In a Hurry
Ben didn’t have the energy to run, especially with an extra 20 pounds strapped on his back and needing to go up the hill, but he did his best to at least proceed at a decent trot.
“Guess I should have trained more for this,” thought Ben.
As he arrived at the top of the ridge, Ben was out of breath, huffing and puffing, and feeling like he needed to take a quick break. Just then the sound of the helicopter caught his attention. He knew the train was probably getting closer.
He didn’t have much time.
He started trotting again.
Up ahead was the clearing Ben originally found to take the pictures, and his watch buzzed with a text message.
“Seriously,” Ben thought, “Don’t they know I’m busy.”
Still trotting, he saw the text was from Amy, “The train just passed us. Just wanted to let you know it’s on its way so you could be ready.”
Getting to the clearing, Ben was happy to see that no one else had found his “secret” spot to take pictures of the train. He hurriedly took off his backpack, “Yeah, I’m not going to have time to set up my tripod,” he mumbled under his breath.
He took a quick breath, noticing he was feeling frantic, and thought, “Remember, smooth is fast and fast is slow.”
Ben took a slightly longer breath, slowing down his movements.
“You’ve got time.”
Ben shifted his backpack off of his shoulder and tried to pretend he was smooth and calm as he lifted his camera out of the backpack and swapped lenses. He could hear the helicopter getting closer. He knew he didn’t have much time, and then he heard the train whistle blowing in the distance.
“Shit, where is my sheet with my settings? Breathe. Smooth is fast.”
Ben calmly looked into the bag and saw the paper, pulling it out and noticing some dried blood on his shirt.
“Okay, F-Stop, set. Let’s set the lens to manual focus. Good. Set the zoom to 70. Nice. Set the focus to just after 70 feet. Good. I wish I had time to set up the tripod.”
Ben heard the train just about to blow past his location. A train whistle blew, and Ben leaned against the tree for support in the spot he would have set up his tripod.
He took a deep breath, hearing the train getting closer and closer, quickly thinking in his head, “I can’t believe I made it here.”
Ben smiled with excitement, his eye looking through the viewfinder, his hand on the shutter button.
Ben was ready.
The front of Big Boy No. 4014 was just shy of emerging from the trees, just as Ben had pictured in his head, and he held down the shutter button. He expected to hear a flurry of clicks coming from his camera while it fired off six frames in one second, but there was just one click.
Freaking out, Ben frantically kept pressing the shutter button, wondering what was going on, as the train sped by.
As the last car of the train disappeared behind the trees, Ben snapped one more shot.
“What the hell just happened?” he said with disbelief.
Looking at the top of his camera he saw the shutter setting set to “S” for single. At that instant he remembered when he changed the setting to “single” after his tests during his reconnaissance mission so he could take pictures of flowers.
“Shit. Shit. Shit.” Ben exclaimed. “I didn’t write down to check the shutter setting and make sure it was on ‘continuous.’”
Ben almost started to cry.
“Maybe I got lucky,” Ben said with a resignation in his voice that he knew he didn’t get the shot he wanted. He then looked at his camera backpack, sprinkled with seeds, and his pants completely covered.
Ben debated checking the preview images on the back of his camera but knew, if he saw that he missed the shot, he would really start to cry.
He started to pack up his camera, mumbling, “Let’s just get home.”
Ben took out his water bottle, finishing what was left, and began the journey home, not bothering to try and get rid of any of the seeds attached to his pants and backpack.