The Goalie

Patience.

I often find myself working on a rigid deadline while telling myself to be patient.  It is hard for me to be patient when waiting in line, but even harder when I need to meet an important deadline, and in newspaper photography every deadline is an important one.

As a placebo for my nervous tension I frequently experiment with Jedi Mind-Control skills.  Using my novice telepathy skills I tell the people, animals, and sometimes the inanimate objects I am photographing what they should do, so that they can be in the right place for me to create a good picture.

To my knowledge I have never actually managed to convince any human, creature, or thing, to do anything by the use of my Jedi powers.  However his picture is proof that all of my attempts may not have been in vain.  Normally when I photograph Hockey I spend most of each period dutifully following the puck with my camera, when the puck goes toward the goal, so does my camera.  The problem is the puck can move really fast, and my camera sometimes lags behind a little.  I had an idea.  Instead of following the puck with my camera like a lemming, I would wait like a cobra poised to strike.  My camera on the goalie and I would use my Jedi Mind-Control skills to bring the action to the goalie.  It worked, with ice shavings flying.

Skeptics of my telepathic skills might say that instead of mind-control I used the more ordinary skill of observation, to notice that the goalie was under a lot of pressure.  Which would mean that instead of altering time and space with my mind all I was doing was waiting in the right place to make a nice photograph.  In response to such skepticism I can only say that they have can have their explanation and I can have mine.

--Darren Breen