I have spent a lot of time in classroom settings, listening to photographers teach me things.
Sometimes they choose to share things from their own personal experience that ends up teaching you in a very distinct way. They let you in on their mistakes. This is the sort of instruction that leaves a perpetual imprint on your artistic process. If you let it, that is.

I remember one such story being told to me by a professor at junior college.
He reminisced about a building he drove by over and over again in this one place he photographed often.
Every time he passed by it he thought about photographing it and saw the image in his mind.
He did this again and again, always visualizing the image in his mind that he would someday take. He did this for years. One time he drove by the building and all that was left was its burned out basement.
He was mortified.
It pained him to think about every time he passed it, not having enough time, promising himself he would capture it on the next visit.
The image that he was always hoping to make was physically gone, but it lingered. If you are not familiar with this feeling I can tell you it is simply awful. The shadows of these unmade images seem to leave darkened impressions, like little feet hallows in sand.

I remember when this story was being told I was sitting in one of those little plastic chairs with the little attached mini half-desk thing that they cram you into.
It might have been cold or raining outside and the classroom was a pitiful run down little room meant to be a temporary classroom in 1982, and you could hear the rats or raccoons running along the roofline.
I recall the look on his face as he told us the building had burned down and he missed getting his shot.
I could see the distance in his eyes as the image came clearly to him beneath his lids and his mouth continued to tell the story.
I know he could clearly see the way the light gently raked across the brick and mortar and the depth the shadows would take on in the final print.
I recognized the slight agony in his voice. This story was also mine.

It is Thanksgiving Day as I write this, and it has been seven years since that day in the classroom. Out the window I see the persimmon tree in the yard heavy with fruit, branchy and barren. Two days ago the tree was swathed with large waxy yellow leaves. I wanted to photograph those leaves in the waning autumn light, but a windstorm accelerated the leaf dropping process, leaving only fruit and sticks. It still makes me a tiny bit sad each time this happens. I am beginning to think that these missed images may have a more poignant role in my photographic process than just vacant impressions.

I realize it is also what makes my images all the more precious. The times when I stop everything that I am doing to make a photograph that presents itself in a passing moment. When I don’t fuss and think too much, I just see and I photograph. It is impulsive, it is unplanned, and it is imperative.