Turn around and shoot the other way, I thought, as I walked up the Waterfront. The sunset was behind me and in front of me at the same time. Behind me, the actual sun, dropping toward the west end of the Columbia River. In front of me, the clouds caught it and turned a gorgeous salmon over the Interstate Bridge. This is the kind of sky that doesn’t last very long. So I kept turning around. I’d shoot in one direction. Walk a bit. Then turn around and shoot the other way.

Two young women were on the Waterfront path ahead of me, doing what people do at sunset with mobile phones. One would step to the railing and stand there while the other framed her up. Then they’d swap. They’d been at it a while.

The thing is, they were both shooting west. Directly into the glare.

I know exactly what those photos look like. I have twenty years of them in the cloud. Some of them are probably buried here on this site somewhere. I spent a few years shooting on crappy old iPhones and applying analog effects to make up for the deficiencies. It never really did.

But even with newer iPhones, you still have to choose. Focus on the faces and the sky gets blown out. Focus on the sky and the faces go dark. Phones are getting better, but their small sensors can only do so much, and it’s often not enough. Even with great editing tools. They can’t capture enough detail in either the shadows or the highlights in these extreme situations.

I took a few shots with the two of them in it before I decided to say anything. Behind them, seemingly unnoticed, is the shot they really wanted. The sunset would light their faces, and the drama behind them would make the shot truly memorable.

When I got to them, I said, “May I suggest you might want to turn around?”

They looked at me. I pointed behind them. Even though they had both been alternating looking in that direction, they hadn’t seen it. One of them said, “wow!.” And I kept walking.

I could have explained it. I could have told them the sun was going to fall on their faces instead of behind them, that the clouds were doing something the sun itself wasn’t, that this is the whole reason photographers talk about light instead of talking about views. Nobody needed that. They had a phone and about five minutes.

I shot until the sky turned blue. On my walk home, they sat on a bench with their heads together over the phone, going through the shots they’d taken, and one of them looked up as I passed by and said, “Thank you so much; those turned out SO much better.”

They weren’t staring at their phones, ignoring the world. That might be the story everybody wants to tell about two young people with a phone at sunset. They were paying complete attention. They were pointing it at the thing they thought they were supposed to point at. Everyone at that park was looking west, because west is where the sun was, and the sun is the event.

But the best light, the real event, was in the other direction. It often is.

I’ve stood facing the wrong way more times than I can count, working hard, framing carefully, certain I was aimed at the right thing. I wish someone had walked by in those moments and shifted my focus. Most of the time, nobody does. Then you find out later, after it’s too late.

Sometimes it only takes a few words and a few seconds to make someone’s experience better.

Jeff Turner

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