Spin Ink

Over the last 6 years or so, I have taken 10’s of thousands of pictures. I have photographed a wide variety of things; portraits, landscapes, studio, macro, panoramas, the living, and the dead. I have taken my camera from sea-level to ~6,000ft. In each image, a moment is captured and frozen in time. Some were in incredibly sharp focus, while others were abstract or over exposed. I am not a professional photographer, but I play one on the Internet. I have had zero training, and my concepts of lighting, composition, and technique are my own. I know what I like, and I do my best to capture it with each image I take.

When someone asks me, “Of all the pictures you have taken, which one is your favorite?”, I have no trouble telling them exactly which one is my favorite. Without a doubt, it is this image. I’m sure many of you are thinking, ‘What? that one? Huh?”. Granted, its technical merit is poor at best. The image isn’t properly framed, It looks like I may have moved while the shutter was open, and the depth of field is all wrong. All of that aside, It is the best photograph I have ever taken, as far as I am concerned.

“Why?” you ask. Well perhaps you had to be there to fully appreciate the moment, but this image has captured a moment that I believe to be universal to all living creatures. In this image, I have captured the precise moment where a living creature knows that it is going to die. The crab has been forced to come to terms with his own mortality. To set the stage for you, I will do my best to explain the events that lead up to this moment.

A hermit crab is crawling along dragging a shell that is far too big and much to heavy for him. He spots a smaller shell that looks like it would be just the right size. He decides to leave his shell behind and make a break for the shell seen on the right side of the image. Unfortunately for him, what he thought was a freshly abandoned shell, was actually a fellow hermit crab that was stuck on his back. All the while, in the distance, a peppermint shrimp is carefully watching the whole event unfold. As the little hermit crab turns around to retreat back to his old shell, the giant peppermint shrimp flutters down and blocks his retreat.

It all happened very quickly, and I barely managed to get my camera’s shutter open in time to capture this very special moment. This contributed to the chaotic feel of the image, as there was no time to think, much less to compose the shot. This photo is my personal favorite because it depicts something we all must come to terms with at some point in our lives, our own mortality. It is not often you can relate to a hermit crab, but in this image, it is easy to understand what is going through this hermit crabs tiny little mind. “Shhhiiiiittttt!!!”