The one that got away – Sebastian Posingis
Born in Germany, but raised and educated in Iran, Greece, India, Sri Lanka and the UK, Sebastian Posingis has had a decades-long association with this country.
The first years of his career were spent photographing across Asia, for travel magazines and guidebooks, and for wildlife and nature stock libraries. After the 2004 tsunami, he worked for the better part of two years documenting the aftermath, in Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka.
Commercial clients include high-end hotels and international aid organisations, and commissions have appeared in publications ranging from Vanity Fair to Architectural Digest, Elle Decor to the Financial Times.
In the last decade, his focus has shifted towards book projects, notably in the fields of architectural and aerial photography. Next year, he plans to publish a 52-book project of his images.
The one that got away
‘There are two types of miss. For one thing, ‘shots’ is like saying you’re a hunter: it doesn’t really apply to a lot of photographers. If you photograph a tennis match, or you’re a news photographer, then definitely there are certain shots you have to get to make the front page. But architecturally, it’s a little difficult to say you’ve ‘missed’ a picture, unless someone has torn a building down.
But generally, regret for missed pictures is just not taking enough pictures, or pictures you think are too mundane. But a professional photographer is constantly thinking in images, and those are abundantly lost all the time. Taking the picture is far more difficult than just seeing the picture. Even today, I missed at least ten – just from not having my camera on me.
For me, the picture not gotten is far more important if I don’t see the picture. You have all sorts of photographers, and most of them will, hopefully, come back from the same event with a slightly different photograph. And some of them will come back with a picture that no-one else has even seen. And that, for me, is fascinating – because when you look at the essence of different photographers, why do they create images that stand out? It’s because that’s what they see.
Dominic Sansoni [‘The One That Got Away’, Sunday, June 21, 2020] is a classic example. You can sit with him all evening, and then he’ll unexpectedly post a great picture on Instagram of some chair you’ve both apparently been looking at the whole night. So, the one I didn’t get is one by Dominic, for a book we did together, Sri Lanka: the Island from Above. We were flying up the West coast, in a helicopter, and taking pictures randomly of these sand-spits off Kalpitiya, and the one he photographed is in the precise shape of Sri Lanka.
In a helicopter you only get a split second to take any given picture; and there was a lot of bright light on the sea that morning, and I was trying to avoid the glare to get the sea in, and Dominic kind of did the opposite… That is certainly a picture that I missed, in that I didn’t see it. I have a picture of it, sure; but it’s a different lens, different angle: I missed the concept. And then when I saw his photo I said “Where the hell was that?!”’
The shot that he got
‘This was a total fluke. Our second day of flying for the same book, we left Point Pedro in Jaffna, and flew south-east, over Chundikulam National Park. I was sitting with Dom on one side, the writer Richard Simon on the other, and the doors are open.
It’s a stunning, stunning place. So we’re just taking our pictures, and then suddenly through the headsets I hear Richard screaming something. “FLAMINGOS!!” probably. We looked across, through the helicopter, and at that moment the pilot banked to the left, so now I’m not looking at the horizon, I was almost looking straight down as we were turning. And I just took one picture, almost out of politeness – and then we flew on.
We landed near Batticaloa and had lunch, and downloaded our pictures. This one thumbnail image on the screen really popped out, and Dom said, “That is bizarre. It looks exactly like Sri Lanka!”
To anybody outside of Sri Lanka it’s just a blob of birds. But if you’re Sri Lankan, or you know the place, it has more meaning. And that is a picture that was not ‘conceived’ – through a moving helicopter, past somebody’s knees – and not even knowingly taken, really. But it’s a perfect crop, straight out of the doorway. A truly serendipitous shot.
Maybe Dom has the exact same image, and he’s just too polite to show it. But I kind of feel that this is Richard’s photograph, actually, because he saw it. I’m just the guy who took the picture.’
‘Sri Lanka: The ‘island’ from above’