Some forms of professional humiliation are subtle. It usually appears covertly during a field session when the subject is uncooperative, the light is off, and the mud near the riverbank is just damp enough to be dangerous. For the majority of stories that eventually make people laugh, that’s about how it starts. Not right now. Never at that precise moment.
The term “accidental comedy” is used loosely on the internet, where anything that takes someone by surprise is considered hilarious. However, in the realm of visual storytelling, such as photography, documentaries, and field journalism, a single unplanned moment, a misplaced step, or a startled subject can result in an image that is so perfectly timed that it could not have been staged. Every now and then, that picture becomes viral. And sometimes it succeeds.
It’s difficult to ignore how frequently the narrators of these tales begin in the same manner. The day was not going well. The equipment wasn’t working properly. In a shop, a man’s back is pressed up against a mop handle, and he raises both hands in the air, certain that something evil is happening. It is captured by the photographer. Everyone remembers what appeared to be a ruined frame. It’s likely that the man filming it first moaned, then turned to face the screen and burst out laughing. It seems like everyone experiences that sequence: groan, look, laugh.
That contains something worthwhile to sit with. Comedy, particularly the unintentional kind, often finds its way into the area where control falters. In a field session, you are already negotiating between your plans and what the real world has to offer.
More than most, wildlife photographers are aware of this. The frame you envisioned doesn’t exist in reality, and after hours of waiting in the heat, something entirely unplanned occurs three feet to your left, and you either catch it or you don’t. When someone does catch it, they may become enraged for the next ten minutes before they realize what they have.
Naturally, the stakes have changed due to the internet. In less than a day, something that was formerly confined to a contact sheet or the cutting room floor can now reach millions of people. She most likely didn’t intend to post that widely shared video of a woman in her car forgetting to turn off her camera and capturing the universe delivering something perfectly timed right behind her. The entire narrative began when she revealed it. The context fell apart. The content was the unintentional comedy.
When that unintentional energy is officially acknowledged, that is truly fascinating. The funniest and most memorable moments in a project almost never occur during the scheduled shooting days, as film productions and documentary crews have long known.
Producer Adolf El Assal, who has worked in the film industry for more than 20 years, has stated that the majority of the lessons he learned came from mistakes that no one warned him about and from victories that didn’t feel like victories at the time. This is a particularly good example of that observation. When scoring entries, the awards committee is typically unaware of the backstory. They see the cut or the picture. They are blind to the mud, the frustration, and the instant when everything appeared to be falling apart before everything unintentionally came together.
There might be a tiny lesson here that transcends photography and filmmaking. In structured creative work, a lot of effort is put into trying to control uncontrollable outcomes. The best parts of the finished product are frequently the ones that were not planned. It seems like the most technically accurate people in the room aren’t always the ones who win things out of the blue. Sometimes they’re just the ones who continued filming when something went wrong, who didn’t cut out the awkward frame, and who allowed the error enough room to turn into something completely different.
That doesn’t mean you should make poor plans. However, this could be an indication that you should have a little more faith in the stumble than your gut tells you.
