I wish I had that one back!

I thought it would be fun to start a thread where we all could post shots we wish we could have another chance at. I know all of us have gotten back to the house or office and started going through the days shots and found images that you know would have been award winners if only... Well, post them here and show that you goof up great opportunities just like everyone else. I hope maybe we can all learn from our and others mistakes and reduce the number of these type of images we have to bear.

Here is one of my recent goof ups I wish I had back.

These bird's almost never stick their wings out when hunting and the one time one did, I was concentrating on getting the reflection in the frame. So, I cut the wing off. Oh well, maybe next time. If there is a next time.

Interesting topic Ron. Thought I'd contribute one of my many examples of this phenomenon. Maybe we can learn from others how to avoid some of these screwups.

This spring I had three days to photograph fishing Forster's Terns before most of them moved on. I made many attempts at getting one emerging from the water with a fish but failed miserably. Usually it was because I didn't have time to get focus locked on but other times it was no head visible, no catch light and often no fish. Many times I failed on all counts. In desparation I decided to try anticipating where the diving tern would hit the water, aiming the lens by looking down the outside of the lens tube rather than using the viewfinder and hoping for the best. About the third time I tried it this was the result. I got the head visible, a catch light, focus lock and a fish - all the hardest stuff that I had little or no control over. But I cut off the wings.

If anyone would like to suggest a better technique I'd sure like to hear about it....

This looked like a pretty big bird, sitting on a snag on the wind-protected side of a bluff one very cold day. I hustled to the top and made a sneak approach. I anticipated the wing lift so prepared to make the shot vertical. And in the one split second equaling one frame where he is parallel to the lens...I clipped the tail. Lousy panic aim...

This is the one I may never get over.

There is a trout stream running below my house. I was actually in my yard just goofing around with trying to get some kind of yardbird shot (my term for whatever comes to my wife's feeders) when an Osprey flew over. We basically never see Ospreys along the creek since it is too small. I was shooting with my 600 lens on the Wimberly and I started taking in-flight pics of the Osprey and was excited to be doing it. I compensated for the bright sky by dialing in an ev compensation and took a number of shots as he flew back and forth. Suddenly he was hovering right over a pool just below me. He dove into the stream and I was all over it shooting as he splashed in and emerged straight towards me with a trout in his talons.

Of course as he dropped out of the strong back light he was way overexposed and worse yet my shutter speed dropped to 1/200th and I got huge motion blur. I was able to save the exposure somewhat because I was shooting RAW but the 1/200th I couldn't so anything with. Had I simply gone to a manual focus I would have been perfectly exposed and shooting at 1/1000 minimum.

Moral: ALWAYS shoot manual exposure on in-flight shots as the BG may change at any moment.

I know I will never even see this again in my stream much less with camera ready. Not only that but I think that was the biggest trout in the whole creek.

After spending several days in south Texas visiting, for the first time, NWRs and State Parks in the general vicinity of Brownsville, I started driving well before sunrise and in dense fog toward New Mexico where I was signed up for a Birds in Flight workshop. You can put a NPNer at the wheel, but you can't make him watch the road. I spotted two Crested Caracara in a tree in the median of the highway. At the next turn-around, I stopped pulled out my camera backpack and removed the teleconverter from the 300mm lens to admit more light in the dim conditions. The birds were still in the tree when I got back and sat there while I was photographing them from the car. I had never seen a Crested Caracara before. In my excited state, I decided I needed to get closer. WITHOUT VIEWING THE SHOTS I HAD ALREADY MADE, I got out of the car and watched the birds fly away in a direction that gave me a good view of their tails.
The birds gave me some nice poses for my seriously underexposed shots. This is a crop to emphasize the noise present in the images.

Thanks, for all your posts and stories. It is amazing how may ways things go wrong. Yes, I shoot manual now almost exclusively, just because of the BIF BG change rule. I also have just kept shooting thinking all is great without checking my exposure in that nice screen digital cameras provide. How lazy can I get.

I hope more people will contribute to this thread. If nothing else seeing these goofs makes us think again about what not to do.

This image was created May 29th in Utah, or should I say that I messed it up on that date?

The pair of Western Grebes were just paddling along, side by side. I wasn't set up for any shot in particular when without any notice at all they started "rushing".

The light wasn't the best in their direction, but I wish I could have done a better job capturing this pair.

All I can do now is hope that I get to see this behavior again one day in better lighting conditions.

Glad to see photographers as talented as you all are prone to mess ups too. This shot is from my first (and so far, only) experience with a snowy, and as such I was pretty excited. So excited, that I forgot to change the focus lock from bottom to middle - resulting in this great detailed shot of beach grass -- with an unfocused bird flying above. Better luck next time. . .

Luke, too bad on that one. This was a great setting for a snowy. Very unique. I hope you get another shot.

You guys have no idea about the proper way to miss a shot. Here's my masterpiece, panning as a bald eagle flew by in Prince Rupert, BC.

Durwood, nice! Now I don't feel so bad about my misses, some of which look a lot like this.

Durwood your photo and comment gave me a good laugh.

This one's pretty self-explanatory.

Oh, Argh...

ok, this is the "miss" that killed me last year at Sanibel. I spent the whole morning trying to get a spoonbill in flight, but they were too far away.Thern I turned my attention to a crowned night heron on the shore in front of me.
Guess what flew right by me before I could re-focus? this is full-frame
# 256,789,451,667 in my "missed shots" file...

Sandy r

Well, here's just one of mine because I have so few to choose from. I used to do so well panning with racing sports cars and now it's like I've never had a camera in my hands before.