Forty years after ‘napalm girl’ picture, a photographer reflects
on the moment that might have been his  It’s difficult to
explain to someone who has grown up in the world of digital
photography just what it was like being a photojournalist in the
all-too-recently-passed era of film cameras. That there was,
necessarily, a moment when your finite roll of film would end at
frame 36, and you would have to swap out the shot film for a
fresh roll before being able to resume the hunt for a picture.
In those “in between” moments, brief as they might have been,
there was always the possibility of the picture taking place.
You would try to anticipate what was happening in front of your
eyes, and avoid being out of film at some key intersection of
time and place. But sometimes the moment just wouldn’t wait.
Photojournalism — the pursuit of storytelling with a camera — is
still a relatively young trade, but there are plenty of stories
about those missed pictures.  In the summer of 1972, I was a
25-year-old photojournali