I was taking ground level pictures of the various county fair activities, and someone said, "Look, here come the skydivers." I turned around, aimed my camera at one of the skydivers and prepared to take a shot.
Well, the skydiver must have seen me pointing my camera at him, so he abruptly yanked his cord to change direction, and came straight at me (supposing that it would be a better shot.) Well this means he was coming down at me pretty fast, too fast. I hit the shutter release as fast as I could and tried to jump out of the way. He landed feet on the ground running as fast as he could.
He missed me about a foot and a half. I was immediately enveloped in a tangled mass of parachute cords (with one of the cords hitting me across the throat), and the parachute was coming down on top of me and him both. I didn't even know I had gotten a picture until the slides were developed.
Not only did the picture turn out great, but somehow miraculously there was another skydiver in the extreme top left corner exactly where he should have been if I was lining the shot up on purpose. For a split second picture taking decision, it was a winner.
