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Take a moment to imagine: you are walking down the streets of Upper Manhattan, camera in hand. The light is fading, and you're not sure you'll capture many more pictures that day, but you're enjoying the scenery as you wander along a tree-lined street. On your right are luxurious high-rises, doormen guarding the entrances like dragons guarding their gold-laden caves. On your left is a beautiful museum done in the Art Nouveau architectural style. But what really captures your attention is a stone set of stairs at the end of the street, so on a whim, you go up them.

You immediately find yourself in the leafy sanctum of Central Park, on a path clogged with determined after-work joggers clad in brightly-colored lycra. Running both in packs and by themselves, surrounding you on either side, you are struck with the sensation that you have discovered an entirely new species -- a hybrid between an exotic parrot and a particularly anxious hamster, perhaps. Part of you wants to stop one of these determined Manhattanites and ask what they're running from. Their soaring rent? The pressures of their career? Their most recent Bumble date? But instead you just snap a few photos of this odd herd, telling yourself that you don't want to cause a scene, and continue along the path. 

After a few minutes, the trees along the path give way to reveal a lake, skyscrapers looming over the opposite shore. You step out of the way of the runners, moving to the edge of the water, and lean against the fence that surrounds the lake. A duck floats lazily on the surface, and a half-forgetten memory from your high school English class comes to mind.

"Where do the ducks go in the winter?" you say to yourself, laughing a little bit as you do. It's been years since you thought about that book, and about the paper you wrote to your English teacher, in which you ranted about how clearly Holden Caulfield needed to learn something about duck migration patterns, if it bothered him so much.

The duck, as if to prove your point, suddenly takes flight -- presumably to begin its own migration. You lift your camera to capture the moment, but you are too slow, and the bird escapes the frame before you click the shutter. You sigh, not expecting the photo to be much good. After all, it's twilight now, and the park is shrouded in the kind of dusk that you have found rarely yields good pictures. And the duck is gone, already just a speck against the purple-blue sky.

Yet, at the end of your trip, when you are going through all your photos, you are particularly struck by this one. You don't even remember taking it at first, but then the memory of the park and the duck come flooding back. This was the accidental photo. But it becomes your favorite picture of Manhattan, and quite possibly your favorite picture you've ever taken. And you smile, knowing that it all happened by chance.
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The photo in the post above is my own work (taken with an iPhone 5S camera, if you're curious). Please note that redistribution without my written permission is a breach of copyright law.