The headline reads: “Best photos of 2012 capture the most remarkable moments of the year.”  Photos of the Olympics, President Obama, sports games, nature and fashion flood the screen.  And then, all of a sudden, I see a photo of a man stuck on the subway tracks with a train about 20 feet away from him.

In December a man was pushed onto the tracks of the New York Subway system.  Only seconds later, the poor man was crushed by the train.  The photographer claims he took the photo to use the flash to warn the driver of the train.  However, in that time he had a chance of actually saving someone’s life.  This photo was later sold to and appeared on the front page of the New York Post with the headline, “DOOMED: Pushed on the subway track, this man is about to die.”

As tragic as this story is, it really got me thinking about the photographer.  Why he did not try to help the individual on the tracks astounds me.  His response to the many reporters who questioned his morals was that he was too far away to reach the man.

In moments of danger, people have seconds to make life-changing decisions.  Maybe this photographer was too far away and maybe saving this man’s life was not possible; however, everyone has to at least try to help. I ask myself how this photographer and everyone else at the scene could have done absolutely nothing to try to save this man.  Yet at the same time, I put myself in their shoes.  In a moment of such panic, people can feel frozen in time. They saw a man crushed under a subway and will be forever traumatized by that moment.  As much as I would like to say otherwise, I am not sure I would have been able to do more.  I have never been in a life or death situation.  Reading into this picture, although my instinct is to criticize the men and women who did nothing, I know now that I cannot do that.  I do not know how I would have responded in this situation, and I cannot judge others on how they did.

The bottom line is that you cannot judge others until you have put yourself in their shoes. In any type of situation, we can only hope that we would do the right thing.