On Dec 18, 2005, at 6:37 AM, Mark Roberts wrote:
He was just driving by
with his son when he saw the scene (and almost crashed the car when he
did). He jumped out, set up his camera, found out the batteries in his
light meter were dead, guesstimated the exposure and got one shot. Any
photographer of any skill/experience level can relate to this kind of
experience :)
I certainly can, except for the dead batteries. Many of my favourite
photos have been mostly due to simple luck.
This one is probably the most "lucky" - I already had the photo
composed and metered when the little wisp of cloud floated into view
from behind the other clouds which were reasonably static. It was
moving fast enough that I wouldn't have got the shot if I wasn't just
about to trip the shutter already. I had enough presence of mind to
hold off for a couple of seconds until the cloud was right where I
wanted it. Another couple of seconds and it was gone.
http://www.bluemoon.net.nz/photo/printsdb/view.php?p=4
BTW that's the full frame - I prefer to crop a bit off the right.
The more I plan photos the worse they turn out... I once planned a
mid-winter trip to a small mountain town so I could get some nice
snow photos. Well that winter was unusually warm. We eventually
found some small pockets of snow at the base of a couple of trees at
the side of a road somewhere, where the sunlight wasn't reaching it.
The following week, after we'd returned home, they got a massive
dumping that even closed the roads.
- Dave
