Another dismal attempt last night to get lightning shots. My success rate is extraordinarily low and some of it is purely my own fault, while weather and camera issues and even batteries (yes, batteries) make up the rest.
I thought I had grabbed everything and went down to Lake Mirror, figuring the lake was small enough that no matter which direction lightning might be in, I could quickly walk around the side to put the lake between me and it.
I looked at the sky with longing and then ultimately dismay as after thirty minutes, it was obvious there were no storms in the area. That’s when I realized that my trigger battery was dead anyway and my replacement was back in the car.
So I had the choice to dismantle everything, head back to the car and return with the replacement and set it all up again, or just call it a night. The city skyline and the very low clouds meant that I wasn’t even going to see a sunset from that position anyway, so why return at all?
The prospect of calling it a night meant that I had to accept defeat and I wasn’t in the mood, so once at the car I decided to head off and find another lake. I live in Lakeland for god sake; there’s a million of those things around.
I found a small lake without buildings on the far side and the tiny crack in the cloud cover just above the horizon and a decent zoom lens that managed to get me in tight to it, was just the trick. These four pics show how gloriously red that little spot in the sky got as the sun dropped below the horizon.
To the naked eye, the view was mostly of just grey clouds that dominated the skies but my lens allowed me to create my own wonderful sunset!
So, as I drove home at the end of it all, there might have been no sense of a win (remember, I went out looking for lightning) but there was also no sense of defeat. I began to revisit in my head how the gods sometimes seem to conspire against us and how sometimes no matter what avenue we take, they cut us off with some degree of obstacle.
But at the end of the day, that is all they are … obstacles. The gods can’t make us fail, no matter how they try. We can fail, of course, by taking the obstacle as a defeat and giving up. But that is up to us. There are many times we feel the struggle to the point where we can’t battle any more, but the wise choice then is to simply retreat, regroup, and live to battle another day.
Robert the Bruce, back in the 1300s learned that persistence is the answer to eventual success. Giving up is not an alternative. Remember that spider story?
It’s one of the most wonderful characteristics that humans have …. the will to succeed despite the odds. Failure only exists within us and if we keep it in check, then does it ever even exist at all?
So, let them conspire, but carry extra batteries, find a better location, don’t run off home just yet and you too can find a glorious little sunset of your own!
Have a wonderful week!
