The weather App on my iPhone said it was clear skies for this morning’s sunrise, so I figured a perfect way to start my day off would be to head downtown and watch the sun come up as a backdrop to the skyline.
Perhaps it was indeed clear skies in the heavens, but down here on earth, there was a thick layer of cloud completely ready to subdue whatever colors Mother Nature might have to throw at us.
There was a realization that the weather App had gotten it wrong as I pulled off the interstate onto Ashley Drive and the only thing that was clear was that these clouds owned the morning sky.
As I pulled into the University of Tampa grounds just off Kennedy, I noticed that they had lit up their unique art creation and so I was able to get a few shots of its accentuated shape against the starkness of the night skies and city skyline.
Who needs sunrise, when you have Tampa. (I might have mentioned before that I love this place LOL)
I hope you like this little selection …
The first sign of cloud cover might have made some adventurers turn back, but when you build flexibility into your approach to life, you can find new experiences even where you hadn’t planned on looking.
I think most of us shutter-clickers learn early on that you can plan all you want but life has a way of happening around your plans. Perhaps masters of the art are more successful than me, but the percentage of time things turn out exactly as planned is pretty low for a photographer on my level. So, you have to be able to adjust quickly on your feet in order to be able to get the most out of your shoot.
I was able to see in the viewfinder that I had gotten something decent, so by the time I pulled out of Starbucks on Kennedy (thanks Toria) I sipped on a white peppermint mocha, revisited my success, and continued my way home. I have to admit that I felt pretty good about life.
Bathing in self-glory, in between peppermint sips, I reminded myself how versatility and flexibility took a sunrise shoot and turned it into something entirely different. And furthermore, the same Plan B approach to life really allows us to twist with each curve that life gives us.
Some of us go through life planning and executing but frequently derailing as plans come to naught.
It can be a futile struggle if we try too closely to follow a preset plan … one that results in stress, disappointment, or even a feeling of failure.
But but being able to shift with the changing winds and adjust your sail to whichever way the wind is blowing, we can still steer our lives to our chosen destination.
More importantly it is worth noting that life is about the journey and not the destination. So being destination-focused is a fools errand, in any event.
So when life’s journey presents you with twists and turns, go with them. When it places obstacles in your path, go around them or over them.
Because nobody gets a day exactly as they plan it. And if you do, then you probably didn’t aim high enough with your planning anyway.
By finding a different angle on a happening, you can sometimes reach an altogether better result than what you had originally been aiming for. It only asks of you that you ask yourself “what else can you do”. Giving up and going home is almost never the right answer.
Life is more about the experience than the success and while the success of your plans can lay very much in the lap of the gods, your experience is very much up to you.
Being able to adjust to a plan B when your skies cloud over can be the difference between a disappointing or wonderful experience. May your experience this coming week be the latter!
