Yesterday morning’s escape to Lake Hancock was pre-planned more than most.
I had decided to walk the trail there in the near-total darkness of pre-dawn and the previous evening was spent assembling all the bits and pieces I would need to take with me.
My intention was scenic-level shooting rather than creature shooting and so the lenses were the 11 mm and the 24 mm. The 11 mm is a fun one but doesn’t have the clarity of the slightly narrower 24 mm. However its fish-eye ultra-wide view can create lovely views that, uncropped, generate “keepable” pictures.
I also brought the mid-zoom of 70 mm to 300 mm which would allow me to get closer to the horizon, should something good be happening there.
I remembered the spare batteries and threw everything into a backpack that had the tripod clipped to one side. I even remembered the flashlight for the long walk in the dark.
From where I parked the car to where I encountered the lake was about 3/4 mile journey through a forest of large live-oak trees and their umbrella canopies shielded any light from above so that there were several patches where you could see nothing around other than what the flashlight was pointed at.
Being woods, there was no likelihood of encountering alligators but there was always the possibility of stumbling into some wild hogs, or wildcats and there had even been a sighting there a few months back of a black panther.
On my last such attempt through these woods at dark I heard several large animals moving in the shrubbery nearby and even some growls or grunts that raised my level of anxiety. But this time, other than some large winged creatures that I disturbed on one section of the trail, I didn’t hear or see anyone.
The twilight itself wasn’t particularly wonderful but it was the experience of getting there that mattered. Breathing in the fresh air and feeling alone and at one with nature was a wondrously special way to start a day.
I have attached a few images at the end of the blog and I hope you enjoy. They are on the dark-side so best not viewed in the brightness of some well-lit area on a phone. But the very darkest ones of the moon through the trees are probably my favorites.
It was just after twilight and before dawn when I switched lenses to the zoom and I stood there for a moment just looking from the shore across at the horizon in hope that something might happen.
Just then an Osprey dropped right in front of me, hit the water with a splash and emerged with a sizeable catfish in his claws. I can’t tell you the number of times, I have wished for such an event when my large zoom would thrive in capturing the moment.
But unfortunately for me, the lighting was terrible, and my camera was still in manual mode, set to a shutter speed of 1/10 of a second, and in my hands (not on a tripod). I furtively took some shots of what was happening but I knew I was getting nothing.
I tried to figure out if I should change the settings on the camera in order to get something but it happened all too fast for me and the moment was gone. He then flew right over my head, fish in claws, and I thought I felt a drop of water hit my head as the beat of his wings thumped in my ear-drums.
With the moment gone, I had conflicting emotions. On one hand there was the huge thrill of witnessing what I had just seen. On the other hand there was the feeling of abject failure in missing such an opportunity with my camera.
As he flew on to a distant tree where he could enjoy his breakfast, the latter feeling was the one that really took hold and I scolded myself on such a dismal performance by someone who likes to think of himself as a somewhat decent photographer.
And that is where the thought for today’s blog took shape in my brain.
I decided to call it the R.O.A.D. of our journey through life. This is the Realization of Opportunity vs Ability and Decision.
You see, Opportunities happen along our journey quite possibly on a regular occurrence. Some of these can be life altering and others simply moments that could enhance our life experience in some manner.
Realization that an opportunity is happening is the first step in not letting it pass you by. I suspect that there are many in my life that I never even knew were there at various points in my journey. Perhaps they are moments where I was looking another way, or distracted in a different thought, or maybe I even completely misread the moment to where I saw but didn’t recognize it.
A very important aspect to the success of an opportunistic moment is our Ability to seize it. Oftentimes we may lack the skills or the resources even when we do recognize it correctly. For example, there may be an opportunity to make millions if we had ten thousand to invest in it but if we don’t have the ten thousand in the first place, then tough shit on us.
I have read a lot over the years about this important combination of Opportunity and Ability and while I agree that it is true, there is another significant quality to the moment that is equally important.
And that is our ability to make the right Decision in being able to seize and convert the opportunity and making it something real in our lives.
For example, in yesterday’s moment, I made the wrong decision and it cost me any chance I had of seizing what was happening before me. Had I switched my camera into auto-mode rather than cripple myself with possibilities of settings that needed to be simultaneously changed in manual mode, I would have very likely got something.
Yes, the lighting was incredibly wrong but still it would have improved my likelihood of success.
Our decision making skills get tested at many points in our lives and while I pride myself on my ability to make a decision regardless of the pressures in place, like most people, I sometimes get that decision wrong.
And when we make the wrong decision, it doesn’t matter how well we recognized the opportunity, how real the opportunity was, or how able we truly were to take it.
Decisions haunt us throughout our lives and those of us who look back at bad ones, carry them like a mill-stone around our necks.
But the point in looking back at them at all is to realize that we made a bad decision and to learn from it so hopefully we don’t repeat that again in the future.
You can bet that if I ever find myself in a similar situation to yesterday’s Osprey experience, that my first reaction will be to throw the camera into auto mode.
Lesson learned.
… just a thought.
