True to form, I set off into the morning darkness today with another experiment in mind.
I had my battery pack, light strips, bottles of water, a strainer, a couple of different props … all thrown into a bag and my new A7 resting on the passenger seat beside me.
I was half way there when I realized I had left my phone behind, but that’s ok. It wasn’t going to kill me to be without my cell for an hour or two.
My choice of venue for these experiments is the pier at lake parker. Not because of the scenery or view, but because at this time of day it gives me the darkest place around, with the fewest distractions or traffic.
So I wandered out in the darkness to the end of the pier and set up to take the first shot, only to realize that I had left my memory card in my PC. Luckily the A7 has two slots and there was a spare card sitting in slot two in the camera. So, I swapped it over to slot one and I was back in business.
I began pouring water through the strainer only to realize that the strainer’s holes were too big to emulate rain, so that was a bust. So I just soaked the ground around the props to at least give me a reflective surface.
That’s when the lights went out because I hadn’t charged the battery pack.
And that’s also when the light of the full moon behind me gave me enough light to keep shooting with … hence the sudden disappearance of blue light in the photos at the end of the blog.
I hope you enjoy the little selection. The quality of the images was terrific in my eyes and well worth the early morning excursion.
So I felt proud of the results, albeit on the back of a pretty poor “neville- performance”. Forgotten phone, forgotten card, forgotten charge to the battery pack … I would have forgotten my head ‘cept it was glued to my shoulders.
Thankfully there are times in life when our ball-dropping is recovered by something or someone about us. In this case, if was the camera and the moon to my rescue. But in other times it has been someone or something stepping in and saving the day.
It is one of the reasons why I preferred team-sports growing up. The sense that you didn’t always have to bring your A-game. That someone else would help carry you to the win.
It is a comfort that is very much part of belonging to a pack; working together and for each other.
Life’s journey is never fully alone and our best successes are rarely achieved without the help of someone or something outside of us. To think that our wins are ours alone is a foolish, conceited thought and it is important to understand that our life does not play out in a vacuum.
I have long been blessed with help and support from friends and loved ones and honestly can’t think of a success that is solely my own. There is also more joy to be had in a success when you can share that with others around you. A feeling that you achieved something all on your own is not just foolish, but it is hollow.
Success shared is truly more joyful and definitely more honest.
I love how some idiots describe themselves as self-made and they bask in their shallow claims of success. There may be a false-appearance of success that they can attribute to themselves but it is always at the very least on the back of someone that they stood on, or someone that helped them.
John Donne in 1624 wrote that no man is an island and unable to process the thought properly, he attributed the success of man to his god. You see this same response on the field of play sometimes where a goalscorer gives thanks to the skies or at the award ceremony when the actor gives thanks for his talent.
But the truth in the thanks is really to the parent that nurtured, the teacher that taught, the friend that helped, or the partner that encouraged. There are so many players in our success story and it is with those that we share our success.
I have long since understand that my successes belong to so many. It is only my failures that belong to me alone.
… just a thought!
