With Pete still here from England, I had the chance to go back out on a trail with him yesterday morning and with Inna’s extra eyes to help spot things us old fogies would miss, we were well set up for a good day of picture taking.
It turned out to be another fun trail and the early highlights were these amazing butterflies that were flitting around a bush that I spotted while waiting for them to arrive.
It was great fun trying to follow and catch focus and however long I ended up waiting felt like less than a minute.
Apart from all the wonderful birds we spotted along the way, we also caught a number of baby alligators and had the added joy of seeing one with a catch in his mouth that frankly looked too big for the little guy to swallow. I hope he was able to figure out a way to make a meal of it. He clutched to it as a sacred possession and when he deemed I was getting too close and might take it off him, he swam away.
The occasional cloud cover and the sun’s low angle proved to be the challenge to overcome but before I even get into how they formed the thought for today’s blog, take a peek here at one image I got around five in the morning as I drove over the home to let the cats out. It is hand-held and opportunistic in nature, but worth the view, I think.
Each glimpse of the moon seemed to only last a few seconds as clouds floated by, and most of the shots I took were awful. But this one came out cool, I thought.
Anyway, all the main images from the trail are at the end of the blog and I hope you enjoy!
So, the thought that occurred to me (hence this blog) really formed in my head towards the first part of the trail. We encountered a large number of turtles basking in the early morning sun and just to the right of where they sat, was a lovely alligator sprawled along a length of fallen log.
I wanted to take the shot but the position of the sun made everything so dark and when I tried to go up a path that would have allowed me to shoot from the other side, they had that section of the trail closed (some idiot was caught throwing things at a mommy gator as she watched over her young … I hate people sometimes). In any event, as I couldn’t get anywhere to take the shot, I realized that though on the outset it looked like an opportunity for a cool pic, it really wasn’t.
There were a few such instances later on where on first glance there seemed to be a shot available to take but in reality there was either no clear view or the sun was behind what I wanted to shoot.
Hence the thought that sometimes we think that opportunity is knocking and it genuinely isn’t. At least, not for us.
In real-life, such situations happen where it looks like we might have a chance to do something but due to other circumstances, we find ourselves unable to act.
For example, someone tells you about a super investment opportunity but at that moment you don’t have the funds.
I have written before about how we need to be able to take opportunities as they arise, but it is also very important to be able to walk away when the opportunity isn’t right for us at that moment in time.
Many will rue the opportunity missed and chastise themselves for ages afterwards. Others will try to take the opportunity and find themselves unable to deliver and they experience a real failure that sets them back a bit.
So really, it is all about timing and circumstance when it comes to opportunity. Just as being in the right place at the right time is important to recognize, so too is the wrong time important to understand. We need to be confident enough in our moment to be able to walk away and to do so without recrimination.
Life rarely presents just a single opportunity to us. The skill involved is recognizing which one is right for us when we are offered them.
… just a thought!
