Making Lemonade
My Nikon had been sitting on my desk since the Florida Springs dive trip. I felt so bad for it, all alone…waiting for a play date, I decided to do my Sunday morning beach walk this morning since Sunday was rained out. It was before 5am when I ran upstairs and grabbed my camera and tripod. Cool. The tripod bracket is already on the camera. That will save time.
When shooting sunrise, I like to begin while it’s still completely dark. With long exposures very nice effects result. About half way to the beach I wondered why my tripod bracket was on the camera. When did I use the tripod? Not on the dive trip. Hmmm.
The sky was still subdued but there were pink clouds mocking me as I hurriedly drove the last few curves on Highway 135. By the time I ran to the water’s edge most of the pink was gone. Whatever, I’ll just do some long exposures with the rough water…that will be nice.
When I attempted to attach my camera to the ball head on my tripod I noticed the plate on my camera was actually for my underwater housing….NOT the tripod. Well just freak.
Not to be deterred, I started shooting and balancing the camera on the tripod for long exposures and they did okay. No big deal…just not as long as I wanted.
About 10 minutes into the shoot I realized I hadn’t cleared my memory card…my large memory card that was nearly full. And for some reason, Lightroom and my D800 don’t play nice when I don’t want to import everything on the card. And with images that are very large in size….jeez. I didn’t want to even think about the fussing that would go on between the Adobe product, the Apple product and me later. Gawd. Next time I think about shooting, I’ll pack everything the night before….duh.
Too late now. Light was brightening and that’s not what I want when playing with motion and color and wide angle.
I finally had enough concrete and geometric fluffy water shots so put my tripod in the car. I could at least get in a good walk on the beach.
The rough water of the past few days had deposited huge amounts of plants from Mobile Bay along the beaches. I felt bad about leaving my usual trash bag at home for collecting garbage but there was so much plastic and other human-created debris I could have filled up a pick-up truck…or small dump truck. (I did remove plastic bags and a mylar balloon….deadly items for sea turtles and other animals that might eat it).
Regardless, I played with my 14-24mm lens. Each time I use it I remember how much I enjoy the lens…its beautiful crispness, the ability to get very close to objects for interesting wide angle shots. It was a sweet reminder.
I could have given up after leaving my bracket at home or paused to erase (one-by-one) the many photographs from diving weeks ago so I wouldn’t lose the ones already taken this morning….but then missed the perfect light. However, I worked with the circumstances that presented and came away with not only a nice walk and a few good images, but with a valuable reminder: Work with what I have, celebrate the day regardless.
Perhaps too often I allow the glitches of the day define the day. No need to do that. Keep squeezing the day for every bit of sweetness I can find.