I almost did not take my camera that morning. I was heading out quite early to enjoy a morning of bass fishing at a local lake. Very summer-like temperatures and humidity had overtaken the previous couple weeks so when a cool front drifted through the area dropping the temperatures into unseasonable ranges, it was difficult to resist getting out. Seems like I had been cooped up far too long and the chance to do some bass fishing offered a wonderful reprieve, so much so, all I was thinking about was spending the day in my canoe and fishing. Photography was to take a backseat and pretty well determined I was not even going to take a camera on this trip.
At the last moment, just before I pulled out at 4:30am that morning, I grabbed my camera, an extra lens and battery and secured them in a watertight container. "Just in case I might see something..." I said to myself.
The morning was indeed much cooler and I donned a light hoodie to ward off the slight chill. When I arrived at the lake, a lively fog was dancing across the surface stirred into movement by a gentle breeze that rolled down from the tops of the ridges that formed one eastern bank. By 5:10am I was on the water moving toward a mile and half long rocky bluff where I planned to spend most of the morning fishing. By this time the sun was still below the horizon and behind the bluff, but the sky was getting brighter with its glow being reflected off the shallow ripples rolling across the surface. The background appeared almost black and the fog took on a bluish nature to it in the subdued light of predawn. A blue heron drifted across the gap between me and the ridge and lightly settled into some shallow water just a few feet off the bank to my right. He was slightly backlit by the soft morning light and presented a silhouette. I slowed down, and drifted slowly forward while I extracted my camera. The light was very low and I adjusted the settings to account for the available light. With a slow shutter speed and long 300mm focal length, handholding a camera steady enough to prevent camera shake was difficult, even more so while sitting inside a canoe whose every whim is to bob and rock at the slightest provocation.
I framed the shot firing off several quick captures before the heron might spook. I reset the camera exposure to try to get a faster shutter speed...then fired off another set of quick exposures, the heron squawked and leaped into the morning air to disappear into the fog. On camera the images looked promising, but by this time I was ready to do some fishing so the camera was replaced in its box and the fishing pole readied for action.
Later after returning home, I loaded the few photos from that morning and focused on that first series of the heron. A few of them were indeed blurred by camera shake, but several were clear and sharp. By applying a selective compositional crop, and adjusting the exposure values in post processing, I settled in on the one final image. Did manage to catch several good bass that morning, but the best catch of the day turned out to be this one iconic, spur of the moment, nature photo.
I've written at length about how planning and preparation are vital to the success of capturing a great photo, and certainly applying such principles to your photography can produce some positive results. However, there are times when instinct and spur of the moment action trumps any degree of planning. Listening to and acting on those inner feeling can at times produce a truly unique and spontaneous photo, and sometimes those often turn out to be the best photos of all.
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