The Online Photographer

Moon hunt: Summer lasts half as long as you want it to, and goes by twice as fast as it should. The last robin fledgling of the season left the nest today—I saw it; the cantaloupe are out at Raymond Shirk's farmstand (he grows the best cantaloupe in this, I don't know, hemisphere); and the corn's as high as a man. Summer is fast passing by.

Last weekend I noticed from the apps that sunset and moonrise were happening at more or less the same time, around 8:45, so 8:45 on Saturday and Sunday found me driving slowly down country roads out on the high flatlands peering around looking for the moon. Funny thing though. The air was clear on the sunset side, and the moonrise side looked clear, but there was some distant overcast, far off, that shrouded the moon until it was more than ten degrees up over the horizon. Eventually it rose out of a hazy glow in the overcast into the clearer sky. By that time the possibility of balancing the light had passed.

The next night I did eventually see a lighter glow in the dark sky appear, but, again, not until it was well above the horizon. I positioned it next to a silo near a barnyard where a single outdoor light illuminated a single pickup truck. But the moon couldn't quite delineate from behind the haze, and it was too bright relative to the sky and the rest of the scene already. I tried a few exposures. I have a vague notion that if I understood Photoshop better, I could merge two exposures together to make a passable illustration of what I might have been able to see if things had worked out better. But to be honest, I lack motivation for things like that sometimes. If the picture's not there, no use forcing things, unless for some reason you have to.

Forest bonfire: I experienced a worse failure recently I am still kicking myself hard about. And will probably be kicking myself about for a while. My neighbor Les and his wife, who live on the lake, have a big field higher up on the hillside. Two years ago they hired some Mennonites to clear an acre or two of forest. The land clearers made a great diffuse jumbled heap of trees on the low end of the hillside, which Les told me they would eventually burn. Imagine four or five semis parked alongside each other—that's about how big the heap was. For two years it just sat there, drying out and settling, with grass and weeds growing around it and through it.

A month ago I was driving by on the way to a regular appointment in Watkins Glen and could hardly believe my eyes. The Mennonites had taken all that wood and stacked it tightly in a shape that resembled an elongated church dome. It was at least thirty feet high. The rough branches and twisted trunks were so cleverly pieced together that it looked like a completed puzzle or an art installation. And they must had had a crane. At the very top, they had placed a giant stump, roots intact and weaving down into the wood underneath. I saw it near dusk on a cloudy day. It was amazing. Especially on a brooding overcast night, it looked timeless and mystical, like some kind of Druid offering to the gods far back in the mists of time. I knew I had to come back with the camera, and that it would be worth it to come back again and again until I got the shot.

But did I? A week later, I was making the same regular weekly trip to Watkins Glen, and I passed the huge bonfire structure again—and again had the same thought, that I really had to photograph it before it was gone.

The third week, same trip, I didn't think of it until I was headed up the hill. Then I passed the woods that blocked the view of where it had been, and saw a giant heap of ash that was still smoking. It smoked for several days more.

Ow, ow, ow. That one's going to hurt for a while. Of course, you're never sure if something would have made a good picture until you see the picture. But I'm pretty sure.

What's that Jay Maisel quote? "Never say you’re going back—SHOOT IT NOW!" I could have shot it when I first saw it if I'd had the camera in the car. And I had at least a week to go back. If I had only remembered.

If I make an educated guess about a possible photo opportunity and head out a-huntin', I can't really complain if nothing comes of it. But when the universe gives me a gift and I don't have the wits and grit to simply take what's offered, that's on me. Damn. There are now two great once-in-a-lifetime pictures I could have had since I got the new camera that I missed.

Mike

P.S. I'd say live and learn, but, to say that, you've got to learn.

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Featured Comments from:

Jeff1000: "I completely relate! I was driving my rig, a 2024 Kenworth T-680, heading west on I-10 in Louisiana, nearabouts Baton Rouge. The sun was going down, pulsing the way it does, and the sky was on fire, like streaks of red painted on a pale canvass. I was driving a section of the Interstate that's elevated, like a bridge, above the Louisiana swampland. The swamp looked absolutely evil, like it was under the spell of Satan. Streaming red light raked across the swamp, and my imagination conjured up the scary creatures that were surely lurking under the water’s red surface: alligators, eels, snakes, leeches; heck, maybe even the creature from the black lagoon. I’m sad to report though that I never got the shot: the shoulder of the bridge’s road was just too narrow to accommodate my tractor-trailer."

Dave Levingston: "The moon and sun do that every month. The day before the full moon you often get around an hour when both the moon and sun are above the horizon. There is often haze on the horizon that obscures the moon, even when the sky is clear. And at the moment there is smoke from the fires out west making it worse. Atmospheric conditions are better in colder months, but the amount of time when they are both visible is shorter."

robert e: "The cynical gloss of this post would go something like: 'you can't win for trying, and you can't win for not trying,' but of course only the trying gives you any chance at all. It's just that you need luck, too. Once upon a time, it seemed that every serious shutterbug kept a spare in the car. I don't think that's a thing any more. Is it because the phone is now the spare? Is it because digital cameras aren't as good in that role as were all-mechanical film cameras? I think it's a bit of both. Come to think of it, spare tires are disappearing, too. What's happening to us, anyway?"

Allan Ostling: "Your missed bonfire photo doesn't hold a candle to the shot that I missed in 1995. I was driving a rental car in Tasmania when I spotted an echidna sitting in the road. I slowed, and missed it, but did I stop and take a photo of this seldom-seen egg-laying mammal? I did not, and regret it to this day."

anthony: "True story: Some guy took a stunning close-up of a great snowy owl in a snowstorm in northern Canada which won a major competition 10–15 years ago. He said he had initially taken a number of shots of the owl, and left to return home. After two hours on the road, he turned around and went back (in the snowstorm!), found the owl in the same place (!!), and took the prize winner(!!!) And so it goes…."