Opportunity Knocks

The lesson I seem to keep missing in life is that many of the best parts aren't planned. This especially seems to apply to my photography. I'll buy a flower intending to take some macros, but be unable to get anything I like. While fussing with the lights, I'll suddenly see there is a great shot in one of the backlit leaves. While stopping to tie my shoe while walking, I'll realize there is a great view behind me that I hadn't seen.

The best example of this was on a trip to England last autumn. For part of the trip, we rented a narrowboat and traveled the canals from Napton to Coventry and back. Just north of Rugby, we stopped early due to some inclement weather and planned to make up time the next day. We got an early enough start, only to round a bend and find the weather had been a little more severe than we thought. A tree had fallen across the canal.

Patience is not one of my primary virtues. Rather than sit in the narrowboat and listen to the crew from British Waterways work on removing the tree, I decided to grab my camera and go for a walk. I got off the boat onto the towpath to find the world lit by watery sunlight. It wasn't my first choice for photography, but it was that or a return to the confines of the narrowboat and snap at my traveling companion - and boredom is a strong motivator for me.


The steep banks along the canal magnified the noise from the tree-removal equipment, so I decided to climb them simply to get away from the sound. Behind our boat was a high bridge, where I could hide from the noise at the very least. When I reached the top of the bridge, I realized the world looked different from there. The watery sunlight was still strong enough to light up the canal, and I shot the first photo on this page.

After a while, while I wandered across the bridge and down the road while taking the occasional shot, the noise below lessened, and I decided to head back and see how things were going. On my way back across the bridge, I realized there had been a great shot behind me all along, when I started seeing the crooked fence along the road by the farm and the signs of Coventry on the horizon. I took the second photo on this page, which is a crop is from a stitched panorama.

While climbing down the bank, the sun started shining a little more strongly. The work on the tree was progressing, but not yet done, so I started looking for macro subjects in the leaves of the trees on the canal bank. I wasn't getting anything worth keeping, when I suddenly had the urge to look down, and I took the third shot on this page from material that was literally right at my feet.

From an unplanned delay that had me looking to alleviate boredom, I got three shots that I really like. Is the lesson in all this to be more aware of what is around me or simply to carry my camera more often? It might be both, or maybe it's just to be ready when opportunity knocks.