![]() Bill actually just posted the photo and full original article on his blog-a great read. He started with a plan, but when the weather didn’t cooperate he was able to let go of his preconceived idea and find something even better. My friend William Neill wrote an enlightening article in Outdoor Photographer magazine about how he made Dawn, Lake Louise, probably my favorite image of his (among many great ones). In hindsight I felt I’d been led to that place, either by instinct or by forces beyond my consciousness. I embraced uncertainty and something unexpected yet wonderful happened. I just thought, hey, it might be interesting down there. Even better, they’re a little surreal and disorienting, creating the possibility of a visual surprise-a view of the world most people haven’t seen before. These images of the reeds and cloud reflections are abstract, which I like. ![]() I liked these photographs much better than the more standard views I had made earlier that day. I wasn’t thinking about the future, or the past I was completely absorbed in the present, concentrating on the beauty in front of me. Years of photographic training kicked in, and decisions about compositions and settings were almost instinctive. Every time I looked through the viewfinder I saw another beautiful scene, and all I had to do was compose and press the shutter, and occasionally check my histogram. The clouds were moving, so I had to keep changing the camera position to juxtapose a group of reeds with the most interesting cloud reflection at that moment. I spent the next 20 minutes quickly composing and recomposing photographs of two beautifully-designed clumps of reeds. Light, color, and design all packaged neatly together-perfect. A light bulb went off: the clouds overhead were about to catch fire with sunset colors, and would be reflected in the water surrounding these reeds. I continued walking around the shore and spotted some clumps of reeds with interesting shapes and lines. I walked down there and found the expected mountain-reflected-in-pond photo-nice, but nothing special by my (high) standards. I remembered a small reed-lined pond I’d been to before with reflections of Tioga Peak. So guided by whim and the thought that hey, the light looks interesting over there, we headed up to Tioga Pass. But the resulting photograph didn’t work. This spur-of-the-moment plan actually worked-I found a rainbow. But if a rainbow can be unexciting, this one was. We ended up following the storm, hoping to see a rainbow, and eventually we did. Interesting weather always makes my photographic antennae perk up. We had planned to meet up with a friend, but somehow we missed finding her, so we found ourselves in this beautiful area with no particular plans. Rather than attempting to control everything, I’m opening my mind to the possibility that unexpected events could be good-that on any day, or any moment, something surprising but wonderful could happen.Ī few afternoons ago Claudia and I were in the Yosemite high country near Tuolumne Meadows. I’ve been trying to embrace uncertainty lately, both in my day-to-day life and in my photography. Sometimes this works, but frequently the weather doesn’t cooperate or conditions aren’t right. We imagine that if we go to a certain location at a certain time we’ll capture a certain photograph. But sometimes there are too many variables that we can’t account for, so the result might not be C-it could be D, or E, or even Z. We think that if we do A and B the result will be C. ![]() The future is uncertain, so we try to control it by planning. ![]()
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