Just Take the Damn Camera…
I thought this would be the best show. I was mistaken.
I can’t be the only one that battles with this… right??
You’re going out. You won’t be out too long, and the outing is not photography related but maybe there could be a chance for a few shots… Do I lug my gear with me on the off chance I’ll have 5 minutes to shoot? A recent outing may have me rethinking how often I bring my camera.
The company I work for had a yearly party, and this year they chose one of the Bat Boat Tours in Austin. So of course my first thought was of cool shots of downtown. So I got pretty stoked and tossed the camera in my bag and my wife and I headed out.
In the approximately 8 billion years it took us to drive into Austin I didn’t see a cloud in the sky, which, if mimicking the prior few days, meant there would likely be no decent light. We planned to walk from the hotel at 35 and Town Lake to avoid ACL traffic and parking, and I was beginning to feel a bit unmotivated to lug my admittedly weighty setup to a party where I may not even have time to shoot, when it was nearly 100 degrees, without a cloud in the sky. But that would have proven a big mistake…
A small amount of orange starts to appear as we approach the Congress Bridge.
During the trip back, in almost no time, we went from a modest, but interesting light (pictured at the top of this article) but in the time it took me to grab a second round on the lower level and climb back up. Some orange started to appear and people started gathering at the railing to watch the color develop.
The Violet Crown appeared and was gone within minutes.
Within another few minutes the Violet Crown appeared and stayed with us for a bit as we approached the Congress Bridge to anchor and wait for the bats to get hungry and go scouting for the moths and bugs pestering us all.
The bats never showed their faces… those cowards. It’s a little late in the season for them, so this was somewhat expected but to be honest, with such beautiful light, and the chance to snap off some iconic Austin silhouettes, I was happy to not have to be dodging bat droppings because there is no way I would have let this light go. It was even better that almost everyone on the boat was also caught up in the sunset, so pausing to snap these off was no intrusion at all.
A nice contrast of blue and orange as the night rolled on.
In fact, most everyone had their phones out snapping pics of the rapidly changing sunset. So had I listened to my lazy and not brought my camera, I would have been devastated.
I mean, honestly, what would have even been the point of living at that point? Might as well just have asked the Town Lake serial killer to take a willing victim that night…
Probably my favorite image of the night.
All kidding aside, more often than not, I make the call to just leave the camera for quick outings that aren’t photography related, and I am usually rewarded for that decision with some of the nicest light I would have seen that month and a hefty amount of regret as I am empty handed and powerless to capture the photons at hand. I almost had that same experience on this night.
So I’ll take this as a lesson in judgement.
Grab the camera and take it with you even if you don’t want to. Because every chance you get to exercise this skill is another hour knocked off your 10,000 hours of practice, and with a shred of luck and a bit of light, you might be able to escape obligation for a minute and grab some great images.
Until next week…
Cheers,