Plan Ahead and Adapt

Last week featured several of the more amazing sunrises I have seen in many a year.  One morning in particular I remember red skies and the cloud cap atop Mt Rainier and the calm waters of Puget Sound.  I was on a bus heading off to the ferry at the time and could not even grab the iPhone in time for a quick photo.  Some moments are just that way.

This morning featured fog and the potential for some amazing skies yet again.   And this time I was prepared with my Nikon D300.  Setting out a bit before sunrise, I drove to the spot where I had witnessed the red sky/Rainier view the previous week.  The fog was of varying intensities and shrouded a passing ferry.  Mt Rainier was clearly blocked by clouds or far distant fog.  So the image I had planned for was clearly not going to materialize.  But there were other photo opportunities that presented themselves, for instance a ferry passing through the fog.  I'm partial to ferries and fog (witness my blog "header"), so this was a natural shot for me. 

But my favorite and most unexpected shot of the morning for the march (or float) of the ducks.  There was little color due to the fog; I went even further and de-saturated the image in Lightroom and then cropped it into more of a panaroma to strengten the horizontal layers of the photo.  It becomes almost a compostional study, rather than a wildlife or landscape.

         

There was a reason that I went out this morning, camera in hand. To take photographs. Only the subject was different than I had planned. Adapt! And, maybe next time, a red-capped Mt Rainier may be the subject. Or not.