We’ve all had those times when things work against us. When we traveled recently to Delaware, even though water scenes are among my favorite subjects, I did not take all my “good” equipment that I normally use to capture those scenes. There were a total of 19 different family members gathering that week. I knew that the week was mostly about family so kept it simple and only took my small Canon G-16, a great point and shoot that still allows a good deal of control with image making. I also happen to have a waterproof covering for that camera so thought I might get in some play time with that. I had it so well planned. 🙂
The second or third day in to the week, I went to take a picture and the lens on my camera stuck. No matter what I did the lens would not open fully. I determined pretty quickly that I needed to stop trying to get it to work or I could cause further damage. I was afraid that a grain of sand had made it’s way into the lens mechanism. I was feeling more than a bit sick. Meanwhile memories were being made so rather than spend time stressing about my camera, I put it away and got back to flying kites and playing in the sand.
The rest of the week, I took just a few images with my phone, definitely not my preferred equipment, but I was just capturing a few moments. It was a great week with many great memories created.
Our last night at the beach was the best of the week. It was a perfect evening with gorgeous soft colors to the sky and water. I admit I was feeling just a bit sad that I didn’t have a camera to capture that softness. My son-in-law could tell how I was feeling and offered his camera to me. It’s a great camera and I was quite happy to accept. Still, normally when I work on images like this, I’ve used a tripod, my Nikon D800 camera, a large lens, a remote shutter and timer, among other things. Now I had just a camera and one I was not accustomed to at that. But I was so happy to just play and see what I could make work given what I had. I took 30 or 40 images playing with 1 and 2 second exposures. It’s difficult to hand hold a camera for that long of an exposure and not have it just look blurry. Many of the images were just that, bad blurry images. With the 3 images below, though, I carefully panned the camera during the exposure, dragging it slowly and steadily across the scene during those 2 seconds. It seemed, at the time, that this was working but I couldn’t really tell until I received the image files this past week.
Sometimes you have to just go with the flow. It can be a good exercise in creativity as it forces you to get out of your normal way of doing things and try something new. I’m glad that I had that experience and pleased that these 3 images match my vision for the scene. The soft colors and flow capture the mood on the beach that evening. I will definitely give that technique a try another time.

Beach Flow 1 ©GailHaile

Beach Flow 2 ©GailHaile

Beach Flow 3 ©GailHaile
When have you had to go with the flow? Was it a good experience?
PS My camera was sent in for repair and returned in full working order and it was all under warranty. 🙂
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