Taking Chances

One of the great gifts of digital photography has been its encouragement of experimentation. With film, I would shoot a roll of film of a low-percentage shot (think wind-blown flowers) and then quit – just to save film. It was a total crap shoot whether you actually got something or not. Now, by contrast, you can shoot all day on a 16 gb card: and check your work along the way.

I haven’t made up my mind about this shot yet – and that’s just fine. I took it on a sunny arctic mid-day when there simply weren’t any other decent pictures to be made – too bright, too windy, too whatever. The kind of day, in fact,  when I should probably have put the camera down and literally stopped to smell the flowers. Fair enough…but I couldn’t resist these dancing harebells. So, I braced the camera on a rock and shot a pile of them at various slow speeds, quite literally painting with color. Most of the resulting images are junk – and maybe this one is, too – but it was a fun, spontaneous process. And for that, and for a picture I could have easily walked past, I am grateful.

Nikon D3, 70-200mm lens  1/8 sec