Taking Chances

Harebells in Wind, Lofoten islands, Norway

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