The Right Place at the Right Time

 There are times when a photographer goes out to shoot a picture or two and nothing presents itself to them. The ideas in their head just don’t evolve into what they had imagined. The weather might not co-operate or the sun is too bright. (Usually not the case, here in Pittsburgh!) The subjects are poorly lit or there might be a wrong adjustment on their equipment. It happens all the time. This should be looked at as just another bump in the road, another day of learning, learning that we don’t always get what we want!

    This simple fact becomes more and more obvious the older we get. In our youth we are pumped up, full of the knowledge we can’t wait to use. We have ideas and plans and as the years go by, we tend to realize that not all these wonderful thoughts will pan out. We are going to experience some failure on the road of life and the sooner we realize it the better. Failure helps us progress forward. “We learn from our mistakes”, we’ve all heard that quote! 

    On the other hand, sometimes the things in life all line up for us. There are times that all our rows are right where they are supposed to be and this last Wednesday was one of those days.

    Frank and I were off to find some geocaches and hopefully some pictures. Since we’re usually already up, we tend to leave early in the day. This morning was no different; we were out on the road by 6:30. We took a slow, meandering route towards where the caches were hidden while waiting for enough light to be able to search. The sky was slowly brightening and features were just starting to be recognizable when we saw a purplish glow in the east. There could be a picture hidden in the sunrise, if we could just find a place to view it from. Buildings and trees hid it from our view as we drove around the North Hills. As we looked for a good spot, the sky appeared to revert back to its normal “Pittsburgh grey”.

    I pulled into a road that was situated above a church and a convent and parked the car. I got out of the car and saw that the entire eastern sky had turned orange and red. “Red sky in the morning, astronomers take warning!” is how I believe the quote goes…this doesn’t apply to photographers!

    We both “ran” across the street with our cameras. The Church and Motherhouse were nicely silhouetted by the spectacular sky. We both started lining up our shots.

    It was then that I realized that there was a man working on the dome of the church below us! We continued taking pictures as two other workers joined him on the dome. The sky was truly fantastic and of course, the men noticed it also, how could they not? They stopped working to admire it and take a few pictures with their phones, just as we were doing behind them with our cameras. Their shots might have turned out a bit sharper and the colors might be a bit more precise, but our picture had the workers in them. We had a human element in our shots. 

    So, the shots we got that day were just a matter of being in the right place at the right time. It was all a matter of luck. We couldn’t have planned this! I’ve got a shot that will probably eventually end up on my wall and memories of a fun morning filled with excitement and adrenaline.

    We continued on to our geocaches and only found about half of the ones we were looking for but that didn’t bother us. Mainly because of the exciting start we had to our day! Yes, sometimes it pays to leave early in the morning before the sun rises.