Nature does cool stuff all the time.  The hard part is being there with your camera to capture it.  Are you willing to wake up an hour or two before sunrise and wait in the bitter cold for the perfect shot?  What about missing prime dinner time for a sunset? 

Just the other day I went out on the patio of my condo to water the plants.  I looked to the right to see one of the most spectacular sunsets I’ve ever seen in my life.  I looked up in awe, dropped my watering can, and gathered my camera equipment as quickly as I could.  I rushed past an old woman with a walker in the hallway, who wisely got out of my way.

Within five minutes, I was on the roof, shooting away.  The light was good, but not nearly as good as it had been only a few minutes earlier. 

The moral of the story is this:  The most beautiful moments in nature may only last a few minutes, if not seconds. Being there is everything.

Ansel Adam’s famous photograph Moonrise, Hernandez,  New Mexico is a prime example of this.  He said, “The situation was desperate: the low sun was trailing the edge of the clouds in the west, and shadow would soon dim the white crosses.  Realizing as I released the shutter that I had an unusual photograph which deserved a duplicate negative, I swiftly reversed the film holder, but as I pulled the darkslide the sunlight passed from the white crosses; I was a few seconds too late!”