Incidentally, on purpose

There's a golf course in my neighborhood and my daily walks take me past 3 of the lovely ponds located on it.  Lovely ponds to me, golfers would use other words to describe them, words I cannot put here (it's a PG blog) so I'll use words like "confounded water hazards".

One, in particular, catches my attention.  There's a fountain in the center and it is home to about a gazillion turtles.  A blue heron likes to prowl the banks and some neighbors have been seen casting fishing lines into the water.  One day I saw a fisherman pulling a nice sized large-mouth bass out of the water.

This past winter, a bevy of ducks has taken up residence on one of the ponds. I see them everyday and in my efforts to be "deliberate"  I think about photographing them, before they take flight and head back to where ever they came from.

One late afternoon, I grabbed the camera and headed over to the pond, thinking about the pictures I might get of the ducks, thinking about where to position myself to take advantage of the evening light, what lens and settings I would use.

I found a spot where I had full view of the pond and it's inhabitants and of course as soon as I got situated every duck swam as far away as possible and every turtle descended to the bottom of the pond because I had overlooked one crucial detail-bread.  I had no bread to lure my subjects close to me.  Every now and then a turtle would pop it's head up to give me the stink-eye check on me (to see if I had any bread) then quickly descend again.

grr!

There were some dandelions on the banks and I'm a sucker for dandelions so I spent some time shooting those.  I spent some time trying to get some lens flare.  I thought about quacking but didn't want to have the ducks fly far, far away.

Then a little girl and her daddy came to the pond with some bread to feed the ducks. She was adorable as she looked at the ducks so far away and almost tossed a whole hamburger bun in the pond! Her dad stopped her in the nick of time and showed her how to tear off little scraps and toss those in the water.

She giggled as the fish roiled the water where she was tossing the bread pieces. A fish would jump out of the water and she would squeal with delight!  The turtles were popping their heads out of the water right below where she was tossing the bread.

I watched this simply sweet sight and noticed the reflection of the girl and her dad in the rippled water. click.

I noticed the turtle heads sticking out of the water. click.

I did get some shots of the ducks but they do not make me smile like this one does.

Have you ever gone out with a specific plan of what you wanted to shoot, then once you got there you were smitten with something entirely different and had to have that shot?

Share your incidentally, on purpose shots with us!

Incidentally, I hope you're getting some mah-velous spring shots for Claudia's Linky party coming up!  It's going to be so much fun!  Read all about it here!




"The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself."  ~Henry Miller


xo,

p.s. always take bread with you when you go to a pond to photograph ducks, I'm just sayin'