Confession time.
I am a lazy photographer.
Well sometimes. The other day we had some fresh snow, but the melt was on so I hit Ripley Creek to see what I could see. It was overcast, but reasonably bright with lots of snow cover so I decided not to bring my tripod since I didn’t have a mind to do long exposures. I wanted to freeze the water and contrast that with the relative smoothness of the snow. I should have brought it anyway.
Looking quickly, you might not notice that I had to use a higher ISO than I normally would have to for landscape work. Zooming in makes it obvious. And it bums me out a little. Taking along the small tripod wouldn’t have been a big deal and it would have given me latitude when it came to ISO. I could have shot using a fast shutter speed even with the tripod and it would have given me the opportunity to do longer exposures just to compare the results.
The remaining snow wasn’t as smooth as I envisioned and so I think a slower exposure – say a second or so might have worked pretty well. But it’s the fast exposure and frozen action that I wanted. Spring melt is a wild time and even small streams can be dangerous. Especially when you can’t really tell what is safe to step on and what isn’t because of the snow cover. I err on the side of caution and don’t go for the optimal composition if it’s going to endanger me. Earlier this year a woman doing some photography up at Potato Falls fell to her death when the cliffside next to the falls gave way. She was alone and it was definitely an accident, but oh how tragic. I’ve been to Potato Falls at just about this time of year and can attest to how crumbly the high banks are. A few sections of trail were closed and blocked off even back then and I didn’t risk it. It’s not worth it.
But I don’t want this post to focus on something so bleak and sad. It’s really about regret on my part that I shouldn’t have been so lazy. My primary tripod weighs about 3 pounds. How hard would that have been to carry? Doh!
So that’s my lesson – don’t limit my options out of laziness, especially when the effort to broaden them isn’t huge. Taking along tripod would allow me to work the scenes to vary the final images more than I did here. I even have a monopod coming my way. LOL.
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