Patience

This has been a good weekend.   I got to spend most of it with June and taking pictures.

On Saturday June and I spent a few hours taking sunrise photos in downtown Kingsport, eating breakfast at The Bagel Exchange, and then making photos of the pianos that have been painted and placed around downtown.

Downtown is not a place I would have thought to go for sunrise.  We were there to drop my car off for service while we photographed the pianos.  Wanting to get close to the front of the line we dropped the car off before sunrise.  It was too early to eat so we wandered around trying to find a good vantage spot to see the sunrise.

The sunrise colors were spectacular and we did find some nice shots before breakfast.

The pianos turned out to be more fun that I ever imagined.  I made a lot of shots and spent most of Saturday editing.

I'm planning to take my favorite piano photos and make a slide show.  For now, here's a couple for you to preview.

I almost missed the photo below.  We had seen this piano earlier and passed it up because we were on our way to breakfast.  It was much later when June reminded me we hadn't gone back to this one.   I wasn't real excited because I hadn't seen any compelling compositions the first time around.  It was still a beautiful morning and we were enjoying our time too much to cut it short so why not walk back and see if there were any shots hiding there.

What a shot we found!   The glass panels reflected the brightly painted piano, creating what I call a Pianorama.   This was a fun photo to make.  The hardest thing was finding a composition where I wasn't also reflected in the glass.

Day two of our weekend.   Again we got up before sunrise and this time we headed down the road to Warrior's Path State Park to see if we could catch another sunrise and fall colors.   No sunrise today, but the overcast skies made the fall colors pop right out of the photo.

There were many photo opportunities, such as the Blue Heron across the lake posing among the fall colors.

Near the end of our morning in the park the smooth reflections in the lake were disturbed by a couple fishermen in a big hurry to get to their favorite spot in the lake.   Because I was set up to take long exposure landscape shots from a tripod I wasn't set up to photograph a fast moving boat.  I did the best I could in a couple seconds and got an OK shot.  

I little later another boater arrived and unloaded his boat into the lake about 50 years away.   I was hoping he would come across in front of me like the last guy so I set up my camera for an action shot and waited.   He took his time and I about gave up when he started his motor and took off in the opposite direction!  This time I wanted a boat to come by and disturb the smooth surface and he goes the other way.

In the end my patience paid off and I got a different shot that also tells a story.

No matter how much we plan, there are things out of our control and we end up in situations where we didn't expect to be.   Be patient, make the best of it, know that someone else greater than us is in control, and His plans are even better!