I got a big day-job project out the door this morning, and I followed soon after with mtn bike and camera to explore some new territory over in the Knickerbocker area I had "discovered" while messing around in Google Earth. Some trails, slippery with mud, and wading across a couple of creeks brought me to a beautiful pond, perhaps a quarter mile long and a couple hundred yards wide. An egret was fishing among some cattails while I sat and ate my sandwich. After lunch I thought perhaps I could creep around behind the reeds without disturbing him, so off I went with the camera. I got involved in photographing the seed-heads of the cattail in the light breeze, and when I finally carefully peeped over them to find the egret there was emptiness. Looking up I saw him eying me from a tree across the pond, clearly not happy that I had messed up his fishing. So I just kept working the cattails, trying to get the composition right and catching them in a poof of breeze at the right moment. Turned out that the very last exposure was the one.

Lessons from the week:

1. Keep in practice - press the shutter once in a while.
2. If you've got something going that you think might be good, keep on pressing the shutter.