A morning in the fog
Three hours of waiting in the Marin Headlands for about ninety seconds of light.
The forecast said the fog would burn off by eight. It did not. I sat on the same rock for three hours, drank cold coffee, and watched a wall of grey move around the valley like it had somewhere to be.
Then, for about ninety seconds, it opened.
Nothing about this was clever. I had the camera on a tripod with the same settings I’d been using all morning, and when the light came I just kept pressing the shutter until it closed again. Tap the photo if you want to see what it was set to — I was at f/11 because I’d stopped thinking about it an hour earlier.
The rest of the morning
On the way back down I found a heron doing exactly what I’d been doing: standing very still in the cold, waiting for something to happen. We had a moment of professional understanding.
The best photos I take are almost always the ones where I’d already given up.
I keep relearning that. Bring a warmer jacket, bring more coffee, and stay half an hour past the point where it seems worth it.