Patience
Several years ago when I would board my morning ferry for work, there would be days when they'd load the boat from slip number three. Farthest passenger slip to the left, in order to get to it we'd have to walk past this slip pictured here which was too small to ever have a ferry boat in it. However from time to time it did have some kind of patrol boat docked inside.
Glancing quickly through the window at the scene as we rushed towards slip 3, herding onto our morning boat like cattle, was still all that was required to tell my artistic half that an interesting image lay hidden in there somewhere. I just had to catch it one of the times there was a nice foggy morning, that still had enough sunlight peering through to keep the scene from looking too flat. So after taking a test shot one day to discover exactly which lens I needed for the shot, I started slipping that zoom and my camera into my backpack on days I thought they might load us from that slip, instead of one of the other three.
Most mornings there was no fog, sometimes there was too much, other times there was no patrol boat, still more times there was a work barge in along with it. Still other times the patrol boat was there but it was facing the wrong direction. And no small amount of time we loaded from some other slip. Add to all that days when space in my backpack was already used up for more pressing needs of the day, and my camera had to be left at home. And so on an on it went, as I watched days turn into weeks, weeks into months, months into seasons and seasons into a new year - or two. But patience is a virtue and one summer morning the all the necessary elements finally fell into place.
