Sometimes I’m absolutely convinced that I am the stupidest person ever to hold a camera. This morning I had this great plan to do a double whammy – drive to a spot which would provide me a view to both the moonset and sunrise. I was even going to take a closeup of the almost full moon so I had the 300mm lens mounted on the camera. I figured, first the closeup, then swap lenses, shoot sunrise, shoot moonset. Great plan, eh? So I was driving to my spot and on the way I saw a very nice scene with snow covered pines lit by the early dawn light and full moon above. But I was going to my spot, so stupid me drove on without stopping. I got to my spot, viewed the sky towards sunrise and noticed that there are no clouds, boring, viewed the sky towards the moon, there are clouds in the horizon and the moon was rapidly going down. Stupid me decided that it’s no point in stopping here when I wasn’t going to shoot the boring sunrise and drove on. And drove on… at this part of the road there were no spots to get a decent foreground for the moon and time was running out. But then my luck changed and I found a great spot and half ran out of the car so there I was, stupid me, with a 300mm lens attached to the camera and a scene that required the 24-105mm lens (in the bag)… and the moon disappearing behind the clouds. Absolutely no time to change lenses any more so I just stood there in total disgust and hated myself for not stopping at that first good spot I saw.

When I got back home, the first rays of the sun where lighting up the bird feeder and my anger quickly subsided when I saw that I had quite a few birds as well. It’s been relatively quiet at the feeder in the past weeks, I’ve only had to refill once a week instead of every other day like it was in the autumn. But with that sweet light now, I made use of the 300mm lens that had been so wrong a moment earlier and desperately wished for a bird to settle down on the perch during those few minutes that it was lit by the early sun. No such luck – goes without saying – but if there’s any benefit of the short days, then it’s definitely that the light is good any time there’s any of it so I got a few pictures when the sun had climbed a bit higher in the sky and the perch was lit again.

I’m still thinking about the missed opportunity with the moon. Sure, it was a big mistake to drive past the first spot. But the second spot I found, it would’ve been ever better but I got unlucky with the clouds. Last week we caught the sunset because we took the first best spot instead of searching for something better, but it appears that I didn’t learn anything from that. Stupid me.