Following Up on an Observation from Saturday

Last Saturday I recorded video and still images of the paddling portion of the Rugged Toad Adventure Triathlon. As I was looking at the river and paddlers, I noticed interesting shadows from trees along the shore. But, on Saturday I was there to photograph paddlers and was not able to get artistic at the same time. Today I returned to hopefully capture some semblance of what I saw on Saturday.

To make the photograph I needed to be in position with the drone along the river at about the same time as four days ago, at the same angle, with the sun shining to create the shadows I was looking for. In other words, many key details had to fall into place for this to work out. To complicate this effort, unlike Saturday we had hit and miss clouds to interfere with the lighting.

After many long minutes of watching the clouds that did not seem to be moving as they obscured the rising sun, the skyscape experienced the necessary break needed to cast the shadows I was looking for. When those precious seconds happened I had to quickly adjust the position of my drone, along with the camera exposure settings, before I pressed the remote shutter release button. As you can see, it happened. What I needed to fall into place did - the sun shone long enough to tweak the position of the drone, I adjusted exposures correctly and I captured this unusual composition I have been thinking about since first seeing it on Saturday morning.