In my last article I mentioned that you sometimes get lucky when you roll the dice and take a chance on a sunset. Well, If I’m going to share my “success” stories, it’ only fair that I also share when things don’t go as hoped.

Now, as everyone knows, we can’t control the weather. We can’t control most things in life actually, but the weather is probably the least of them.

Yesterday afternoon was partly cloudy and when the sun wasn’t behind a cloud, it was bright. Historically, this is a good recipe for a great sunset. So, I searched out a location that would hopefully have a clear view of the sky as well as some visual element of interest on the ground. That’s always a challenge, but if the sunset works out, it’s secondary anyway.

So, I had my spot picked out and checked the time so I could arrive in time to set up and still not be there too early. Waiting for the sun to set (or rise) can be fairly boring to tell the truth.

Once I arrived and took a look around, it still seemed that this was going to be a great sunset. The clouds were starting to clear, but there were still enough to give the sky visual interest and the sun was near the horizon already, so there was no time to waste.

Well, I shot off a few images. Worked a bit on different compositions to get all the element lined up where I wanted them.
The Mississippi river has be very high of late, so I was surprised to see some (sort of) dry ground on the water side of the levee.
Well, the ground was pretty muddy to be honest, but hey…. if you want the shot, you gotta do what’s necessary. That’s how a lot of photographers get into trouble. Once you get an idea of a shot in your head, you’ll go to great lengths to get that shot. That often means putting yourself in places where you normally wouldn’t.

So, I kept watching and waiting…… and waiting…. and waiting.

it never happened. The spectacular sunset that I set out to capture and was fairly confident would happen – never did.
Here is the resulting image.

Stay tuned as I’ll try again, but I wanted to share that not every adventure is successful.

It’s not a ‘bad’ photo, just not what I pictured or had hoped for.