Luck favors the prepared mind as does serendipity. Websters definition-Serendipity-an apparent aptitude for making fortunate discoveries accidentally. Audacious, is the photographer who chooses to make his living stalking serendipity from one location to another then back again hoping to capture light as it has never been captured before or tougher yet as he may have captured it in the past. But that is what we do, and that is what we live for. Armed with our acquired knowledge of the magic hour, cloud diffused lighting, outdoorsmen, storm lighting, instinct for peak action, wildlife behavior, camera mechanics, changes in seasons, composition, astronomy, etc., we set out to bring the natural world to armchair adventures, outdoor enthusiasts, textbook publishers, and advertisers. And to do so we have to rely on serendipity.

Recently I have been shooting windsurfing. Nightly I watch the news for wind and surf reports but my best day of shooting was by happenstance, not much was expected this particular day but I showed up at the local hotspot to meet a friend to compare notes on a manuscript we were working on. He wasn't there and no one else was either. Perplexed, I pondered the emptiness of this hotspot. So on a hunch I drove up the coast a ways and found them windsurfing 10 foot waves where there usually are none. I had a half hour to shoot before I had to be to work but I got the shots, quite by chance

On the other side of the coin, one day I looked up at the sky 2 hours before sunset, high, thin, wispy, cirrus clouds covered the sky, so off to the coast I went to a favorite spot, I set up and waited for what was sure to be a dynamic sunset. 8:30 brought an unceremonial disappearance of the sun into an unseen marine layer somewhere off the coast that swallowed the pinks,tangerines and oranges of my over optimistic mind.

Then there was the time I was driving around Yellowstone looking for the telltale tail lights that indicate wildlife found, when there it was! three cars pulled off to the side of the road, in anticipation I looked down into the meadow only to see a cow elk. The sun was sitting on the western horizon so this was to be the last opportunity of the day so I grabbed my tripod and gear and set up for what appeared to be some grab shots of something that would never sell when a full moon started creeping over the horizon directly behind the elk. Bingo!

We also have serendipity inhancment. For instance, in route to the Green River Lakes in Wyoming I noticed the glassy surface of the Green River with the beautiful Square Top Mountain at the end of it. Knowing that there was a dynamic reflection down there somewhere I hiked down to the river only to find the reflection framed up someplace I couldn't get to from here. Then the ice cold reality hit me. I had to strip to my underwear and wade to the middle of that glacier fed river. Mercifully the ripples I caused were swept swiftly past me by the current of the river and I quickly shot off a roll of film. The cameras perspective from 6 inches above the water surpassed anything I could have shot from shore, had I been able to find a decent spot.

Last spring when the costal hills were covered with a new carpet of emerald green grass, a clearing storm had me hoping to catch a slate grey sky trapping the light of the evening sun coming in under the clouds and illuminating the grassy hills. As an after thought I stopped by a newspaper photographer friends house to haul him along. He didn't want to go because it was raining. I told him there wouldn't be a picture if it wasn't raining. We got the slate grey sky, the brilliant green hills illuminated by a clearing western sky and a 180 degree rainbow framing a ranch house for a bonus.

A case of serendipity enhancement run amuck, is when I rented a house forty miles from my real job so I could drive past the Grand Tetons Mountains at dawn every morning. The serrated skylines alpenglow covered peaks at sunrise was inspiring, the elk, moose, deer , antelope and bison along the way were beyond belief. I just wished that I had budgeted enough time in the morning to pull to the side of the road to take a picture of it all.

I mustn't leave out murphyÕs law of serendipity. I was on my way to a sled dog race in Montana Creek Alaska in my pinto hatchback, my seven huskies snugly inside with my sled tied to the roof when there in front of me were two bull moose fighting in the middle of the road. I eased the car to the side of the road then reached into my empty glove compartment for my camera, OOPS. I sat and watched the moose lock antlers and shove each other from one side of the road to the other for 20 minutes with the sun brilliantly rising from the alpenglow covered Talketena Mountains with the pink, tangerine, and orange of my overly optimistic mind this time scattered all over the sky and theice covered pavement that these moose were traipsing all over. I'll never forget it, picture or not. I just don't get to share it with anyone.

Serendipity isn't the sole propriety of photographers. Sometimes I leave my camera at home so I can enjoy moments in nature without having to record them and murphy isn't so busy sabotaging idealic scenes so I have nothing in the way so I can simply enjoy them. Getting some exercise on the sandspit in Morro Bay Ca. one evening I was treated to one of the master displays, without my camera, all I could do was take it all in. I found myself trying to articulate it into a verbal picture that could match what I could have caught on film. The cirrus clouds above me were crimson and the gaps between them remained azure, this pattern continued till the sky met the sea where the water was a muted greyish-pastel mixture I couldn't define, the white of the breakers were tinged with pink till they washed up to the sand then receded back to the muted grey of the ocean the wet sand left in the waves wake captured the reflection of the sky but with it's own color rendition in peach. The dunes to the east were a soft gold until the earths shadow moved up their face and slowly darkened everything around me.

One time in Barrow Alaska I was showing around a newcomer to the north. We were walking on the polar Ice cap outside of town during Barrows 43 perpetual days of mid winter darkness. About the time he was telling me about how horrible all that darkness was going to be, a curtain of dancing light appeared just above the northern horizon. it quickly expanded until it covered the whole sky. nearly imperceptible blues, greens and reds interspersed with the predominately white lights that shot across the sky were awesome. What made this display special was sharing it with some one that had never experienced the northern lights before. The northern darkness seemed to have a new window in it for my friend.

Humans aren't the only creatures that enjoy this phenomena of the north. One day I came out of my cabin to hook up my dog team only to find them staring at the sky. I couldn't bring myself to interrupt their reverie so I laid down beside them and took in the show The searching and recording of serendipity might seem like a fairy tale way to make a buck because it is. If I wasn't a carpenter, cook, writer, wrangler, tour guide, real estate investor, horse trader and jack of a few trades I would never admit, I would never see the financial light of day, but it's this search that keeps me going and looking forward to waking up to a brand new day.