Positioning yourself to encounter is a choice we can make everyday.
The beautiful thing about tomorrow is that it’s unknown, we can plan, forecast, predict and even hope but not a soul on earth really knows what tomorrow will bring. We humans are creatures of habit, having routines and mindsets that we slip into day by day, growing to be comfortable with waking up expectant to how the day will unfold. But what if ‘What if’ was to get the better of us, just for a day, to step outside the usual regime into a place of anticipation, a place of fresh happenings. It could be walking the beach before work, a different turn along your mapped out trail, or even just offering a friendly greeting to a passing stranger. It’s that easy to position yourself to encounter, to encounter something that refreshens our wonder of what if and what could be, to reawaken vision that transforms the daily routine and to remind us that absolutely anything is possible at any given time.
Many of my best moments and encounters have been at times when I least expect it. A recent morning the surf wasn’t all that good, I didn’t feel like going out and I had other ‘more important’ things that I needed to be doing, but I decided to put in an hour or so and shoot our Agent Eighteen team riders in hope of getting some cool content. The sky was dark and the sun was battling some broken clouds to filter through onto the oceans surface. After a short time in the water ducking under and around the waves, a fin caught the corner of my eye as it broke the surface. ‘Dolphins!!’ I thought, as I quickly set my ISO to 640, dropped by aperture from 6.3 down to around 5.0 to allow a little more light in on the Canon 8-15mm, and dove under the next incoming swell line with my Aquatech housing and GoPro mounted on top recording away. The sun was just glimmering through, illuminating the surface when suddenly 3 dolphins emerged out of the depths and flew past me, one of them turning and looking straight at me and giving a friendly nod and squeak. I captured the below image in the process and surfaced from the exhilarating encounter with absolute stoke on the images that I just captured and the brief moment I had with a friend in the wild playground of the Ocean.
Make the choice to go, because you just never know..
'A Passing Smile' by Thurston Photo. Print now available.
