Suffering for your art

Have you ever had one of those moments where you know that you have get up out of bed and go outside.  Monet had one in 1873 when he woke up to see a beautiful sunrise and knew he had to paint it.  Well this morning I see the dawn light and knew I had to go up to this farm track about a half mile from where I live.

So I grabbed my Mum's camera, briefly woke her up to ask her permission then headed out the house as fast as I could without looking like a complete idiot twice over by slipping on the ice that still covered the pavements.  Fortunately I got to the farm track without incident and started snapping away.

Even though I had four layers on up top as well as thick gloves, a nice thick coat and a hat, I was still cold.  Even taking a glove off for a few seconds to take a picture left me with a freezing hand to the point where retaining any feeling in my fingers seemed like a victory.  I was only out for an hour and a half so it wasn't too bad.

Later though Mum and I went to Martin Mere, a local wetlands reserve full of various kinds of waterfowl.  While not too bad at first after a few hours, my right hand was so cold from continually taking the glove off to press the shutter, so I stopped.  For all my desire to take great photos, my desire to keep my hands from going numb was greater and so I ended up pressing the shutter button with the gloves still on, despite how clusmy my control was.

Because I now needed to see what my fingers were doing, I ended up using the screen on the camera to view potential pictures rather than the main lense.  As a way of taking photos it's clumsy by comparsion, but if I'd had the gloves off I think my fingers would have frozen in place, so I accepted the compromise.

I still managed to get some great shots though, even if wild birds aren't the most accomodating of subjects.