In this post, I am looking at past photos. Again I am returning to the recent theme of serendipity, or good luck.

Don Johnston and I were photographing in Grand Tetons National Park, Wyoming. Near the road we spotted a moose feeding in a pond. So I was able to find a parking spot for the van off the road. We set up our tripods and began photographing this moose as it fed on vegetation at the bottom of the pond. And then good fortune was with us. Out of the forest this very young calf appeared and began running through the pond's shallows.

01000965Moose calf running, Grand Tetons National Park, WY At the time I was shooting film with my Leica R8. By chance I had just put in a new roll of film. As this calf moose ran parallel to me along the edge of the pond, I used my motor drive and shot off the full roll within ten seconds. In those manual focus days, I was lucky enough to have almost all the images in sharp focus. Again, chance favours the prepared photographer.

When these moose eventually left the pond, we returned to our van. By this time the road was jammed with stopped vehicles. Park rangers appeared, ordering  all the vehicles to move on and clear the road. We were the only ones safely parked off the road. But one vehicle remained parked in the centre of the road. When the ranger asked the exasperated owner to move his car, he threw his hands up in the air, saying that his wife had the keys and had locked the car, and he did not know where she was.

We did not stick around for the conclusion to this story.