I was poised 30 feet above the water on a plateau looking down, staring at this boat dock and the scene before me at Whitlock Bay, South Dakota.
I thought:
If only I had a person who would stand at the dock, it would add so much needed scale to the image, truly revealing the feeling of openness it brought me. It would punctuate that feeling if someone could just enter the scene and stand right there.
I crouched down to my camera bag and grabbed my wide-angle lens so that I could capture as much as possible despite my missing piece of the puzzle. I took off my medium lens, put on my wide angle lens, and adjusted my settings on my camera.
I pulled the camera to my eye to frame the shot and that's when I saw a man standing there, just where I was hoping, through my viewfinder.
It was an eerie moment. I truly thought he was a ghost since this mysterious man entered and stood there without warning. There was no sign of any vehicle.
Suddenly the picture I wanted magically appeared as I pressed that camera sharply against my face. I was afraid that if I put the camera down, the man would disappear as fast as he arrived.
Perhaps he was living inside my camera and wasn't even there. I didn't want to find out, so I got 3-4 frames with my favorite one of him looking straight out into the openess.
Now that I had the shot, I lowered the camera away from my eye.
He was gone.
Just kidding. He walked down the dock to the shore and walked away. It was pretty strange how far he had come to only stand there for such a short time. He was real and human. He was not living inside of my camera. I doubt he ever saw me.
If he did see me lurking on the plateau, standing there motionless, I bet he was probably more scared than I was.
