Photographer has to be at the right place at the right time

A friend of mine once said that landscape photography as well as photojournalism was all about being at the right place at the right time. I can agree to that, but it is not all that simple

You can fail even though you are at the spot when things happen if you are not ready and your knowledge base is such that you can cope very fast with the situation. Also you do need a litle luck from time to time.

Last week i arrived in the afternoon in Landmannalaugar in the Icelandic Highlands. Tired after a 5 days hiking trip around Langisjór I decided to have a nap before making dinner. I had shot some images on Landmannaleið from langisjór to Landmannalaugar and wanted to wait until the evening to see how the light would be then.
To make a long story short I over slept and was only waken by a knock on the door of my little camper by the guard charging the camping fee.

With my sleepy eyes I looked at the guards then the sky shouted at my wife to take care of this. Jumped into some clothes grabbed my camera and tripod and managed to get a 6 shot bracket of the scene.

That was all the time it took to grab this image. 6 frames at the average of 1.3 sec pr frame . That is 7.8 sec. Try counting to 8 and see how much time it takes. I spent far more time in composing and post processing the image afterward s and working with my stile of Painting with light and HDR layering in Photoshop than it took to get the raw files in the first place.

But I got the image, with a little luck and my experience in hand. With out the knowledge base and experience I probably would have no image, despite being in the right place at the right time and having also little luck.