I happened to be off of work for two weeks of vacation time. I had not planned anything and was sort of just hanging out at home. I get a call from a buddy of mine, Mike. He say if I want to go up to Montana, sure why not, I'm on vacation for a few weeks anyhow.
This is my first time to Montana and I honestly have no clue whatsoever of what to expect as far as the fishing is concerned. Well I could lie and say the fishing was phenomenal, but this isn't one of those epic stories of hundred fish day and monster brown trout from the Madison River. This story is about a father and daughter who just happened to become my subject in a photograph.
As my friend Mike worked the river in search of trout, I was on the river bank shooting some photos. I usually would have been fishing, but I had suffered a really bad knee injury that kept me from wading and pretty much sidelined me on this particular road trip. So in order to keep me from going crazy I picked up the camera.
As I'm shooting I notice a man and daughter standing down river from me. It was a father and daughter standing in the river. The daughter looked to be no older than about five or six years of age. I thought it was the coolest... Here I am with the camera and a father and his daughter are fly fishing. I start shooting away, but it's tough to get a decent shot because I'm shooting into the sun. Well it turns out I captured a pretty nice moment of the two.
As the father was wrapping up, I happened to capture a doe wading down river from them. I wanted to say something to them, but I would have had to shout and that just would have ruined the moment. Instead I waited until the two walked up to where I was shooting. I quickly let them know I took a few shots of them and if they wanted to see them, sure, we'd love to see them said the father. I click the camera and push the playback button and show them what they had just missed behind them, the doe crossing the river. The reaction was oh how cool is that. The father quickly asked if I could send them a copy of the photos via email. I got to my truck and got a pen and the father wrote down his email, turns out he was from SoCal as well, San Diego area. I put his email away inside my glove compartment and sort of lost it in all the papers I have stacked in it.
About a year later or somewhere about, I was cleaning out my truck and found a small piece of paper with an email, it belonged to the father & daughter who had wrote it down so that I could send them the photos I had taken of them while on the Madison River on their visit to Yellowstone NP. I totally forgot about where I had put the paper with the email address. I quickly logged on to my desk top and sent out the email with an attachment of the photos I had taken. It's a total shame I can not recall the name of the father and daughter. It was a special moment caught and frozen in time.
What's in the picture?
The love for a daughter by her father. A special moment shared with a perfect stranger who just happened to be capturing it through a camera lens.
I just happen to be reminiscing of special moments while on the water...
The SoCal Fly Fisher
0 comments:
Post a Comment