It's true that sometimes the best images just . . . happen. You are in the right spot, at the right time, a camera in hand and - boom.  Marilyn Monroe's skirt blows up, utterly unexpectedly!  Yes, it's key to be ready for those eventualities, but it's also unwise to count on them.

Which is why, right now, I am waiting for the moon. Lately I've been taking a lot of early morning shots at a nearby golf course, and I'm convinced that there are some settings there that would make a terrific moon rising - or moon setting - image. So I'm in preparation mode.  I've looked up the full moon dates and rising and setting times. I've checked out the google map of the golf course, and have a good idea where I need to be to get the best shots. There isn't a huge window of time for the pictures I want to take, so the more advance planning, the better.

And if it's cloudy, or things don't quite work out as I'm hoping, I'll be back on it in a month.

In photography, the mantra most oft repeated is that you don't take great pictures, you make them.  Along those same lines, when the great travel photographers are asked how they get their incredible shots, the answers are often along the same lines - they go back to the wonderful places again and again, until the magic makes it happen.  Or, should I say, until the thought and planning combine just perfectly into an image that is exactly right.

Will my planning work out? Eventually I know it will, and when that happens you will see that image here.