The Shots I Missed - Part 1

Probably every photographer knows what it's like to miss that perfect photo. It's happened to me quite a few times. Well, there is a way to preserve the memory of at least seeing the thing you wanted to photograph - draw it. I know my drawings aren't completely photo-realistic looking but they can help to preserve a memory the same way that photographs can.

I'm thinking about making a series on my "main" website, ExploreFloridaWaters.com, titled something like, "The Shots I Missed." I'll talk about the photos that I came so close to capturing, and share a painting of what I saw.

However, I've decided to post them here as I make them, so here's part 1:

Okay, in this case, I captured what would have been a perfect photo, but it came out terrible...

And now here's the painting...

Well, I will admit that this isn't a raw, start with a blank canvas painting. To ensure it looked real, like the photo, I traced the dolphin in the photograph and selected the colors from the photo as well. However, all shading/highlighting,placement of colors was done by me (except for the trees in the background - those are from the original photo lol)

The story behind this photo/painting:

One evening in June of 2016, I pushed my paddleboard away from the shoreline of Placida Harbor and began to paddle towards Bird Key and the nearby mud flats, as I had spotted dolphins there earlier. The dolphins were still there, and with my Nikon coolpix AW130 (that was all I had back then) I attempted to photograph the dolphins in the fading light. For a while, several of the dolphins swam alongside my paddleboard, then Mangrove and Warsaw headed off to the shallows on the north side of Bird Key, and I decided to watch them. Suddenly, Warsaw took off somewhere close to my board, and Mangrove appeared to chase him/her. The two began splashing and rolling at the surface and came literally ten to fifteen feet away from my paddleboard. Warsaw then made a beautiful side breach, but the photo came out all blurry...