Keep Taking Your Best Shot.

A wee go with my family at panning for gold, and found two small nuggets.

I was talking with my neighbour a couple of days ago, he had just returned with his mates from watching nature on the Great Lakes here in the USA.

A quip was made about hunters. I answered that the best shot I ever took was from a camera lens.

Most individuals reading this are lucky enough to be living in a fairly stable environment.

Sadly though, many people and many children of those people have no choice. They’re either long dead, wounded physically and mentally, or permanently in a frenzy, wondering when it’s their turn to be whacked.

With that, no matter the weather, no matter the standard of your camera…a top-range camera with a telephoto lens, accompanied by various other lenses…or just your camera on your iPhone, go out and take a great photo. Take a hundred, then sit under a tree, or on a riverbank, and choose the one you like best and delete the rest.

Take pride from the shot you managed to take, capturing the one photo that you were out to get…it’s an awesome feeling.

In today’s world living in a global economy, reading, listening and seeing the bad stuff that’s going on in too many areas of our tiny planet right now, it’s time to take a moment and do what makes you feel good, individually or as a family or a group of mates.

If it’s not taking a shot from a camera lens, then have a shot at panning for gold, looking for Roman coins, finding fossils, sitting in front of an awesome scene and drawing it. Gardening, redesigning your garden and watching the results.

Whatever it takes to make that shot in the moment…take it!

Because life is short, as each day around the world appears to be becoming worse, it really doesn’t have to for you.

We are the lucky ones, living in a reasonably stable society (at the moment), enjoy each day.

A young girl in an Afghan orphanage has her moment to take her shot in the form of art.

I spent seventeen years after my military career taking photos while working as a security adviser in the horrendously bad places described above, the vast majority of my shots were ones that reminded me of the beauty amongst the horror. Landscapes, wild animals, children playing, beautiful ancient buildings, and faces of men and women.

Afghanistan 04

I’d look back at what I shot…the photos were wonderful, nothing like the situation going on around.

It made me feel good that I’d captured a moment in time, a moment of kids laughing, a moment of women chatting, young lads moving their herd to better pasture…whatever the shot, it was a moment captured forever.

A goat guarding Kabul city.

If I can achieve that in conflict, we can all achieve it where we live.

An Israeli soldier offered sweets from Palestinian children, later they were kicking a football with one another…they realised for a moment that they were all young and all the same. West Bank 02.

A chat on the Western shores of Saudi Arabia at sunset.

Talk to your family, your mates, your work colleagues…go out there, away from the world’s greed, hatred and drama…take that shot…and capture that moment, or find some treasure and treasure that moment forever.