Any photographer knows that light is everything, and that the best light is often found at the beginning or end of the day. Sometimes you can plan to be in the right place at the right time, but sometimes it just happens.

All of our previous visits to Kielder Water had been day trips from Newcastle; thus we had only ever been here during the middle part of the day. But on this occasion we had stayed overnight, to visit the observatory. As we left the village the next morning and started to skirt the lake, I spotted that the early morning mist was still drifting among the hills on the far side and the water itself gleamed silver. Luckily I also remembered that we were just coming up to one of the waterside parking areas; I quickly alerted Chris who was driving, and he turned off into the car park at Matthew’s Linn. We grabbed our cameras and hurried down to the jetty.

Truly a serendipitous moment! The light was perfect, we were on the spot, and what is not always the case, had been able to pull over in the car and capture it.

The moment didn’t last very long. The mist started to rise and dissipate, and all too soon we were looking at a pretty, but unexceptional, lake. But just for a while, it had been perfect.

Of course I took far too many photos and had to do a serious weed later. But the joy of digital photography is that we can all afford to do that. And the joy of photography itself is being, from time to time, in just the right place at just the right moment.

Posted in response to Terri’s call for photos of fog and clouds in this week’s Sunday Stills challenge.