I was out near Marble Falls, Texas, about an hour from Austin, to document the ground breaking of a new service center for Pedernales Electric Cooperative when I took this. We were in an out for the groundbreaking in a bit less than an hour...
The venue was a big, grassy pasture. In a few months it would be a big building dedicated to helping customers get service and also pay their bills. I arrived with the advance P.R. team, about half an hour before the executives and maybe an hour before the invited guests. We had the ritual shovels lined up next to a patch of turned over dirt so I could get photographs and someone else could get video of local elected officials and company poobahs tossing dirt in unison. Commemorating the day when another project would be launched in that county. Good for business and good for the thousands of Texans who depend on keeping the lights on (this area did not go down during the Texas Deep Freeze of 2021!!! Yay! Client!!!).
The marketing folks had acquired a giant American flag and had the idea to suspend it between two high lift bucket trucks. It would flutter over the heads of the folks shoveling raw dirt.
You can see by the clouds in the background that we were on the cusp of bad weather. As the guys started getting the flag positioned the wind picked up in angry little gusts and threatened to make "Old Glory" into a wicked sail. I grabbed the shot during a moment of relative calm and then moved on to some handshake and shoulder patting moments.
We rounded everyone up, did the speeches, took the photos, grabbed the video as the wind picked up again and we could smell the fresh rain coming our way. The quick march back to the impromptu parking lots was a bit of chaos. The rain broke over us high and quick. Everyone got soaked. I said a little prayer to the photo gods beseeching them to honor the D810's reputation for ruggedness and water resistance. They answered my prayer but sent me a sign that I should cover the camera and lens with my best felt hat. Sadly, it was a goner.
So much fun when you leave your home and go out on location to spend quality time running from a ground-breaking in the middle of a raging thunderstorm. Happily we all got our cars out of the field before the ground turned to mud and trapped us there.
Good times.
3 comments:
Great job retaining cloud detail in that sky.
Was it the D810 or the felt hat that bit the dust, or rain in this case?
The felt hat. But fashionistas would tell you it probably needed to die.
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