My Dam Experience

This past weekend I was doing some landscape shooting at a local dam. The shooting location is along the Shell Rock River south of Clarksville Iowa. I usually leave about 45 minutes before sunrise to this location as it takes 20 minutes to reach from my home. I have been to this location a lot the past month trying to capture its essence, I have also been focused on a 100 year old trestle about a mile down river but the lighting and clouds never seem to cooperate.
This morning the sky was overcast which was a disappointment to me and it was the coolest morning of the season so far, with light frost in low laying areas. I stopped at the trestle first and took a few shots before heading up river to the dam.

The dam access is on a high bank 100 feet of so above the bank. There is two ways to reach the dam one involves steep decent with a few places to get decent footing, the other is a rickety old set of metal angle iron stairs that look to be over a half century old. I opted for the stairs on this trip down. I took a few more shots and relaxed listening to the sound of the water before packing it up and returning home.
A couple of hours went by and the sky turned blue and became perfectly clear and I once again got the bug to return to the dam and get some bright day shots of the backwater area. I repeated the earlier steps from the day only this time going down the non-step access point.
As I sat on top of the dam I took some photos I wanted and was just listening to the sound of the crashing water and watching it flow over the dam.


Nobody was around to disturb me, solitude peace and quiet. I had my 18-55mm lens attached and tripod set up, after taking a few more shots I wanted to capture the sound and action on video and set the camera up level with the top of the dam and started filming.
A few seconds later a Bald Eagle circles over the backwater and suddenly drops down over the water and snatches a fish from the surface, he then flew over to a downed tree along the bank and ate his meal. At this point I was frustrated I did not have any other lens on me. I should have known better than leave with one lens. I moved the tripod up higher to film the eagle as best I could he was a good 200 feet away. He ate the small meal and jumped off the log and got a drink.
By this time I was having a mental conversation with myself. Could I possibly rush through the boulder strewn shore line to the rickety metal stairs and go up the 100 feet in time to grab the telephoto and make it back to get a shot? Visions of twisted ankles scraped skin talked me out of it. I decided to enjoy the moment and watch this bird as he flew off and went the full width of the frame on video before flying downstream right overhead.
Sometimes the moments captured are in the mind only and makes for wonderful memories, this was the first time I have seen this in person and it will remain with me for the rest of my life, even without the image. Would have loved the shot but loved seeing it even more. To me the golden hour is any time of day when you experience a moment when your spirit is uplifted by being in that moment.