Our World: The unexpected

There are many things photojournalists look for while on the job. Invariably, great light and the unusual rank high on the list.

Expecting the unexpected becomes an art form of actually predicting the unexpected. It's a bona fide misnomer, validated by our propensity to prove our ability time and time again.

Maybe it's just quick reflexes, maybe it's a bit of intuition. Sometimes great photos are simply photo fantasies that happen to come true.

Photography literally means painting with light. There's plenty of the beautiful stuff here in Southwest Florida. It has it's own quality, unique to the region, and it adds a dimension to our photos not available just anywhere. We must be in hog heaven.

While many assignments provide the opportunity to explore light, sports never seems to fall into that category. Dimly-lit fields and yellow-green gymnasiums are the norm for most events in Southwest Florida. With great light also comes heat, but the cooler, damp night games provide some relief. Photographing sports really can be disappointing from a photographer's standpoint.

My expectations jumped when I realized I'd be shooting a springtime football game, daylight sports assignments being few and far between. And so I drove to Fort Myers, happy to be shooting the expected, sports-action by great available light. And what light it was, turning golden as the sun approached the horizon. Hog heaven.

Photo by MICHEL FORTIER, Daily News

That's when I was caught off guard by the unexpected — in the form of a marbled sheet of clouds blocking the sun and ruining the light. Slowly, the clouds turned delicate shades of pink and blue, morphing into ember reds and deep blues. As the light began to seep to the west, the normally dull flood lights created a balance between the available and the artificial.

I forgot about the action, the expected, and concentrated on this fleeting fragile balance between nature and technology. And I captured the unexpected in the process.