Split Second

Sometimes I wonder when I will ever learn. Here's yet another example of a picture I really like that came about purely by chance, and only because I took thirty seconds to pull out my camera and actually attempt the shot. I was walking out of a building the other day when I saw some big fat drips falling from an overhang, and nimbly sidestepped them as they splashed on the pavement. And that was that--no second thoughts given on my part, and a good photo opportunity nearly missed. But then I thought I would try, just try, to catch one of the drops as it was falling. I am horrendously self-conscious when it comes to taking photos, and because a) it's something I'm working on, and b) no one else was around, I knelt down and aimed my camera right up into the path of the drips. No way was autofocus going to work, so I put my camera in manual, set the aperture to f/4 and ISO to 200, and just motor-drove until the buffer was full (which, thankfully, is over 20 RAW shots on my D200--three ti