Ron C. Judd / Times staff columnist
Losing one's focus can make life difficult

	RON C. JUDD A woman and her dog, captured with just the right camera lens, walk on the harborfront in Victoria, B.C.
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VICTORIA, B.C. — It was a meaningless, silly decision, really. And as usual, I was having all sorts of trouble making it.

Prepping for a wintry morning walk around Victoria, most people would be stressing about proper headwear, footwear and the like. I was lost in thought about lens length.

Any fan of outdoor photography will attest that it simply goes without saying: Unless you want the true, spine-compacting, Sherpa experience, you just can't lug all your lenses around with you all the time.

Naturally, it follows that the one lens you choose to bring along will, without fail, always prove to be something other than the one you really needed.

My short-suffering wife, Tara Firma, has almost learned to plan her day around it. If I take the short lens, for example, she knows with a great degree of certainty that we will encounter all manner of wild animals — most of which were long ago believed extinct, all cavorting within perfect 200- to 400-mm range.

Conversely, if she sees the long, heavy, 400-mm around my neck and a wide-angle lens nowhere in sight, she knows to expect spectacular sweeping vistas painted with the kind of stunning God light that would make Ansel Adams drop to the ground and weep like a child.

Given all that, I have tried to put this constant bad luck to work as a force for good — as a sort of highly reliable fate determiner. Which is why on this fine, sunny, crisp afternoon, right before we headed out on this city's lovely harborfront trail network, I confidently locked and loaded my ultra-wide-angle zoom and declared: "OK. Let's go find some rare birds!"

Find them, we did.

To be fair, Victoria on such a day is one of those places where not even this humble fool could go wrong: The city's peaceful waterfront was bathed in those warm, tangerine hues you only get with the low-lying, southerly sun. Everywhere you looked, a perfectly pleasing wide-angle vista presented itself — usually with a friendly Canadian pooch-walker or sea-kayaker perfectly posed in the foreground.

But just as expected, our four-mile stroll along the Songhees Walkway, on the harbor's northwestern shore, quickly turned into a birder's bonanza. Around every bend of the paved path, which snakes along the waterfront for miles, through a pleasing mix of new condos, old boathouses and nicely aging homes, another cluster of waterfowl would break into sight:

Mallards and wigeons and mergansers. Blue herons and cormorants. Buffleheads and, perhaps, a goldeneye. A wayward, lone snow goose who clearly did not get the memo when everyone else flew south to Mount Vernon.

All in all, a stunning display of the benefits of living along the Pacific Flyway, a coastal bird migration route that can shower your neighborhood with a range of splendid species with nary a moment's notice.

Walking at a brisk pace, we watched the water-surface display for more than an hour, constantly surprised by what we'd find flapping its wings around the next corner. In an urban setting, home to a good third of a million folks, it was a delightful surprise. And, of course, at the same time a constant irritant to yours truly, he of the stubby lens.

Tara could see it building up in me. I held it back for as long as I could, and then, sensing a "go ahead and get it over with!" look in her eyes, I finally decided to just say it:

"I SHOULD HAVE BROUGHT THE OTHER LENS!" I bellowed.

A bit too loudly, perhaps. Hearing the commotion, a flock of beautiful wigeons floating not far away took flight, their wingtips frothing the glassy water surface as they skimmed along the bay and came to a perfect gliding stop, in formation, just in front of us.

"Go ahead, mock me!" I growled, turning the other direction and, just to show them, shooting a fine, sweeping, wide-angle picture of the city waterfront.

Another rich experience, but another lesson learned. Rest assured, it'll stay with me. And this is important in the sense that it also will affect some of you:

Tomorrow, I'm kicking off the Christmas-shopping season in downtown Seattle. And I'm bringing the really short lens.

Be prepared for mountain goats and an occasional saber-toothed tiger on Fifth Avenue.

Ron C. Judd's Trail Mix column appears here every Thursday. To contact him: 206-464-8280 or rjudd@seattletimes.com.

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