My definition of being spontaneous is doing something without thinking much about the outcome.

Google’s defintion:

spon·ta·ne·ous

Looking back through my timeline of adventures it seems a majority of my life decisions have been made spontaneously– some with amazing results, others inducing painful life lessons and a few scars that thankfully did not require very much Bactine, a steady hand, needle or thread.

One of my most recent spontaneous decisions was to enter a random photo contest sponsored by One Kings Lane on Instagram.  I had to choose 5 photos that best depicted the theme “Summer Escapes.”

This particular photo has been selected to be in the top 30 which will then dwindle down to 5 based on harassing everyone I know to vote everyday for 7 days.   In which you will then be harassed every day for the rest of your life with spam mail to buy overpriced beautiful things that you don’t really need.  But never fear I have decided to not fill out the release form giving them all rights to my amazing photo craftiness (no craftiness was actually used during this picture- right place, right time) so that I may or may not win a stretched 16 x 16″ canvas of my picture- value 20$.

With that being said I must confess another life moment driven by spontaneity.  The reason I started taking the almost daily sunrise photo shot consists of two reasons- The first one based on inspiration from two cool people, Scott Spradley and Michelle Claire who had been snapping a sunrise picture and posting it to their good morning Facebook timelines and I thought perhaps I would give it a try because…wait for it…I have sleep issues and had been lying awake in bed  during the wee morning hours thinking mainly about all the things on my never ending to do list and all the things I haven’t done yet. That was the other reason- so why not.

And since I’m being honest I must also confess that before all this photo hype began, with the exception of my children’s first years of life, I was the girl who brought a camera everywhere but never actually got it out of my bag.  I was completely content in getting copies of pictures other people had taken so that I might put them into an album one day or since the techno revolution just tag myself and think about possibly one day getting them printed somewhere…if I have a coupon handy of course.  But now things have changed.  Because this is actually the second time I have been an Instagram photo contest finalist – the other one was for a picture featuring all the trash I picked up at the beach one morning – it was sponsored by Surfrider— no I was not even close to winning-and no one ever wins when there’s that much trash laying around.

But it doesn’t stop me from sharing with my family these small accomplishments and perhaps one day I’ll actually be considered a real photographer, buy a camera and quit using my iPhone.  Maybe…

But if you want to know about some real photography… here’s a picture my friend A.J. Neste took at Cloudbreak, Tavarua Fiji.  His story of what he endured trying to capture this amazing photo is almost as killer as the prize he won from the OnEarth Magazine photo contest– AWESOME!!

(Click on the picture for the full article)

If you would like to see more of my amazing photos follow me @flaglersurf on Instagram or friend me on Facebook  for the morning sunrise-

Cheers to making memories!