[LiquidPolymer]

As a pro photographer I’ve always been intrigued by serendipity and luck. For instance, the amateur who photographed Mt. St. Helens moment of “the big one” eruption with a spectacular landslide preceding the event has made money licensing those images every year since.

Yet this is an example of something that required foresight and planning- and just a bit of serendipity. It’s a great image.

I’ve had some trouble illustrating the difference between these two concepts for people not in the profession. Yet my professional success has been entirely based upon the latter. However even with all the planning and preproduction work, most of my success has relied on serendipity to a degree. Sometimes this results in failure because this last little ingredient never happened.

[mordechai9000]

I remember a couple of pro photographers died in their cars in separate incidents after taking shelter from the eruption. I believe they were outside the restricted zone that was considered dangerous, but that didn't take a possible lateral eruption into account. One of the photographers laid across the backpack with his equipment and they recovered some of the film when they found him.