I was at the Norfolk "Nauticus" maritime museum over Spring break, wishing I wasn't. An entire cruise ship had docked at the museum (of all places!) and there were over a thousand senior citizens swarming the place, rooting through their luggage, looking for Elvira or Maud or Horace, and generally just loudly getting in the way. After all, they had paid good money for the cruise. They needed service...

I nearly suffocated as I wound around the crowd, trying to get through without inadvertently tripping over a cane or a suitcase or a walker, only to be acosted by the glaring eyes and righteous anger of so many wrinkled arms, for 'assaulting someone my elder'.

I couldn't get in. So I stood for a time in the only place with standing room, next to this weird clear tube of a fishtank. It was almost glowing -- gotta love synthetic coral and carefully-placed lighting. So I pulled out my digital camera to try to catch some of the fish. It's impossible to turn off the autofocus, so timing photos is difficult. Out of one eye, I looked at the fish in the tank. The other I pressed to the viewfinder. Then, like a ball gunner in a WWII superfortress bomber, I tried to time and predict the path of the fish.

Snap!

The fish turned away, and I got a picture of glowing coral. When it did work, the shutter speed (fixed) was too slow. I got blobs of yellow, smears of blue against a glowing brown background.

"Why don't I try to move the camera with the fish?"

I tried it. It worked. The photo you see is a result of that experiment. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't do it again.

That photo is one of the coolest flukes that's ever happened to me :-)