Look around and wait

I can remember bringing my camera with me and taking hundreds of photos on any particular day. I had gotten in the habit of just snapping away. I then would get home and one of two things would happen. I would either not load the photos on my computer because I had so many it would just take up too much of my time or I would load them and just become overwhelmed by the number of photos that I had that I would never make it through all of them.

I tried to find an example and came up with this. This summer I took my camera to the beach so I could get some photos to turn into canvases for our home. In the past I would have seen this spot and just snapped away coming home with 50 shots of basically the same thing. And, truthfully who needs 50 shots of the same location (but I bet everyone is guilty of this).

So I scanned around the environment and tried to form a vision of what I was looking for and what "I" thought would make a great picture. I could not help but notice all the American flags in the bay with this one in particular blowing in the wind. Then I started to notice all the sail boats in the area. So, I waited for a sail boat to make its way down until I could see the American flag framed in between the sails.
This is the shot I had been waiting for. So I took a couple of shots and changed my angle slightly with each shot. That was it. A total of 8 shots of that location and then it was time to move on.

Here is the shot I walked away with and I just love it.