Most weeks I post something in response to the WordPress photo challenge. This week’s theme is ‘evanescent,’ a word I wasn’t familiar with. The definition provided is “soon passing out of sight, memory, or existence; quickly fading or disappearing,” or, put simply, ‘a moment in time.’

To me, this is what any photo is, a snapshot of a given moment. Even the look of a fixed object, a landscape, a building, a monument, is always changing. It could be the light, weather, activity around the subject. Everything is in constant flux, sometimes in obvious ways, sometimes only in the detail. With birds, animals, bugs, even plants – blowing in the wind – those changes of passing moments are more obvious.

So I thought I’d take this week’s challenge as my theme for the week (or at least the remaining six days of the challenge). I start off with this photo of a manta ray. One of the great joys of snorkeling is never knowing what I’ll see that day. It could be a common fish engaged in some activity I’ve never seen before. It could be a glimpse of something unexpected. It could be something seen only at a certain time of year. Whatever it is, it almost always gives me a little jolt of ‘wow.’

While out snorkeling, I got a jolt of ‘wow’ when I saw this manta ray gliding along in the opposite direction. I turned and followed its effortless progress for several minutes until it headed into deeper water and disappeared. An evanescent experience? I think so, though it won’t soon disappear from my memory.