Improving takes time and patience and lots of near-misses. There is usually a narrow window in to capture the ideal scene and if you aren't in position and ready you will miss it. I continue to be 10 minutes late, out of battery or space on the SD card when I realize this is the shot I wanted.

In this case, I wanted to try the waters before going again the next day. The challenges of shooting downtime is that you attract too much attention to play around with expensive equipment as a crowd gathers.