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The second moment, which occurred at roughly the same time in my life, took place as I was ponderously reading a rather dry textbook on photography; and is a direct precursor of why I am now so excited (30 years later!) by a magnificent lens filter available from Singh-Ray. Going back to my old self at 17, I remember being curled up in bed one day, while skimming through some pages explaining the basics of exposure. It was all standard material, with equally standard (meaning somewhat "dull") illustrations and photos highlighting the central points of the text. And then I ran across what I, at the time, thought was a stunningly dull photo: an image of an empty highway, taken in broad daylight. No cars, no pedestrians, no birds, nothing but asphalt and concrete. "Wow," I remember thinking, "these guys could use some creativity pills if this is the best they can do to illustrate a text on photography!" But it was a curiously puzzling photo, and strangely mesmerizing in its own way. I couldn't take my eyes off it for some reason. I kept asking myself, "Why aren't there any cars on this long stretch of highway in the middle of the day?" After reading the text more carefully (there was no caption underneath the picture except for the figure number), I had my second epiphanous moment.
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For example, if a "filterless" exposure at f8 is, say, 1/500 sec, then a "2 f-stop" NDF will increase the exposure to 1/125 sec (at the same aperture); and an "4-stop" NDF will further increase it to 1/30 sec. Of course, one has to be sure that the white balance is preserved (so that there are no extraneous color shifts); which in practice simply means that you'll be investing in more expensive brands. I always carry at least two NDFs in my bag, one 3f-stop and one 6f-stop. The range is important, for it allows me to "experiment" with, say, a "frozen" water stream (using a fast exposure), a stream that is delicately blurred (for exposure times between 1/4 - 1 sec), and cloud-like flow "abstractions" (for t>5 sec).
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A philosophical postscript: I use the word "magic" in the title and in my reference to the vari-ND for two reasons. The first reason has already been hinted at in the text above, and has to do with how this filter "magically" renders effortless the willful imposition of desired exposure time (on a technical level). The second reason, unarticulated explicitly above, is decidedly philosophical. What this filter does, in effect, is to transform our normal, every-day perception of temporal flow - in which the world appears to move in localized snippets of time that last roughly 1/30 to 1/60sec - to glimpses of a supranormal, otherwordly, realm in which time moves at a slower, sometimes significantly slower, pace. It thereby also transforms us into temporally transcendent beings, that temporarily exist outside of time, and are able to marvel at time's own inner rhythms. Who is to say what is "real", and what is not? Is the "real" stream of water the one my eyes provide a visual imprint of?" Or is it the ethereal cloud of vapor that my "temporally transformed" eye glimpses, however briefly, with the aid of the vari-ND? Both are "real", but neither is definitively so, of course. Moreover, I would argue, it is this simple, but profound, realization that we have momentarily stepped "outside the normal flow of perceived time" - along with the even deeper realization that the clearest view of reality can only take place from some vantage point outside of it, on a meta-level - that points the way toward something approaching a "spiritual" enlightenment. Thus, the second reason I use the word "magic" in describing the vari-ND, is that it "magically" reveals a (normally hidden) spiritual realm.