2011 Bucket List

Being a photographer who also has a regular 9-5 job is something of a challenging lifestyle, because my second career often has to take a back seat to the one that makes the majority of my living at the moment, so I'm not able to just up and fly off to Hokkaido or Costa Rica whenever I feel like it (which is almost all the time, but I'm restricted by a budget that keeps me at home most of the year). However, I can plan to do local day trips or weekend photo shoots, and do so on the cheap by camping instead of staying in hotels when an overnight stay is required. Yes, sleeping on the ground kind of sucks at my age, but I accept the idea that a little pain may be required to get to do what I want.

So I intend to make it a regular yearly schedule to hit as many locations in-state as I can, to catch wildlife and landscape opportunities whenever I'm able. And please let me know if you'd be interested in joining me on these little journeys, and we might just do some of them as a group.

Port Angeles/Sol Duc River valley/Olympic National Park/Washington coast -- This is a weekend excursion I'd take, either based out of Port Angeles or nearby. The rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula have some really magical sites when conditions are right -- waterfalls, temperate flora, really dramatic view of sunlight through hanging moss-covered trees, a good mix of evergreen and deciduous trees, and the occasional sighting of larger animals. Along the coast, you have beaches dotted with huge seastacks, and an ever-changing array of flotsam and jetsam that can wash up along the beach if you're interested in such things. Opportunities abound for a variety of shots, and you never really know what you're going to get until you arrive.

Mount Rainier National Park -- in mid- to late-summer, the area around both Paradise and Sunrise explode with wildflowers. The brief growing season on the mountaintop means that the plants and animals adapted to live in that environment expend the majority of their energy during the four months that the mountain isn't covered with snow, so the flowers bloom all at once, and all the animals are either busy gathering food or fattening up for the coming winter or raising their young, and is the best time for a photographer to get a chance to see both. I also want to get back to Mount Rainier after dark, because I have a better idea of how to get good timed exposures, and I want to try for a better shot of the stars over the mountain than the one I currently have (which is nice, but I think I can do even better)

Palouse -- It's a city! It's a river! It's a farming region! It's a desert! All of the above; the southeastern corner of Washington state has farms with colorful barns and old vehicles; charming little towns; stark, rocky landscapes alternating with miles of waving grain and open sky; state and national parks with a wide variety of flora and fauna as well as breathtaking views of a geologically diverse region of the country. Definitely a long weekend worth of shooting, and a lot of driving, but worth the effort (or so I'm told -- I've only seen what can be observed at 65 mph from I-90 as you pass through, so this year will be the first time I'll actually stop and smell the roses... and photograph them)

University of Washington Arboretum - Had a good bit of success finding interesting things to shoot there a couple years ago, and with one thing or another, haven't had time to go back when things are actually blooming (I think I went through in late August or early September last time). I like to start off along the boardwalk trail that starts by the Museum of History and Industry and goes along the Montlake cut, because in the early morning you can get some nice shots of herons and ducks feeding, the occasional rowing shell going by, and of course, the sun rising over Lake Washington. Then you make your way into the arboretum, and there is always a wide variety of flowering plants that beckon, and even in the bright afternoon light, the canopy of trees gives you a dappled light source that can still create dramatic shadows on things if you look for them.

Pike Place Farmer's Market - There's more than just the cliche produce shots to be found around the market (though those are spectacular, and well worth the visit all by themselves). An old series of connected buildings like the Pike Place Market offers hidden treasures for a photographer, with a variety of lighting aspects throughout the day, and a colorful cast of characters available all day long if you're into editorial portraiture. It's possible that the real challenge is choosing what to shoot, rather than finding anything worth taking a picture of.

Other places around town - Alki Beach or Kerry Park to get some shots of the Seattle skyline, particularly around dawn or dusk, definitely a must at some point. For architectural and random people shots, I'll wander around the University of Washingon, Pioneer Square, and the Seattle Center. I can probably get some good shots in Discovery Park in Magnolia, and I'll probably head to the beach at least a couple of times at dawn and dusk, as well as low tide (preferrably when this happens at dawn or dusk) to get some macro shots of tidepools, shells and driftwood.

Any other suggestions? I'm certainly taking any you've got!

Finding the Subject

Blogging is still not second nature to me, so there are going to be some periods of little activity on this site; sorry. (I'm not the kind of guy who Tweets, either, so you'll likely never see me on Twitter posting things like, "I just made toast! Awesome!")


We just got back from a trip to Orlando, mostly a vacation to visit with some friends and see the old stomping grounds where we used to live while I was stationed there for Navy training back in 1997, but I brought all my cameras with me just in case. We were thwarted in our attempt to photograph the shuttle launch at Kennedy Space Center, as delay mounted upon delay due to mechanical issues. As disappointed as we were to have missed one of the last few chances to see a space shuttle launch, I'm okay with the idea that they were trying to do it safely. A stop in nearby Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge also failed to yield a really wide abundance of wildlife like I would have liked.


This brings me to the subject of... subject. Every photographer has run into a situation when you arrive at a location to shoot something specific, and either your subject simply isn't there (such as trying to shoot a live animal migration or you arrive a little early for a wildflower bloom) or the conditions aren't right (maybe you were hoping for a nice sunrise/sunset, but the day you got there, the day was overcast or pouring rain, or the event you came to document got cancelled due to unforseen circumstances). I've come to realize over time that one of the hallmarks of a good photographer is flexibility. Just because the subject you thought you were there to shoot isn't present or the conditions aren't ideal, that doesn't mean you day is entirely ruined. Granted, there will be times when great photography just isn't going to happen (your desert landscape is obscured by a blinding sandstorm for the duration of your visit, for instance), but you need to look at your surroundings from different angles and with an open mind. Okay, so the herd of reindeer you wanted to photograph didn't get your memo to be in this particular clearing at this particular moment; that doesn't mean that meaningful, powerful images aren't there. Great photography doesn't just happen; it takes work, planning and a creative eye, and the patience to separate all the distractions from the potentially great image before you.


So now it becomes a game, and photographers become really good at finding hidden images. Ask yourself: Where's the shot? If the subject you inteded to shoot just isn't available, what else looks interesting enough to shoot? Maybe you've noticed a mountain that is lit just perfectly or an interesting cloud formation you want to shoot, but a telephone pole or a tree blocks part of your view. Will moving to a different location give you a better angle? Will using a telephoto lens to zoom in on a smaller feature of the overall scene before you make a more interesting composition? Maybe the entire meadow isn't ablaze with wildflowers, but perhaps you can still get some close-up or macro shots of a single bloom, or possibly even some fallen petals might be interesting to shoot. The parade got cancelled because half of the participants ate at Greasy Gert's Gas-and-Go the night before and got food poisoning, so maybe there are architectural features along the parade route you could shoot instead, or maybe even a poignant editorial photo opportunity may be found with the unfortunate snack food vendor who set up at one end of the parade route and now has no customers. I'm being silly on purpose here, because there's no way to predict what kinds of shots will present themselves to you in the moment, or what may appeal to your artistic sensibilities at that point in time, so any suggestion I make here is purely conjecture. What matters is that you roll with the circumstances of your photo shoot and remain open to shots you wouldn't have planned ahead of time but which you come across either in the course of photographing your primary subject or because you can't get the shot you had intended.


So take my visit to Kennedy Space Center for example. No shuttle launch, and with the service gantry in the way, not even a really interesting shot of the shuttle on the launch pad. And if you wander around the site, you'll see a lot of touristy stuff, and you might be inclined to believe there isn't anything a professional photographer would be interested in shooting, but maybe you can still get a shot of something no one's photographed before, or at least not in the way you've done it.


Everybody who visits Kennedy Space Center sees the Saturn V rocket on display that took the Apollo missions to the moon, and many people snap a full-length photo of it (or as close to a full-length photo as they can get, considering how big the thing is). By itself, a photo of a rocket is a photo of a rocket, but maybe there is a more detailed shot available. Take it as a personal challenge to find patterns or interesting features on the rocket that aren't so obvious without looking for them.

Here's a shot inside one of the rocket engines. An interesting view, but it doesn't really challenge the viewer, and compositionally it's not all that exciting. Perhaps closer up?

A shot like this challenges the viewer more, making them stop to ask more questions, like "What is that?" It might ultimately not be their cup of tea, but at least it forces them to consider your photo for longer than a couple of seconds, if only to try to figure out what they're looking at.

Or perhaps the outside of the engine is more interesting to you. These heat transfer vanes create an interesting repeating pattern, and again challenge the viewer to identify what they're looking at. Are any of these great shots? No, but someone may still be interested in seeing it, and they'll only get that chance if you get the shot and show it to them. So even though you might have failed to get the shot of the shuttle launch, you can still find things worth photographing if you take the time to look and stay with a potential subject until all its angles are explored.