black and white image of a tree infested with mistletoe

Get off your butt and go out shooting, my mind said. It will be good for you, it said. Fresh air, sunshine, this is what being a photographer is all about, so get it in gear, Bub!

Let me tell you, sometimes you just want to stay at home and procrastinate over the next blog post or finally get down to editing those family Easter photos.

And the kicker was that the sky was ideal: partly cloudy. A black and white photographer’s dream. There’s nothing worse than clear blue skies for a landscape photograph. Okay, there are several things worse, but clear blue skies are up there.

If I was going to pack up my camera gear, fill a hdryoflask full of water, then I wasn’t going to go it alone. Nope. So I informed my youngest daughter that we were going to Folsom Lake. Fortunately, she loves nature and the outdoors.

Once again, I brought along my tripod as I thought I would switch it up and take some color photos. It was almost midday, so the light wasn’t the best, but I figured I could at least practice some long exposure shots. There were some rocks sitting in the water that I knew might make good compositions.

I was glad my daughter was with me, it was my idea after all, but there’s a reason why landscape photography is best done alone. Even though there was no such indication from my daughter, I still felt rushed. When someone tags along if feels like you have to hurry things up so they don’t get bored. And rushing a photograph is the worse thing you can do.

The water in the lake was higher than the previous year even though we’re going through an epic drought in California. There were some rocks across the calm water that threw some great reflections. I set up my color camera on a tripod and fired off several shots from different angles and zoom lengths.

We walked around the area a bit more but and I took some handheld pics with my monochrome camera. I didn’t think I’d gotten anything earth shattering, so I packed up all my gear and we headed back toward the parking lot.

Back to the Car

As we approached this tree I thought to myself that it might make a nice photo. I had to have the usual wrestling match with the lazy part of myself because all my gear was nicely tucked away in my backpack. Thankfully, my photographer self won the battle and I took out my monochrome camera.

Normally, I abhor shooting vertically. I don’t really know why, but it is something I rarely do, but the composition of the tree in relation to the hill called for a vertical shot.

I had a 28mm lens on my camera and it was fairly new at the time, so I was still used to composing for a 35mm instead of something a bit wider. Initially, I was too far away and wasn’t really happy. So I got closer, recomposed, and took a few shots.

Now, as almost all photographers know, the hardest part of taking photos is that they rarely meet the expectations of the photo we had in our mind’s eye. I actually believe this is a big reason why a lot of people stop taking pictures after a while.

After I got home, I imported the photos into Lightroom. I did a scan through the images and when I got to the one above, I literally let go of my mouse and sat back in my chair. For the first time in over 20 years of taking pictures, the image on my screen exceeded the one I had in my mind’s eye. This picture just completely blew me away.

I realize this is subjective, but photography can be such a personal thing and we all have different expectations. The picture above is one I’ve been waiting for my entire life. And that scares me. Will it kill my motivation? I sure hope not, but only time will tell.