The following morning started nice and early and there was barely a stir in the campground as we were rolling out, hot breakfast in our stomachs and coffee cups in hand.

During our Redwoods trip, Beast sprung a leak.  After the penthouse had been up for a few hours in a light drizzle, we found a puddle of water on the cover to the shower.  Checking things out, we noticed that the fabric on the rail was damp as well.  Nothing to do but call Sportsmobile when we got home.  Given that it was covered under warranty, and we could pretty much schedule an appointment any time we wanted, we decided to take advantage of the opportunity and made an appointment for a Thursday.  Why Thursday instead of Friday? Well, that gave us Friday and Saturday morning in Yosemite!

Today’s answer:  To better understand your own work. 

This week’s print comes from our Spring 2017 trip, taken at a location neither of us knew about until the day before we got there - Snow Canyon State Park.  It’s another one of Utah’s incredible state parks and if you’re ever in St. Georges on the way to Zion or Brice Canyon, it’s worth a detour, whether for a drive-through, a morning (afternoons get hot!), or a relaxing couple of days away from the crowds of the National parks.

A week or so ago I was listening to a writer on NPR.  She was discussing how she crafted stories and explained that she has to figure out the ending of the story before she could really move forward with the writing.  Once she had the ending, then everything else just seemed to fall into place.

I’m just the opposite.  I have to begin at the beginning.

Photographing the Redwoods in the snow was quite unexpected.  But as one can easily imagine, it is an incredibly beautiful place to simply be.  From our first steps into the grove we were in awe.  It’s also a great place for a shooting the shooter segment.

If you’ve been following the blog at all, you know we came across some very interesting weather our last day and a half in the Redwoods.  Who would have figured that we’d see snow of all things?  We knew we were going to have a variety of landscapes to photograph, and that the weather was going to be constantly changing, but snow?

Ann and I got up at a reasonable, but still early time the next morning, got dressed, coffee’d, fed and packed, and headed out for the morning’s destination - Fern Canyon.  This was one of the locations the Ranger we chatted with during our Christmas trip said we shouldn’t miss - so long as we didn’t mind a bumpy ride.  In Beast?  Are you kidding us?   

For our February adventure, Ann and I decided to take advantage of a long holiday weekend and to make it even longer.  Once we realized that taking the highway down to the Redwoods took about as long as going to the Painted Hills, there was little doubt where we were going.  We’d had a taste of the Redwoods over Christmas and we wanted more.  So on the Thursday before the President’s Day Weekend, we took off after work and headed down I-5.

As I’ve mentioned a few times recently, this month I’ve been studying the work of Joe Cornish.  In addition to being a superb photographer, he also is very down to earth - for example, admitting that he often doesn’t know why one image works and another doesn’t - and is willing to share his thoughts and experiences.  So I’ve learned  from his words as well.

Ok.  I could have argued that, if this had been a leap year I wouldn’t have been cheating.  Or, that because March has 31 days and February only 28, gifting February an extra day to make the difference only 30-29 was a just and proper way to distribute my time (based on a calendar imposed on us by the Romans that really does not make much sense).  But I’ll be honest - I cheated.  A bit . . . . No, I cheated.

This is about as close to taking a selfie that Ann and I are likely to get.

Quite often the most difficult thing to do is to see the image in a subject that you find appealing.   You’re attracted to a subject, you find it interesting, but you can’t figure out where the photograph is.  Not everything, even something interesting, makes for a good photograph.  You have to see the image before you make it.

Last weekend Ann and I headed out on Thursday afternoon to maximize the long weekend, and to just get away from things.  Destination - Redwoods State and National Parks.  We didn’t get back until fairly late on Monday, which means we had a great time photographing.  We’re exhausted!

No, we didn’t (unfortunately), go photograph the Portland Japanese Gardens again.  Instead, I’ve been trying to catch up on cataloging my photographs from 2017 and, as all too often happens, working on some of them.  I recently returned to the photographs of the gardens I took during our mid-December trip and was pleasantly surprised.