All photographers experience good and bad days.  On good days, everything seems to come together and you fill up memory cards with interesting images for hours at a time.  On not so good days, inspiration gets drowned out by bad weather, mediocre light, or worse yet, great light but ho hum subject matter.  Yesterday started out as one of the not so good days. 

Skies were clear and frost was on the ground, but the river was heavily fogged in, from Brattleboro to Bellows Falls and beyond.  Of course, fog with clear skies above can result in some dramatic scenery, but for some reason it wasn’t happening for me.  Maybe I  spent too much time the night before in the hotel watching the baseball playoffs instead of planning out my morning shoot.  Actually I did have a plan.  It was to make pictures of warm early morning light on riverside silver maples, but these shots weren’t possible in the fog, and I couldn’t seem to break out of the mind set of making those images in my head.  The farm I had planned to photograph after the river scenes was covered in thick fog as well, so I spent the next two hours frantically driving around looking for subject matter to coincide with lighting conditions.   Needless to say, that didn’t pan out at all.  At least, breakfast was included with the hotel.

Now, anyone who has been in one of my workshops is probably yelling at me to “Get out and tune in!”  I am always preaching about what the late Galen Rowell called “participating in the landscape.”  By getting out and exploring your subject matter, Galen believed that you will understand your subject better and therefore make better photographs.  It is a process I firmly believe in and yesterday morning I probably missed out on several excellent photo ops because I failed to take my own advice.

So over a plate of scrambled eggs and home fries, I decided the rest of the day needed to be more productive. I had a couple of must-shoot scenes on my list, but instead of planning to just show up at those places at the end of the day when the light was supposed to be good, I decided to go on a couple of hikes to scout out the views from two hill tops and get some much needed exercise as well.

First I hiked up Hubbard Hill in New Hampshire’s Pisgah State Park to check out what the guidebook called the best view in the park.  Well, the view may have been the best in the park (personally I like the ledges on Mt. Pisgah better,) but it was way too obstructed for any meaningful landscape photos.  I was still feeling a little wound-up creatively, but it felt good to feel my leg muscles work and to breathe in some fresh woodland air.

Next I climbed up to a fire tower on Hyland Hill in Westmoreland, which the guidebook promised had 360 degree views.  Well, there were views in all directions, but the fall colors and the landscape were both a little flat (I guess I can be a bit picky!)  So now I knew of two hills I didn’t have to climb again for this trip.

 
Swirling Leaves, Hyland Hill, Westmoreland, New Hampshire

Then on the way down from the fire tower, I was drawn to some red maple leaves on the rocks in a small stream.  I had passed this stream just 30 minutes earlier without even noticing it, but now my brain was finally getting “tuned-in.”  The color of leaves is what first grabbed my attention, and that’s what I started focusing on first, but then the creative energy took over and I started concentrating on the movement of the water and the leaves in a small pool.  The movement of those leaves seemed to break the temporary creative block in my head, and the rest of the day was a good day.  Good light and good subject matter blended together easily to make good photos.  The good energy of yesterday afternoon has even carried over into today as I hiked a small Massachusetts mountain for some good old-fashioned sunrise photography, and made some much needed shots of a classic Connecticut River landscape.  Getting out and tuning in is working its magic once again.

Tune in for more next time…

-Jerry