Find the beauty around you

A few weeks ago one of my favorite YouTube photographers posted about climbing a mountain, hoping to get a landscape image that he dreams of capturing.  As he climbed, he  hoped that the clouds would part and the sun would illuminate the magic landscape.  Instead the clouds closed in and he climbed into a fog bank.  He was devastated that there was "simply no image to be had." He lamented the waste of time and effort for "nothing." 

As I am watching the video I am seeing the most spectacular landscape in the fog. He is saying this is a failure, there is nothing to photograph and I am thinking, oh yes there is. It is not the image he dreamed about, but he was in a dreamscape with many amazing images all around him.  He couldn't see it, because it was not what he was looking for. 

Two challenges.  One is the preconceived idea of what the image has to be.  Knowing what you want is great, but when it excludes the perceiving the other images around you, it gets in the way of creativity. Second, when the conditions changed, or didn't change as predicted, we need to change our mode from setting out to capture a specific image to seeing the wonders around us. I have photographed the Mansion at Mt Vernon 100 times, this one stands out because of the fog that morning. It is not the postcard image that most people set out to get, it is different, and that can be good.  

I won't name Thomas or link to his YouTube as I am not being polite to him here. And he is a master of the art of Landscape photography that creates images I could only dream of.  And he shares and teaches along the way.  In this case I learned from what he was doing, to not do what he was doing. 

It has been six or seven months since I last posted on here.  I was running out of ideas. As inspiration strikes me, I will post, or rant, I feel a rant coming on.