Better Than a Postcard

People ask what I’m after out there. In reality I shoot, or don’t shoot, hundreds of frames of amazing subjects. I’m picky. I’m looking for something better than a postcard.

Postcard images are everywhere. Technically fine. Beautiful place. Light that’s nothing special. You can find a dozen of them from the same pullout. Sometimes I don’t even get the camera out. That doesn’t mean I don’t stand there and look. Phone is enough for a memento. If there’s nothing unique in it, nothing that makes my eye want to stop and explore what’s in front of me, I leave it. Pretty isn’t enough.

What I do stop for is when things start stacking. Emotion. Weather. Light. A moment you won’t get again even if you stand in the same spot next year. One of those alone is intriguing. Two or three and the frame starts to matter. The harder I work for it, the more it means when it lines up, because for every one that works there are dozens that don’t.

In the field I usually know if I have it while I’m shooting. At home I open the file and check whether it still matches what I felt. Sometimes it holds. Sometimes I was reaching.

Mystery of You. Three Sisters, Oregon, spring 2013. The falls trail was still closed, so we snowshoed about three miles in. Cold under the canopy with almost no sun getting through. I worked the falls for a bit and nothing stuck. Never even processed those frames. I turned around and the light was cutting through the trees hard enough to light the mist. That’s the only frame from the morning that ever mattered.

Hearts of the Innocent. Big Sur, April 2013. I spent the day working the coast and found a valley of calla lilies running down to the Pacific. High surf in the back, and the sun about to drop behind the ridge. I set the frame and waited. The valley was still. All you could hear was the surf.

Sound of Silence. Peyto Lake, October 2009. We drove up in a whiteout. My friend stayed in the car. I walked in on buried trails and waited a couple of hours in heavy snow. When the wind quit, the quiet was so complete it felt loud. The sky opened for about five minutes. Snow, light on that turquoise water, and nothing else. You can feel the peace settling on the frame.

Then there’s the other side. Maroon Bells. I stood on that bank for four days once, back when you could still drive into the lot. Out at 3 a.m. for a spot. Tripods interlocking. Fights. People throwing stuff in the lake for ripples. I got an ok reflection shot. The place is beautiful. The circus isn’t. I went back once on the shuttle with just to hike. Still chaos. I walked away and haven’t tried to photograph it again.

I chase harder locations now. Harder to reach. More time in the cold and the rain. More personal sacrifice. Fewer people willing to make the commitment, so the frame has a better chance of being mine. Famous viewpoints less and less. More time and effort in the field.

What I came home with isn’t every sunrise that looked good on the hike out. It’s the ones that doubled up, held up on the screen later, and still stir something that wouldn’t be there on a normal day.