On Location

Before moving back out to California, I lived in Chicago for a number of years. It was out there that I began to love photography. Since I am a nature photographer, being such in Chicago wouldn't seem like a good fit, and in many ways it wasn't. Overall there are not a lot of "landscapes" to be shot around Chicago, but Cook County had a lot of Forest Preserves which afforded decent places to go take photos (generally not broad, sweeping landscapes, but what I called "creative cropping"). Needless to say I got pretty familiar with the preserves around where I lived and worked!

Just because of the way things worked out I usually would get out and take photos before work to catch the sunrise. I would get up well before dawn, park my car along side the road (the preserve parking lots usually wouldn't open until around the time of sunrise), get all my stuff together, and head into the woods using the light of my headlamp. After getting to the spot I was thinking of, or finding one along the way I would usually have some time to set up my camera gear, and then just wait for the sun to rise. What a magical time of day! Watching the sky get brighter, maybe grabbing some shots of the higher clouds with some color, and then seeing the world around getting bathed in warm, golden light makes you forget where you are for the moment. I really think that even in Chicago what I saw on those occasions out in the forest preserves at dawn were things that not very many people ever experienced. Sure the trails in the forest preserve were used by many people, but at the wrong times! Every so often depending on where I was I would see a mountain biker or even another hiker, but not until the sun was up for a while and I was heading back to my car.

In many places around Cook County especially in the southwest suburbs the lakes, ponds, and sloughs were really close to the roads. So often there I was sitting along side the road with my camera on the tripod waiting for the sun to rise while people drove right past at 45-50 miles per hour. I always wondered if somebody who took that road to work everyday, never looking off to the side, after seeing me there with my camera, realized the beauty of the scene they had always missed and started to actually pay attention. Quite often when I was hid from the road, but yet very close to it and seeing some amazing things I just had to chuckle as all these people were driving right past and missing it all!

Even though I took a lot of photos around Chicago, I was also privledged to go on a number of vacations where Michelle and I would be able to go to some amazing places and I would shoot up a good number of rolls. Moving out to Southern California presents an entirely different set of locations and environments in which to shoot although to be honest I have only done so really only twice (see the "Photography Revival" below) and it is starting to bug me! I really need to start getting out and exploring the photographic possibilities around me!

There is one little problem however, even though San Diego County and the surrounding areas go from the ocean to foothills to pine-covered mountains (snow covered in the winter) to the desert floor, the time it takes to get to those locations is much further than it took me to get to the forest preserves in Chicago. For instance to take photos at sunrise in the desert means I would have to leave Escondido at least three hours earlier if not more (two hours to drive, an hour to hike/find a location). And that would be the case for a lot of places. So taking those kind of photos on my way to work just wouldn't work out. I would almost have to spend the night out "on location" as to alievate the early morning driving.

There is a nature preserve in Escondido just a couple of miles away as well as other decent places fairly close that I haven't even really begun to explore their photographic potential yet so I have plenty to do in the short term! Now I just need to get out and do it!