Take the shot or go home?

I spend as much or more on travel than gear. When you get to a good location at golden hour and the light sucks, or the scene is no good for whatever reason do you take a picture or just go home?

I always take a picture, just for practice and a record. I can work on composition and technique even if I don’t get a keeper.

I even put these practice shots on my SmugMug gallery. In fact the vast majority of my work is practice. When I go back to Yachats Oregon, I can look at the images I got in the past and see the time of day, exact location etc and decide what I need to change including when to go.

I use a sun/moon angle program to determine when to go or at least to find out which areas work when I am there.

I go out at golden hour but also scout between dawn and dusk. Sometimes I get a surprise in mid day.

I can afford 2-3 extended photo automobile trips in the western United States a year and maybe one or two day trips a month. This does not really provide many sensational images. So I also find 15 mile or less locations around home to provide enough photo ops to sustain the hobby.

I am always practicing technique. Focus, exposure, into the sun shots, tilt/shift, multi exposures for blending, ND grads etc.

Local places . The hard thing around a populated area is to find a place where you can park, have some good scenery with decent light angle and no man made stuff. Some man made stuff makes good subject, but I am pretty picky and I don’t like cities.

National park and icons you need something spectacular in the way of drama and light to make your shot more than just an “I was there” thing. Good luck getting a rosy sunrise at the Tetons or the ocean during a 3 day stay once a year.

The vast majority of times I am out are ho hum with respect to light subject and drama. The great scenes are rare even when we plan for them. I have been to Mesa Arch 4 times and got the glow once. I have been to the Oregon Coast every year for 30 years and have seen about 5 sunsets and about the same number of storms.

It’s still a pleasure. I get great personal satisfaction when I bring home images like these. The scene is not very exciting and in fact it was just a lens focus test after Canon adjusted the AF. But the image quality is as good as anything I have ever done. Someday this field and trees will be covered in hoar frost and the mountains will be white with snow. I can get there in 15 minutes and get this shot.

Or perhaps this.

--
When you can't focus, nothing else matters
Once you can, everything else does.

http://ben-egbert.smugmug.com/

Ben