Tip of The Day – Look Behind You

When it comes to picture-taking, there is nothing I like more than walking with the camera through beautiful country and grand spaces, looking for photo ops.  Hiking through majestic forests, scenic shorelines, mountain trails, even the narrow streets and alleys of old cities, you can see terrific images.  Sometimes, the footing requires your attention so you may not be looking at much more than what is in front of you.  All I’m saying is that when you slow down long enough to consider framing and capturing a shot of what’s in front of you or to the side, turn around once in a while and check out the view behind.  There just might be a shot worth your attention.

In May 2007, I was walking through the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoia trees in Yosemite National Park.  It is REAL easy to be awed by what’s in front of you.  Ginormous trees with great, red trunks stretching too high to see where they end.  One can imagine that, with trees over 200 feet high, not much direct light reaches the forest floor.  It was a wonderful place to wander and it was so easy to be drawn further down the trail to see what the next grand scene might look like.

I make this my first Tip of The Day because I don’t do it enough.  That day, I remembered to turn around. There was this fresh, green, youngster of a tree…with a sunbeam shining right on it…directly in front of a big, red mass of a tree.  Like Ansel Adams described when he made his iconic ‘Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico’ image, I had enough time to snap off one shot before the sunbeam moved on.  Don’t miss the chance to capture what’s right behind you.

Mother and Son, 

Yosemite National Park, (15 May 2007)