July 27, 2013


I like getting up early for sunrise.  It sets the direction of the day on a good path.  I decided to drive down into the Snohomish Valley.  Timing is such a intricate part of photography. We sometimes miss out on the potential for great images by not making an effort to just get out and do it, make photos.

If you are driving down Highway 9 heading south as you get closer to the City of Snohomish you can get a glimpse of the valley floor.  Here you will see whether your choice of possible subjects was worth it. This morning the fog sat low over the fields.  At these moments you have a rush of excitement because the potential is there for good images.  I drove along the South West road that winds along the valley floor.  This road is elevated so at times you can be alittle above the fog.  Beware, always drive slower and keep one eye on the road at all times you never know when a working farmer will be out on the road with his tractor or a raccoon hurrying home for the day.  That advice has saved me many times.

As I was driving I kept seeing potential images but I was looking for that aha moment when all the elements come together to make a great image.  Well, it looked like I was going to have to work for any good photograph.  As I passed an opening between a line of bushes and a farm house I spotted a row of electrical towers standing in low lying fog and moving off into the distance toward the Cascade Mountain Range.  Sentinels of our communication obsession.  So I pulled over and set up.  I used a variety of lenses to get the best composition I could given my limited area that I could shoot from.  Once I went through my normal routine of choosing wide, medium and telephoto lenses I realized that I had milked this particular scene.  And my interest here was done.  So I packed up and moved down the road.  As I passed another barn I saw a dirt road that went down into the valley and believe it or not, it didn't have a no trespass sign on the entrance.  So I went down the road and parked.  I took some images of the fog and sunrise behind a large tree and then as the sun rose higher in the east sky I hiked further down the road and found a community vegetable patch.  I stayed and photographed it for a long time shooting the different vegetables people had planted and taking images of some of their tools and large water containers they had set up.

We start in one direction and end up in another.  In a matter of a couple of hours I was able to see the beautiful valley fog and shoot some interesting subjects along the way.  If someone would have told me that when I started out this morning that some of my favorite images would be of a community veggie patch in Snohomish Valley I would have been surprised.  But that is why we seek out good images and let our instincts and luck sometimes take charge and guide us to interesting subjects that were not even on our photo radar..