Sunday, July 9, 2017

Do you every have one of those days when you wake up ready to go on an adventure, but instead you end up sitting in an over-sized chair watching new episodes of Planet Earth all day? David Attenborough telling stories of the plants and animals inhabiting our planet never get old to me.

Today, I found myself a little envious of the photographers who get assigned to exotic locales to capture images of cheetahs chasing down zebras and polar bears climbing cliffs. How many hours did he/she have to sit in a blind in order to catch a few minutes of the leopard hunting the deer? I wondered if I would have the patience to withstand the bugs, discomfort, danger, and inconvenience of being a photographer for the BBC or National Geographic.

Late in the day, I received an email alert from our local library that Abbey needed to return some books. She threw on her shoes, and I grabbed my camera with fresh inspiration from the Planet Earth and my instagram feed (@natgeotravel, @paulnicklen, @CristinaMittermeier, @michaelclarkphoto if you’re interested).

We made our way through the Rod Stewart & Cyndi Lauper concert traffic to the library so that Abbey could drop off her books. Then I high-tailed it to the outskirts of town to the huge sunflower fields which are usually in bloom in July.  To our dismay, we found the petal-less heads of the sunflowers sad and drooping near the end of their lifespan. Not only that, the farmers didn’t dedicate as much land to the flowers this year. It was disappointing all around.

So, with about 20 minutes to spare, I decided to keep driving until I found some open space to photograph the setting sun.

That was fun.