I was just thinking a bit more about today’s photograph and how it (I hope!) illustrates something I’ve learned about my own photography – as much as I like to visit and photograph new places, I think that I enjoy more getting to photography and know more deeply a few places that I visit regularly.

The photograph was made in a place I’ve visited literally dozens of times… in the past year alone. I’ve walked past this exact spot carrying my photo gear too many times to count. I’ve even stopped and looked at this spot and thought about making a photograph more than once. On a couple of occasions I have made a photograph, only to realize that I hadn’t quite figured out how to shoot this little scene.

But I keep going back to this now-familiar place. Sometimes a visit turns out to be a bust photographically, and I just return with the benefits of some quiet time walking in the hills. On another trip I may discover a new thing – rock, tree, view, bird – that I hadn’t seen before. On this morning – a foggy morning like many others I’ve seen in almost this exact spot –  several things came together at once, unexpectedly, and it a way that will likely never be repeated. The hills were still a bit green but with enough brown to suggest the familiar colors of the approaching California summer. A few flowers were blossoming in the foreground. The atmosphere was in that magical state halfway between fog and sunlight, and the light through the moving fog created some definition on the hills and grass.

I happened to be in this very familiar spot at the right moment in time, happened to look up, and happened to see something in this scene that I had probably not seen until this day… and I got a photograph of this familiar place that I like because I was there, I know the place well, and I was attentive to my surroundings.