To Shoot, or not to Shoot...

Those of you who know me or have read previous blogs know that I'm a research junkie.  When I'm planning a photo trip to a place I've never shot before I spend untold hours online searching for information.  Looking at previously shot images, looking at maps, booking hotels and airline tickets, generally making myself as familiar with the location as I possibly can before arriving.  Most of the time I get some good data that makes my trip successful for the most part.  But sometimes it's a problem.

There are a lot of locations in the West that are very iconic.  They've been shot by tens of thousands of photographers over the years and you've seen images of them all...Delicate Arch, Mesa Arch, Yellowstone Falls, Old Faithful, the Grand Tetons, all the famous views in Yosemite.  The image accompanying this blog is another of the icons, The Mittens in Monument Valley.  I could show you hundreds of images online shot from this particular spot in all sorts of lighting conditions.  I think mine is a bit unique but like many of the icons, if you look hard enough you can find a set of holes from thousands of tripod legs in this spot.  And there's the problem.

I'm heading out Friday afternoon for Arizona.  Flying into Phoenix and spending some time with my daughter and her family before driving north to Sedona for a couple of days shooting.  I've been doing my usual research and in this case, I'm just about sick to death of seeing Cathedral Rock reflected in Oak Creek.  It seems if you google or bing up Sedona and images of the area, 99 out of 100 will be images of Cathedral Rock reflected in Oak Creek.  So the challenge is there for me....create some unique images of an iconic location.  Yes, I'll probably make at least one exposure of Cathedral Rock reflected in Oak Creek.  You can't visit an icon without photographing it even if your image will be number 10,000,000 in a series.  But I'll be spending my time searching for images I haven't seen before and who knows, I may get lucky.  I may run into some unusually spectacular light like I did at Monument Valley.  Check back in about 10 days and see.