Personal Perspective

"Have fun! Take lots of pictures!"

"Yeah, sure." And I was out the door.

I'm lucky in that I have a lot of adventures. Freedom of spirit is a lifestyle choice I made subconciously some years ago, and one I continue to reaffirm every so often, when my restless nature tempts me to defy conventional wisdom and hit the road, or as is more often the case, the trail. I work for a bit, save for a bit, stress for a bit, and then escape to the wilderness in seek of respite from it all.

Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from Gloria's eBook, Natural Design: Image Design for Nature Photographers.

What is the key to making your nature photographs unique—to rising above today’s oceans of spectacular nature photographs? How do you get noticed in a saturated market? It’s simple, and for many artists it happens well before the camera is pulled out of the bag. It is the art of observation.

There is one person in this world who sees nature through your eyes, and that’s your edge. Nobody can see exactly like you, so it stands to reason that nobody can render your vision exactly like you. That’s the easy part. It is up to you to develop and nurture the skills required to make your unique vision a reality.

In my early teens, I decided I wanted to be a National Geographic photographer. I really had very little idea of what that entailed, but it sounded to me the way it does to most people: exotic, romantic, and filled with adventure. Now that I’ve grown up a bit, I have a slightly better idea of how unluxurious the job might actually be, and yet, I still want to go on assignment for National Geographic, perhaps even more than I did ten years ago.

Today I’m working on assignments for a slightly less notorious organization. In fact, the New England Forestry Foundation is so little known that you’ve probably never heard of it before. That doesn’t really matter though, because believe it or not, shooting natural history subjects on assignment can challenge and inspire a photographer regardless of who the pictures are for. Even on a small scale, I’ve found that assignment shooting is helping me develop my creative and technical skills as a photographer and motivating me in a new way.

My Early Morning Pass got me into the botanical garden hours before it officially opened to the public. The daylily garden, running adjacent to a narrow pathway, was at its peak. With no swarming throngs of curious onlookers to deal with, I practically had the whole place to myself. The winds were light and the skies were clear. I was prepared for a fruitful morning of uninterrupted flower photography at the New York Botanical Garden.

Everything was going perfectly, until a groundskeeper came over to warn me that he was about to turn on the sprinklers.

Say what now!?