I’ve just completed a long, four-part series on Digital Asset Management. It’s time for some shorter, more-anecdotal stories now, ones that will hopefully inspire you in a different way.

One of the fun things about photography is discovering new locations. I should actually say scouting for new locations, for while we often serendipitously discover new spots, the experienced seek them out.

For our workshops, we always look for new places to take our students. Our regular readers already know I am a fan of the DeLorme road atlases. I recently looked at their website and discovered that there are now atlases available for all 50 states, although four of the smaller states are combined into two atlases. With only five counties, Rhode Island is sensibly grouped with next-door Connecticut and little Delaware with its neighbor Maryland.

I have spent my life exploring and cruising the back roads of America, Canada, and beyond. I started out doing this in New Hampshire in Montague, my dad’s 1931 Ford Model A Roadster. Monty, as we called him, was perfect for the rutted back roads near where I used to live. He sat high and afforded plenty of fresh air that was perfect for me in the heat of summer. What’s more, he had a rumble seat to carry extra, like-minded explorers.

In those days, there were no DeLorme atlases, but there were top maps (OK, topo maps for some of you), and we had them for a good portion of the state around us.

Since I grew up sailing, my dad taught me three-point navigation, and while we didn’t travel in Monty with our old Zenith short-wave radio, I was good at chart and map reading. It was on one of my early forays that I discovered these falls. This is yet another variation of a scene you may recognize from earlier blogs. In the old days, there was an apple tree that gracefully arched over the falls, but even though that tree is long gone, the waterfalls are still beautiful.

I went off to college, Monty was sold, and I eased into adulthood … sort of! My passion for photography continued, and although I was not yet a pro, I sought out great locations, some in the wilderness, so they are not appropriate for our regularly-scheduled workshops. Still, they are places that speak to me after all these years.

The first one came out of my looking for a great location to photograph in the early-morning mists. I got up one June morning, long before sunrise, and drove north.

I headed up along one of my favorite rivers, looking for something to catch my eye. It did — with this scene looking up the river into the early-morning sun. This is a photograph that has been published a number of times.

Sometimes — and this was just such a case — the combination of atmosphere, temperature, and time of day do not replicate themselves. I returned to this location a number of times over the years, and I never saw the same effect again!

In September, a couple of years later, I explored another area that had intrigued me for some time. I didn’t want to go there in the summer, as I would have to contend with the “madding crowd,” so I waited until September. It was a glorious few days. The loons were rafting up in anticipation of their flight south. The trout fishing was perfect, and I had a couple of tasty meals that I prepared in a skillet over the open fire. Butter, dill, some fresh pepper and shallots gave the trout just the right flavor.

I did a lot of canoeing those few days, exploring different coves and areas of the quite-long lake. I had found the perfect campsite on a mossy bed that carpeted the ledge of a point on an island. There were enough small Balsam firs around to which I could tie everything down, since the moss wasn’t exactly deep enough to properly secure a tent. The weather was perfect — warm during the day, and cool at night. I didn’t need a fly. With my no-see-um-proof screening, I could look up at the Milky Way and shooting stars. It was glorious to one who loves the outdoors as I do.

The next morning, I woke up to the soulful, pre-dawn call of the loons. I crawled out of my toasty sleeping bag, rekindled the embers of my carefully-banked campfire, made myself a hot mocha, then went down on the rocks at the water’s edge to call the loons in closer (don’t laugh, I can imitate some of the loon calls as well as those of other animals.) It was beautiful looking up the lake, as dawn lightened the sky and the loons came closer.

Then the first rays of sun broke over the mountain at the lower end of the lake. I turned around, scrambled up the ledge to my campsite and grabbed my camera. This was why. This is a photograph that has sold many times, both as a stock photo and as a fine-art piece. This is the one that hangs by the desk in my office. It is called, quite simply, “Misty Islands.”

I have returned to that location several times and gotten some great shots with canoes, camping, etc., but I have never been able to replicate this shot. Some of you may recognize it from one of our website galleries.

A few years later, a couple phoned me to arrange for a private workshop they wanted to do in New England. Coming from a different part of the country, they loved the farm scenes they had seen in New England calendars, one of which had been mine. Clearly, I needed to go out scouting for old farms that were new to my potpourri of locations.

I looked at the DeLorme atlases for New Hampshire and Vermont and my collection of top maps to determine where there was open land. Farms cannot exist in wooded areas! I found an area up north that potentially fit my criteria, and camera gear beside me on the passenger seat, I headed up that way.

I took in a few lesser, paved roads, went down this dirt road and that, and generally criss-crossed the area in a mostly-methodical manner. I say mostly methodical, because invariably, something down a road catches my eye and interrupts my covering an area in a logical manner.

Such was the case with this location. While I couldn’t see the fence yet, I could see by the quality of light that there was open land just over the rise in the road beyond my view. Unbidden, Barney, my old trusty VW, backed up dutifully, and we turned into the road. The open sky that had caught my peripheral vision turned out to be the open land around this farm. What more could I have asked? Again, this is another shot you may recognize from one of the galleries on our website.

Next week, I’ll share a few more stories about scouting. And if you have any questions or comments, please post below. Remember, you don’t need to be a Google member to do so. Just click on the “comments” link below and post anonymously.

For more information about our workshops, go to our Barefoot Contessa Photo Adventures website, and if you are considering joining us, do as others have already done, made their room reservations for 2009!

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