Two summers ago while mountain biking through some woods not too far from my house, I stumbled across a really old abandoned railroad bridge that crossed over a creek. I thought this would be a great picture to capture in the winter. The scenery around it was just beautiful, big trees, long narrow path where the railroad tracks were taken out, everything you would want for a beautiful, snow covered, winter scene.

So winter came and I wanted to go back and take pictures of the bridge but I never made it back that year. It seemed like every time I wanted to go out and take pictures something came up or I was just too lazy to go out in the cold when it was nice and warm in front of my TV.

The last few days here in Northwest Indiana we got dumped on with a lot of snow, so I yesterday I decided to finally make the trip out there. I grabbed my gear and jumped in my car. I pulled up to the nearest parking lot and headed out on foot to finally capture the image that has been in my head for the last two years. After a mile hike through eight inches of snow I finally arrived at my destination.

It wasn’t the scene I had imagined.

The beautiful, old, picturesque bridge that I had dreamed about got a face lift. The abandoned railroad tracks was now a bike path and the bride was rebuilt. It was now metal instead of wood and it had a tall chain linked fence on both sides so people wouldn’t fall into the creek. I was disgusted.

I’m not sure what I was more disgusted about at the time. The fact that I just hiked through the snow for a mile with my big bulky tripod and my big bulky camera with my big bulky lens or that they remodeled the bridge? Either way I was disgusted. I really couldn’t believe my photo was gone. Stolen from me for what? A bike path? Ugh!

I guess the moral of this story is, if you have a vision, act on it! Don’t put off taking a picture of something because you’re lazy, it might not be there when you finally ‘get around to it”.

Copyright Geoffrey Hudson 2010 – All Rights Reserved

My biggest goal (along with every other photographer in the world) is to get one of my images on the cover of a national magazine. I can’t think of one photographer that wouldn’t want one of their photos on the cover of Time or Sports Illustrated. But unfortunately for me, I don’t think I’ll ever achieve this goal. Its not because I’m not a great photographer (my mom says I am), its because I don’t know how to get there.

Its going to be a long painful road if I think I can go from a zero to a hero overnight so I’m going to change the options on my GPS from quickest route to side roads only.
Here are some roads I’ll be taking:

1) Tell my neighbor I’m a photographer and show them a photo when they don’t believe me. If your mother, neighbor, or the weird guy down the street that walks his dog at 3 am doesn’t know who you are and the work you do, how is a national magazine?

2) Get noticed. Get a local paper to publish one of my images.

3) Take the town by storm. The first thing people in my town should think of when they hear the word photography is me.

4) Win a photo contest. Exposure overload!

5) Do a photo shoot for Time. Check and Mate.

It could take the rest of my life to accomplish any of these and I might not ever achieve my ultimate goal, but I know trying to get there will be more rewarding if I take the side roads.

What roads are you taking?

Some people view photography as capturing treasured memories while others view it as something their mom made them do every year when they were a kid. Either way, I want to hear your views on photography and what it means to you so please comment.

When a lot of photographers (including myself) find something they want to take a picture of they pull their camera up to their eye, compose the shot, adjust their camera settings, press the shutter button down, and look at the LCD screen on the back of their camera to see if it was properly exposed. Then they take a few more shots with tweaks to their camera settings and move on. Later when they dump it on their hard drive and pull the images up, they’re disappointed that what they are viewing isn’t what they saw before they took the picture. Out of frustration, they start searching the internet for a better camera or lens. When their new gear arrives and they take it out on a shoot and come back with the same disappointing results they get even more frustrated and stick their expensive new gear in a camera bag for months.

With new cameras and faster, sharper lenses coming out everyday, its easy to get hung up on having the best and latest gear and forgetting the reasons why you became a photographer in the first place. Being a photographer is more than just pointing your camera at a subject and pressing the shutter button down. Anyone with a camera can do that. Great photographers don’t get hung up on the latest and greatest gear, they tell a story with their camera.

The next time you go out on a shoot, find a subject, spend some time with it, and ask it a question.

What’s over that hill? Where is that duck swimming to? Is that really huge, muscle-bound man going to hit me in the face when I take his picture?

Once your subject answers your question then you can pull your camera up to your eye, compose your shot, adjust your camera settings, press the shutter button down, look at the LCD screen on the back of your camera, dump it on your hard drive, and view the image and smile.

Pretend your camera is a pen. Its your job as a photograher to tell the story of your subject with that pen. How are you going to write it?