I've personally experienced it time and time again. Usually I notice it after a month or two, but this week I discovered a place I had written off for almost my entire life... Lake Mead. Sure, it's a nice place to visit on a hot day in Vegas, especially if you have a friend with a boat! (Anyone?) But locals make jokes about the murky water and how horrible tasting the fish must be. After all, it's fed by the Muddy River, among others, so it has a lot of silt and gets dirty looking rather quickly when you wade in from the shore.
Last week I was skimming over a list of local parks, looking for places to visit and photograph. Reading down the list there were places like Red Rock and Floyd R Lamb State Park, both nearby, then I came to Lake Mead. "Why would I want to go there?", I thought. Not a very pretty place. Or is it? Maybe I've let a lifetime of negative reinforcement shape the image in my mind beyond how it looks in reality.
I decided that my best chance for a great photo, without spending days researching, was a sunrise photo across the waters of the lake. After that I pulled up Google Maps to find some location choices that would have me looking East across the water. Next I pulled up Weather.com to find out the sunrise time for the next morning, prepared my gear, set my alarm and headed off to sleep.
The half hour trip out to the lake was nice and peaceful during the 5am drive. Once on site, another 10 minutes of driving let me to a great location with the exact view I was looking for. The sky was full of clouds and hopefully they would catch some color with the rising sun. It exceeded all of my expectations and I was able to capture this beautiful image along with a few others! The others are in my gallery at http://bit.ly/ybpJj.
If you have time, stop and look around. Maybe there's some beauty in life you've started taking for granted and need to see again for the first time to truly appreciate!
