Spring in the Valley

Welcome back to the BC interior! These images were made last year, in the middle of April on a stretch of Highway 3 between Keremeos and Hedley. It was one of those days that turned out differently than originally intended. I had my good friend (and photographer) Beth visiting from Massachusetts, and we had anticipated days of photographing orchards with blooms at their peak - or so we thought! We were a couple of weeks early, as it turned out. I remember being concerned because the weather was not cooperating at all. It was cold and windy, with intermittent cold and wind on this day we had set aside for the Similkameen Valley. Aside from an image I ended up using on my website, I wasn't thrilled with the outcome of the day's shooting.
A year later, I have been asked to put together a portfolio of local images. As I go hunting through my files for that one image, I find myself looking at everything from that day with fresh eyes. I have a new appreciation for these three images now - they're different from a lot of the images typical of this region - it's marketed for the long summer and desert climate. I am once again reminded of two important rules of photography. The first is that the conditions for outdoor photography are not something within the control of the photographer. It is more important to work with what you are given than to force a square peg into a round hole. The second rule is don't be too quick to discard any technically strong images just because you didn't get exactly what you wanted in that moment.
This is not the first time I have been reminded of this lesson. In order to get to the "good stuff", I have been known to send a keeper or two to the trash can, only to have them rescued by someone with a more forgiving eye. The best example I can give is the first image called "Daybreak" in the Places gallery at www.lauratucker.com. It was taken in New Brunswick at the first workshop I took with Freeman Patterson and Andre Gallant. It was the first batch of slides we got back from the lab. The images had not turned out exactly as I had intended. As I sorted through the slides, I muttered "crap, crap, crap" as I callously tossed them into a garbage bin. One of the other participants saw what I was doing and asked "Can I take a look at those?" very cautiously. She pulled a few slides out of the pile and suggested that I take a look at them in a few days. Well, Beth rescued Daybreak and taught me an important lesson.