I love this image - it is one of my favorites, where all things came together to make beauty. I was on a backpack a couple of years ago with friends. We had set up camp in the Goat Rocks Wilderness of Washington, near the PCT and spent the early evening meandering the trails through the flower-filled meadows as the light faded around us. I had been hoping to get a low shot of flowers in foreground of a landscape with Mt Adams and as we explored, I noted a few nice clumps of Western Pasqueflower alongside the trail. As my friends headed back to camp I stopped at this little patch, but it was too close to the trail to get the image I had in my head . . . there was a ditch on the other side of the trail. Sure enough, lying in the ditch with my tripod made the camera angle low enough to capture the scene. A few hikers passed, at first startled by my seat in the ditch then appreciative of the scene I was capturing.
In the end I took 3 exposures to blend together and knew I had a good image. I entered it into a few photo contests - one a local photo club where it took top honors plus it was selected for their calendar. Another was for a web-based company where I again took top honors and a t-shirt. I also entered it into photo contests sponsored by the Mountaineers and the Washington Trail Association. My amazing image didn't even make the finalists of either contest. I wondered if they even got my submission.
A few months after I submitted the image to WTA, I got a call from a friend congratulating me on my image being published in their magazine. Really? I rushed out to get a copy and sure enough in the table of contents was my image, enticement to read further the article detailing the joys of hiking Pacific Crest Trail. Pretty darn snazzy, I thought. May not have won the photo contest, but this was a win no matter.
Then came the announcement a few months ago for the next Mountaineers Photo Contest. I didn't pay much attention to the announcement as the categories weren't anything I had readily available (ie, don't shoot a lot of). Then I hopped online to look for an outing or two and wait! What was that? That looked like my pic! I flipped back through the images on the main page and yep, that is my image. Title, credit, wow! Can you guess why they were using it? To advertise this year's photo contest! But my image never made the finalists. Wouldn't they want to use the winning image from last year? Nope, they wanted to use mine. Double win!
So for a little ditch-sitting, I got a calendar, a t-shirt, a magazine and advertisement. Yeah, I call that a good thing and my self-esteem takes a happy hit.
