It's summer time, and the heat is on! The pools are open, the trees are green, my brother is now happily married and I earned my first tan (and sunburned shoulders). Good thing my friends like to take vacations as much as I do. But my trips this summer are spread apart by weeks, and since I chose to take this summer off of work and school, I find myself with more free time than I really wanted. Don't get me wrong, staying up late and sleeping in is great; but, my days seem to drag on as I stare at my two dogs whose attention spans are apparently longer than mine.
So what kind of work should I do to prevent this boredom I've been experiencing from becoming a permeant fixture in my head? Well, they always say practice makes perfect; and apparently it takes 5,000 hours of practice before an individual is truly good at something. This statistic blows! Don't they know that I don't have that many hours for everything I want to do? In the mean time, as I have had no idea as to which talent I should focus my hours to, I do know that inspiration isn't going to come from that special place without a little investigating. And all investigators carry a camera.
My friend came up to visit this last week from Arizona, and she has become one of my more active outdoor friends. I think she has been camping or hiking nearly every weekend this year (because she is crazy!). (*Side note: I visited her in May of this year, and I think the spiders who made all the webs in her home have been there more than she has.) Anyways! She wanted to experience the Utah outdoors, and of course that means I get to hike the 7 hour uphill climb up the Timponogos Mountain. In case you didn't know, I didn't lead the active lifestyle this year; which made bringing my camera even more convenient (for me). What else worked in my favor? My friend isn't as used to being at this high of an elevation. We made it a little more than halfway up the mountain in about 4 hours, as we took several picture taking moments. Then, of course, as we headed back down the mountain I had to stop and re-take some pictures because the light had changed. I'm lucky she is super patient.
I haven't used the pictures I took to create something new, but I did get some ideas about what I could do with pictures. Its all about experimentation now; maybe I will make something I like.