So I have a few more days before my wife and I head off for our anniversary trip to .. (just incase Lillian is reading this before we go on our trip). There is something very different about traveling with someone you love and business trips (obviously). I’ve been quite a few places because of business and I’ve enjoyed my trips for the most part, but I didn’t realize how much more the trips with my wife mean to me until last week. I was taking a walk at one of my regular lunch time walk places when I came across one of the first Miracle Lilies of the season. The first time I ever noticed a Miracle Lily was on an anniversary trip to Napa. Now when I see a Miracle Lily it’s always associated with that trip and the wonderful feelings it brings back are almost overwhelming. We’re like every one else we have good days and bad days but the worst trip with my wife is better than best trip without her.
I’m getting very excited about the trip and hope to make this as wonderful as the last one my wife planned. The one she planned was perfect. We stayed in San Diego on Coronado Island at the Marriott. I remember talking to one of my co-workers maybe a year before that trip about what the tourists do in San Diego and we couldn’t understand what would bring people there. I think we thought of the San Diego Zoo and Sea World and couldn’t come up with anything else to do. My wife really surprised me and showed me why people go to San Diego time and time again. We did all kinds of fun stuff while we were there. We of course did the usual, we went to the San Diego Zoo wild animal park and we went to Balboa Park. We also went kayaking, which we had never done as well as snorkeling which we had never done either. We went hiking at Torrey Pines (a wonderfully rugged state reserve worth visiting if you are in San Diego). All these things that I didn’t know you could do in San Diego she found. She really did a lot of work to make the trip very special.
When I do a business trip it’s of course for a specific task so any personal travel/exploration/photography have to be done around my work schedule so usually I can only go places no further than about 1hr from my work location. Usually what I do before I go someplace or as soon as I land, is grab a map find a green spot (city/state/national parks are green on maps) and go exploring. In my travels I’ve found small towns and great parks. Many places I’ve found are only places locals go to because its not worth traveling any great distance to, or at least it doesn’t seem to be worth the trip until you get there.
I plan to combine some of my business travel experience with this trip and try and go to some of the places that may not make the top ten list of places to visit where we are going. Hopefully by combining my business travel experience with a planned trip I’ll be able to give my wife the kind of memories that she has given to me.
So what does this have to do with photography? Actually this has a lot to do with photography. Being forced to travel to places I wouldn’t normally go has taught me to try and create my own “tripod holes”. It’s great to go to the places that the masters like Marc Muench ( 
), David Muench, Ansel Adams and others have created great images at, but my best images were created in places that never make it on the list of places to go for that “perfect shot”. When you go traveling get out the map and find those green spots.