SmugMug Interview

I recently did an interview with SmugMug talking about my decision to quit my job two years ago and focus exclusively on travel and photography (and not so much, as is apparent, on this blog). So, please read it if you're interested in what I've been up to the last two years: http://news.smugmug.com/2013/06/07/quit-your-job-and-run-for-the-hills-ron-coscorrosa-speaks-out/

2012 - Year in Review (Sort Of)

I haven't written a blog post in over a year - and it's not because I have nothing to say (I do!), but I have been incredibly busy traveling, photographing, and moving from Seattle to Denver to move in with my girlfriend (and gifted nature photographer) Sarah Marino. All great things and all much more important than keeping this dark lonely hole of the Internet universe partially illuminated. Also, and this is the real reason: I'm lazy.So instead of writing about all of the great things that have happened in the last twelve months I'll just briefly recap the year by showing some of my favorite photos that I have processed to date.

Many people are doing their "12 favorites of 2012", so in order to be different, and because I can't edit photos, I'm going to show my 20 favorites of 2012 (20 is in 2012 too, damn it!).

The photos are arranged in chronological order with the location above each photo.

Cannon Beach, Oregon

Mono Lake, Mono County, California

Ibex Dunes, Death Valley National Park, California

Ibex Dunes, Death Valley National Park, California

Marlboro Point, Canyonlands National Park, Utah

Roaring Fork, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee

Botany Bay, South Carolina

Jökulsárlón Beach, Iceland

Selfoss Waterfall, Iceland

Toroweap, Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona

Yakima Peak, Mount Rainier National Park, Washington

Paradise, Mt. Rainier National Park, Washington

Alvord Playa, Harney County, Oregon

Tonquin Valley, Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

Groton State Forest, Vermont

Oneida Falls, Ricketts Glen State Park, Pennsylvania

White Pocket, Coyote Buttes South, Arizona

Virgin River Narrows, Zion National Park, Utah

The Racetrack, Death Valley National Park, California

Lower Antelope Slot Canyon, Page, Arizona

All You Keep is the Getting There

It's only the second afternoon of my trip and already I have no idea where the hell I am. I'm sure it won't be the last time. I crawl out of the sleeping bag in the back of my car, peek out of the window, and eventually I remember: West Yellowstone!

The previous night I watched Great Fountain Geyser erupt at 11 PM, all by myself, lit only by the light of the stars. It was the sound, not the sight, that alerted me to its presence, and I really hoped that I was outside the spray zone, and I was (but it was in mine, Yellowstone indeed!). The night before that I was racing from Seattle to make sunrise, and did, with five minutes to spare and no speeding tickets.

I'm in Yellowstone, the sixth time in two years, for a single purpose: to photograph fall colors in Colorado. While there aren't a lot of Colorado fall colors in Wyoming (even in peak years) it's only a few hours from Yellowstone to Colorado, and a natural stopping point on the way from Seattle.

All my non-photographer friends told me I should go to New England for fall colors. I told them New England can suck it, I'm going to Colorado. Where in Colorado? I didn't know, but I knew John Denver wasn't full of shit and was going to prove him right.

The colors are late this year, but I don't really care when they peak, I just want to be there when they do. It should only take a few weeks. I have all the time in the world, and while that's still not enough, it's as close as I'm going to get.

Now it's eight weeks and 12,000 miles later and I'm back at home with a handful of photos, a head full of memories and wondering what the hell just happened. I'm hoping it won't be the last time.

From that foggy afternoon in Yellowstone until my return home, I would visit Grand Teton NP, Rocky Mountain NP, Western Colorado (Aspen, Ridgway, Crested Butte, Telluride, and points in between), Black Canyon of the Gunnison NP, Great Sand Dunes NP, Mesa Verde NP, Aztec Ruins National Monument, Shiprock in New Mexico, The Bisti Badlands Wilderness, White Sands National Monument, Saguaro NP and the Sonoran Desert near Tuscon, Red Rock country in Sedona, Grand Canyon NP (south rim), Havasu Falls, Zion NP, Bryce Canyon NP, Arches NP, Canyonlands NP, House on Fire and Fallen Roof ruins near Cedar Mesa, Monument Valley in Arizona, Lower and Upper Antelope slot canyons near Page, Horseshoe Bend, slot canyons near Escalante (Utah), Death Valley, and the Columbia River Gorge.

I said my main goal was to photograph the fall colors in Colorado. That's actually not true. My main goal was to be flexible and go wherever I felt like going. Colorado was the start, but not the end. There is no end.

I drove on pavement, gravel, dirt, sand (red, brown, and white gypsum), snow, ice, and mud. Well I didn't actually drive on mud, but I slid on it pretty damn good. I didn't get stuck once and I'm going to attribute that to skill even though luck deserves all the credit.

I only got lost when following my GPS.

I was 12,000 feet above sea level in Colorado and almost 300 feet below it in California. I experienced temperatures ranging from 0F to 105F, and dressed so that I would be uncomfortable in any temperature.

I slept in motels (a few nights), a tent (many nights), and my car (most nights). I had no reservations, anywhere.

I showered. Rarely.

I had cold food and hot food but mostly bad food. Except for the free food, free food is always good food.

I met many old friends, made a few new ones, and didn't lose any that I'm aware of.

I had weeks of complete solitude and peace and weeks with friends, laughter, and a different kind of peace.

I made a few jokes, some happened to be funny, most happened to be vulgar.

I saw uncountable crimes against photography and only a few of them were mine.

I had one lens spontaneously break, at Havasu Falls, ten miles down canyon. I had one tripod break. Somewhere. I fucking hate tripods. All of them.

I had bison surround my car when I was 200 feet away from it.

I herded cows with my car, more than once, and I also heard cows in the act, more than once.

I saw geysers, mountains, rivers, sand dunes, ruins, sandstone (rocks, arches, canyons, slot canyons, and hoodoos), forests of aspen and saguaro, salt flats, playas, waterfalls, the milky way, a couple full moons, and not a single ocean. I saw beauty both spectacular and subtle and it was everywhere.

But mostly I realized that experiences are the only possessions worth keeping and time the only price to pay.

Townes Van Zandt said that living on the road will keep you free and clean. He was only half right, but got the part that matters.

There's More Pretty Girls Than One

There are only three months left in the year and I haven't been anywhere, or rather I've been to the same everywhere, which may as well be nowhere. There's a point in here somewhere. The point is (I think) that I've been negligent in visiting new places.

There's always a delicate balance between depth and breadth.

The best images almost always come from places I know well, not just because I'm maximizing my chances of having good light with repeated visits (but that certainly helps), but because there are no distractions. I know where things are. I know how to get there and how long it will take. I know what types of shots are possible for the given conditions.

The problem, of course, is that I think I know more than I actually do. I settle into a pattern. I stop being creative and start being reflexive. Reverence loses ground to disappointment. With experience it becomes easier to spot this trend happening and, if I'm lucky, to stop it. But the threat is always there and will sneak up on me if I'm not paying attention.

Which is why it's important to visit new places. To be overwhelmed and confused and in awe. To not know where to start or what to do. To lose any preconceived notions. To be inspired. To try and tame the chaos and also to fail so that you can get it right the next time, and most importantly, to piss off the locals by getting epic light on your first visit!

So I'm going to hit the road. I'll be visiting some places I know well (Yellowstone and Grand Teton), some places I only know superficially (Arizona and Utah) and some places I don't know at all (Colorado and New Mexico). I'll be trading the volcanoes in the Cascades for ragged peaks of the Rockies; the autumn vine maples, mountain ash, and huckleberries for the gold and crimson aspens; evergreens for sagebrush; wet beaches and waterfalls for the desert and sand dunes, and brown dirt for, well, red dirt.

Lessons I've learned in my familiar territories will still be applicable to these new places. The inspiration I get from these new places will allow me to see the old places in a new way.

There's really nothing to lose (except sleep, money, and gas - but I was going to lose those anyway). I'll return armed with memories, experiences, a huge backlog of photos that will take forever to process, and, if I'm lucky, no speeding tickets that I can't bribe my way out of.

Don't Restrict Me

"What's riches to you, just ain't riches to me" -- Lyle Lovett

Some choices in life are difficult.

Leaving a well paying job (and a significant amount of future stock compensation) after almost seven years to take an indefinite time off was an easy choice to make. The hard part was figuring out that I had a choice to begin with.

We live our life according to a well defined script without realizing that we have the ability to rewrite it. Part of that script says that you work when you are young and enjoy the fruits of your labor when you are retired. This also happens to be the time when you're old (possibly dead!) and most likely to be suffering from illness, lack of mobility, diminished mental faculties, and a general cynicism and bad attitude that can only come with a lifetime of soul-crushing morale-busting work.

Constantly trading today for tomorrow doesn't make sense. Your time is the most precious and fleeting commodity there is. The world doesn't just punish assholes, it punishes everyone, indiscriminately, and you never know when you're next. When, not if, your name is called you will value your friends, your family and your experiences, not your possessions and certainly not your salary and not your career.

Of course it's not always that simple.

You do need at least some money, at minimum enough for food and shelter (less than you think if you only keep the things that are really important). If you live in a less evolved country, you need enough for health insurance. You may have debts (credit, mortgage, car loans, student loans) that need to be paid. You may need to keep employment for visa related reasons. You may have a spouse and kids that depend on you for their livelihood (in that case, all bets are off, but you knew that going in). This doesn't make temporary retirement impossible, just harder.

The other reason to avoid temporary retirement is if you actually truly enjoy and love your job. These people do exist in nature, but they're a rare and elusive bunch.

I have no wife, no children, and no debt. My earnings have always outpaced my spending. I have absolute confidence I could get a job tomorrow of equal or higher compensation than the one I left.

I'm extremely fortunate to be in this situation. I know this. There are people who are smarter, work harder, work longer, and deserve more. As much as I would like to take credit for all of it, I know I'm the beneficiary of luck, timing, and opportunity. I may just as well take credit for picking a winning lottery ticket.

So I'm fortunate to be able to take time off. But I've been able to do this for awhile. The epiphany to make use of this good fortune didn't happen overnight, but was the result of the gradual accumulation of two forces, one repulsive and one attractive.

The repulsive force was the work itself.

I used to love to program. I still do. It might be the only true talent I have. You start off with a complex problem and eventually come up with a design or implementation that solves it. Sometimes the route is surprisingly direct and sometimes you have to polish a turd until it shines, but ultimately you get there. At its best there is nothing between you and the problem you're trying to solve. It's actually very similar to photography, you have to have the creativity to visualize and solve the problem in an elegant way, but also the technical skills to turn that vision into a tangible entity.

Eventually, the problems all seemed to be the same, were easy to solve, or were uninteresting. More and more of my job was dedicated to things that I may have been good at but certainly didn't enjoy doing. Getting consensus on anything took forever. Layers of bureaucracy were only increasing and were seen as progress. Communicating with other teams was tedious and time-consuming. Pragmatism was in short supply, egos and arrogance weren't. It never felt like I could gather any momentum. The only way to break through the quicksand required a level of effort that I was willing to give earlier in my career but at sacrifice to my life outside work. I wasn't going to do that again. My heart was no longer in it. Some people noticed, most didn't.

The other issue with my job was having to be on-call. I don't mind putting in extra hours if the situation calls for it. I do mind having a virtual leash tied around my neck that limits my ability to do things on weekends, at night, or (for secondary on-call) prevents me from taking a weekday off (or even exchanging it for a weekend day). This leash began to grate more and more, even though it was never more than 10-15 weeks a year. I had to stick around town when the forecast was calling me to the mountains. I hated it.

It became obvious that I needed to leave, but I still had the option of switching teams (exchanging a set of known problems with a set of unknown problems and hoping they weren't as severe), or switching companies with the same caveats.

This is where the attractive force comes in.

I began, after many years, to finally take vacations longer than a day or two. The first was a 10-day trip to the southwest in late summer (Arches, Canyonlands, Bryce Canyon, Zion, Antelope Canyon, and Grand Canyon). This was followed by a two-week autumn trip to Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Death Valley. Two separate one week trips to Yosemite in winter and spring. A one week trip to Zion in autumn.

With each successive trip it became harder and harder to come back to work. I started to realize that I was able to reach the same level of happiness I formerly was able to get programming by being on the road, traveling, being out in nature, and with varying degrees of success capturing those experiences with my camera. In the last two years I've put 60,000 miles (almost 100,000 km) on my car, but less than 25% of those were on those long vacations, the rest were on crazy weekend or day trips (some on weekdays before work). These experiences were worth more than my salary. I was willing to sacrifice any amount of sleep and comfort to accumulate them.

The thought of waiting 35 years until retirement before I could do this uninterrupted was unbearable. It soon became difficult to fathom waiting even six more months for another stock vest to come in.

I did the math. With no changes in my free spending ways and with some padding I could last 18 months. With a few small sacrifices I could last quite a bit longer.

Not only will be I be able to travel and photograph, but I'll be able to not travel and not photograph without feeling like I'm blowing an opportunity. I will no longer have to do 500 mile day trips to get back to work on time. My friends and family will start to recognize me again (right now that seems like a good thing, check back in six months).

When I'm done with my temporary hiatus, I can go back to the workforce writing software with new energy and new focus. Or do something else. It doesn't matter, that decision won't have to be made for awhile.

In the last month since I've quit my job the decision has already paid for itself, with the currency of experiences and not dollars.

Which is truly more valuable?