A handful of years ago, I was a student at Iowa State University. I had just started playing with a camera and was inspired by a show on the Weather Channel where a fine art photographer named Peter Lik made landscape photography look like fun. One morning I grabbed a tripod and my camera, got up before sunrise on a chilly morning, and headed to a small pond a few miles north of campus. The weather was terrible! The wind was howling, the light was beginning to show but I could see a thick layer of clouds above me. I grabbed my gear and hiked down to the beach, while fighting the cold wind with nothing but a light sweatshirt. Continue reading