…of a butte in Eastern Utah, I took this picture with a freaking iPhone and almost no sense of composition or framing.
To me, the scene is sublimely and quintessentially “Western”. In reviewing the nearly 500 pictures I took in 10 days of vacationing, it is the one I keep coming back to.
My wife thinks a picture is wasted if there are no people in it. So naturally she thinks THIS pic is the better one. 
I took this selfie in even more haste than the one from Eastern Utah. But unless you know the people in the photo, it has little meaning. That’s why I keep coming back to the sweeping vista from the American West; virtually everyone can relate to that.
BTW, I don’t count myself a photographer. Still, the saying is true that the best camera to take a picture with is the one you have with you.
I’m sorry…I’m rambling.
Here’s the thing: While I love people, and life is about relationships, there is a humbling quality about the Western pic that takes me out of myself. The whole purpose of vacationing is to be away from the mundane and the routine, and find a distraction that delights you, and pulls you away from the familiar. Right?
The Utah picture does that.
The surreal quality of the scene is oddly not validated by knowing I actually stood — in person — and viscerally experienced the landscape. It’s THAT HARD for the mind to grasp the enormity of it…and therefore, it takes me out of myself…if even for a moment.
Pictures of me with people don’t do that.
Maybe it’s the introvert in me that needs the momentary diversion such a picture (and experience) provides. Maybe I’m making no sense at all. But I know I found satisfaction in being out of my routine standing on that butte.
We all need that. A humbling moment to take us out of the self-important urgency that constitutes most of our work-days.
When’s the last time YOU did that?
I highly recommend it. You don’t need a butte in Eastern Utah to find it.
CourVO
