February is finally done. Gosh, that month always seems so darn long. Yes, I know it is the shortest month in actual days, but it hasn’t seemed that way for me. This past February was a bleak, grey, and lifeless time that one must endure. And try as I did during the past few weeks since my Kelowna beach walk, I just couldn’t garner the energy to wander the frozen landscape with my camera. However, when the sun finally made an unusual appearance on the last day of the month it didn’t take much coaxing to get me out.

All my wife had to say was, “Its nice out, let’s take a drive.” That sounded good to me. It’s always relaxing to take a drive around our rural neighbourhood. There still is a few feet of snow covering everything but the roads were clear.

I selected my 70-200mm lens. When I use one of my wide-angle lenses I am looking over the landscape, with a telephoto I get to look into it.

Mid-week is a perfect time to drive around, we had the roads to ourselves and I could drive slowly, stop to look around, or back up and get out just about any location to take a picture.

If it were just me, I would have headed down to the river. I like prowling the riverbank, but as we got into the car my wife said, “I don’t want to go down to the river.” I guess she didn’t want me taking chances tromping on the not-so-stable ice along the edge of the river.

My term for drive-around kind of picture taking is, “roadside photography”. The good thing about driving and looking for things to photograph is you cover a lot of distance and see a lot of stuff. The bad thing about driving around is once you are in motion it’s hard to stop. I am sure that without my wife reminding me, and at times, demanding I stop I’d just motor by many good subjects.

I don’t like to shoot from inside my car. A quick search on the Internet will bring up article after article explaining how easy it for those that don’t want to get out of their car to take pictures.

I can’t get comfortable. Everything is in the way and it’s hard to turn around with a steering wheel restricting my movements.

I prefer to stop, get out, close the car door, get my camera off the back seat, close that door, look at my subject for a while, and think about how I want to take the picture (remember “Previsualization” from my last article) then release the shutter.

Nevertheless, I expect I will be a roadside photographer for years to come. And I’ll keep getting in and out of my car and depending on my wife, Linda, to keep reminding me to stop.

I think sitting in the back seat would be a better and roomier place to take pictures from. My long-range plan is to have my granddaughters to drive me around. I mentioned this to the oldest at her last birthday, but I’ll have to wait a while because she’s only ten and can’t reach the pedals yet.