>>4350797Cool story bro, now it's my turn.
What you don't see are the 30-some odd tourists from all over the world who were behind me. This was the La Sal mountain view point in Arches National Park. They saw all of my equipment out and me sitting down on the rocks waiting for the light to change and asked me about it, well, the French family did and a couple of Americans and a German family did, and a Czech couple did. They thought I was shooting for Natgeo or something, anyway. I had them corralled behind me for a shot for me, with no people in it, of a reflection pool, which will be in the upcoming Sugar Thread in a couple weeks.
I told them to wait, in 5 minutes the light will change and the rocks will look awesome, I showed them how to shoot reflections in the pools once the light changed. I explained how the light interacts with shadows and highlights on various rocks and how the reflections look stronger when the sun is lower (it was 8:30am) and the camera is right on the surface of the water.
Every single one of them took pictures of their families in those reflection pools once the light changed. Those are memories they will have for the rest of their lives, of their families, I even shot a couple with their phones for them, framed between the large rock pillar in the foreground and the small one in the background. These people traveled literally to the other side of the world and now have that memory, even if it's on their cellphone, that was probably the best picture they shot on their phone the whole vacation.
They will show that picture to their friends, and other family members, they may forget about me and that's fine, their photo of their family I took will live on for generations.
I will never have a family of my own, I'm too old now and I struck out at the reproduction lottery, but if I can live vicariously through other people's families and help them preserve memories of their own members, then my work on Earth is done.
