I remember reading a photography article about the Brighton Beach pier, and one photographer's daily visits to it over several months. His lesson: you have to keep going back, somedays days or weeks or months at a time, to get to know the light and conditions. You may get lucky the first time or two. But you probably won't.

Sure, galleries and magazines are littered with once-in-a-lifetime shots that were literally once-in-a-lifetime. With thousands of photographers crawling all over the planet, with millions, maybe billions of smartphone users, there is almost a camera everywhere. The proverbial tree in the forest cannot fall, heard or not, without being photographed. And some of those photographs are amazing. But they're not yours. All one can do is keep trying to capture emotion.

The movie Groundhog Day was about the repeated opportunity to make one's life better until you get it right. In this context, familiarity does not breed contempt; it spawns beauty. The shot of Horseshoe Bend above is fairly bland. I will be back.