When I was younger, I’d occasionally go out fishing or golfing with my dad or brothers. I don’t really have anything against fishing or golfing, but I always saw them as more of an excuse to go spend time outdoors rather than a thing that I inherently enjoyed. For me, the best way to improve golf is to leave the clubs at home, skip buying yet another box of balls,As I understand the sport, most of the point of golf is to drop about two balls per hole into water features, while paying for the privilege of walking around someone else’s over-manicured lawn. I’m willing to accept that maybe it gets better once you’re able to make a dozen balls last more than 9 holes.
and just go for a walk somewhere scenic. You get all of the good parts of golf and none of the frustration. Fishing is similar — being out on the water is great, but I get a limited amount of enjoyment out of losing fishing lures and being laughed at by fish.
My outdoor activity of choice these days is photography, and I’m willing to admit that there are times where I treat the camera mostly as an excuse to go stand somewhere in nature and enjoy the scenery, even if I don’t manage to get the picture that I was trying to get.
Yesterday was a good example. I left the house around 2:30 AM so I could be at Sunrise at Mount Rainier around dawn, which happens around 5:15 this time of year. My goal was to shoot a background video that I could use for Zoom meetings at work. So I woke up at a time that is best described as “late night” rather than “early morning”, drove 2+ hours, and wheezedSunrise is at 6,400’ of elevation. Home is around 300’. I’m really not acclimated for hiking at altitude right now.
while lugging 30 lbs of camera gear up the trail.
Golf would certainly be cheaper and more convenient than this. Especially since I didn’t really end up shooting anything that’d make a good background video. So I was mostly just forced to stand around and watch the scenery as the sun crept across this landscape:
All in all, it still feels like time well-spent.

scottstuff.net

A personal account of a pre-dawn trip to Sunrise at Mount Rainier for landscape photography and video. The author lugged a Blackmagic Pyxis 12K video camera and a Hasselblad X2D II with a 35-100mm zoom up the trail, aiming to capture Zoom background footage. Despite not achieving the original goal, the scenery was stunning. The post includes reflections on the Hasselblad X2D II's image quality, its 100MP sensor's cropping capability, and the lack of long native lenses in the X system.

Rainier at Dawn