Embrace the Concept

Written by Joey Iwen

Sometimes my family just goes on spontaneous adventures. We’ve been known to pick a destination for a vacation a couple days in advance and just go. (Which I get is a CRAZY notion for some people!) Minimal planning, just some ideas of what we might like to do and see. When we go on road trips in the “adventure van”, we seldom have an idea of where we might park and camp from day to day. We love adventuring and seeing what fun, inspiring, cool places/things/experiences await. Sometimes winging it has its disadvantages, but we always love the time we spend together on our adventures. 

Brad wanted to test a new camera lens out yesterday & asked if the kids and I would like to accompany him to nearby DeSoto Bend Wildlife Refuge while he took some photos. I gladly accepted the invitation & we picked the kids up from school and headed on a spontaneous adventure. DeSoto Bend gets its name from a historic bend on the Missouri river where Lewis and Clark once camped, & the historic river town of Desoto once thrived in the 1850s-1860s. DeSoto (the town) was once a steamboat landing and ferry crossing, but when the Missouri River channel shifted away from the town, it was later abandoned. This is the same Desoto that Desoto Hill Studio derives its name from, as our property lies near that original township location. Desoto Bend is now a popular vacation hot spot for migratory & wetland birds, as well as other wildlife & endangered species. Sometimes, you can see thousands of birds along the river & lake as they stop to enjoy a respite from their long travels. The refuge’s visitor center also has an amazing exhibit of the Bertrand Steamship, which was excavated from within the refuge in 1969. Thousands of pristinely preserved cargo items are on now on display- from cans of food, china dishes, clothing, picks & axes, & other items destined for gold mines, logging camps, farms, & households west of here when it sunk in 1865. It’s amazing how the mud preserved the items so perfectly for over a hundred years, but it also makes me kind of sad to think about how all of those things were lost & never used. Our plans that day just involved sightseeing & exploring the refuge, though, so I needn’t worry about getting misty-eyed over cans of sardines. 

Any photographer will tell you that a photo mission may or may not result in the kind of photo they planned on taking. I don’t think Brad had an idea of what he wanted to photograph, just find something interesting and test his lens. Because of the time of year, we wouldn’t be seeing masses of birds, so we would have to look more creatively at the river plains and grassland for interesting photo ops. A few days of warmer temps meant melting snow and muddy dirt roads, and everything looked pretty bleak with a gray sky to match. We were pretty much the only ones in the entire refuge, and it was very peaceful along the river and around the lake. Because of prior flooding, most of the trees are mere skeletons of rotted wood, stripped of all bark. Fields holding the remains of dead sunflower stalks and brown prairie grasses created a landscape entirely in a palette of browns. Nothing too photo-worthy. We spotted several eagles, deer, turkeys, and other birds, but again, not a good picture to be had. We spent quite a while driving around, taking every turn-off and side road to glance at the water and take in any interesting changes in landscape, but it all seemed pretty monochromatic. We spent over an hour there driving around and exploring, but not one photo was taken. Although the refuge was the inspiration for the adventure, it wasn’t the point of the adventure. We spent quality family time together on a random Tuesday afternoon. We laughed, we shared parts of our day, we sang along with the music playing, we saw and experienced nature and wildlife together, learned new things about natural causes and nature, and we got excited about coming back in nicer weather to fish and row on the lake. Once we had crossed back over the river to head home, Brad spontaneously turned off the highway to check out a park along the river that we had never visited before. He parked down the boat ramp angled close toward the river (I made sure he had that emergency brake on tight as I was flooded with visions of the Bertrand Steamboat demise!!), and then he finally got out his camera, tripod, and new lens. While he took photos of the river, the kids and I enjoyed some rice krispie bars and drinks as we watched and remarked about the different shapes of giant ice chunks floating by on the river. It was late afternoon, and the muted sun filtering through the pink clouds had a serene effect on the river. Brad finally got his photos, and we enjoyed camping out on the river with a picnic in the truck. I felt like we were worlds away, and yet we were less than fifteen minutes away from our house. 

While not the trained professional of our duo, I typically take more pictures on a daily basis (on my IPhone), and looking back, the only photo from our adventure, surprisingly, is my view out the front windshield of Brad on the river with his tripod doing his thing. I have yet to see the images that Brad took on the river, but I will always vividly remember the image of the icy river, those pink clouds, and the bridge spanning from Nebraska to Iowa that we experienced together on a random Tuesday. I will remember giggling with the kids while Brad expertly set everything up and got his shots on the water’s edge that cold afternoon. Our original mission didn’t pan out as we expected, but the adventure was a success. And yet he did accomplish his goal by giving into spontaneity, being flexible and open to alternatives, not getting frustrated or giving up, & enjoying the ride. Even if he never got the camera with that new lens out, the afternoon would never have been a failure because we embraced the adventure of it. 

I need to remind myself of this when it comes to work. I have spent dozens of hours on projects that never came to fruition, which can feel very disappointing and frustrating. I could’ve done so many other things with the time I spent doing those things that never panned out. But if I look at it through the same perspective as I did with our adventure, I can see that it wasn’t completely wasted time. I learned, honed skills, dreamed, & created. What will come now & in the future will be better because of that time spent. Brad spent countless hours working on different logos for Desoto Hill Studio. We went back & forth between two we really liked, & it was really hard to make a decision. After much deliberation, we were ready to go forward with one, but then Brad had another totally different idea. To his credit, he embraced the process & was open to alternatives, even though he had already put so much time in, thought he was done, & thought he was happy. The new logo came easily & he had no indecision that this was the right one, it just felt right this time. The creative process is hardly ever linear, & the sooner we embrace that concept, the better our results will be & the better we will feel about it & ourselves. Often times we go full steam ahead down one path without realizing that there may be a better way to reach the summit. Instead of looking for a ton of detours to reach our destination, it’s okay to go back to the beginning & take a different way to the top. There is always more than one way to get there, & the time spent looking for that way is not a waste, it’s actually part of the process. Desoto Hill Studio would love to be a part of your creative adventures, & we hope you will trust us with the process of helping you reach your goals!