Photography Bucket List - do you have one?

[hanz_franzell]

<p>Drafting my bucket list and wanted to know if any of you have one place, just one - that if you could go you would. </p>

<p>What's your one place you'd go to photograph? </p>

<p>I need some inspiration for my list!</p>

[Ed_Ingold]

<p>At my age, tomorrow's schedule is a bucket list ;)</p>

<p>I got to Glacier National Park for the first time last year. There was a new postcard waiting on every turn. I stopped at the Badlands on a cloudy day, but made the best of it. Been to the Smokies dozens of time, and each time is like the first. Maybe Yosemite should be on my list, as long as I don't trip on someone's tripod holes.</p>

<p>Besides the spectacular places in nature, it's a challenge to see something unique in a common person, place or thing, and snap a picture. Every day is a new day.</p>

[JDMvW]

<p>It makes a difference where you are and how far you are willing to go. What do you like?</p>

<p>I'm just back from Washington, DC, finishing up some American Civil War sites and some others, but I'd like to go see the Great Wall, Pompeii, Istanbul, you get the idea.</p>

<p>I like ruins and fast cars on the Autobahnen, but go nuts in about 20 minutes on a beach somewhere.</p>

[bob_flood1]

<p>I started developing my bucket list a couple of years before I retired. I enjoyed adding locations to the list in an Excel file and adding another worksheet to record notes about each place, cost estimates to get there, optimum time of year, etc. Great entertainment as retirement approached. I also started a "fun" savings account twenty years earlier, filling it slowly with money when a travel reimbursement was more than I spent, infrequent overtime pay, money leftover from my weekly allowance, and so on. When I retired in 2012, that account had accumulated $20k, which allows me to travel to my bucket list places without needing to fit it into the normal monthly budget.</p>

<p>Since retiring I've used that account to hit my bucket list pretty good. I've been to Yellowstone and Jackson Hole (twice), the Grand Canyon, Zion, Olympic, Vermont in autumn, Glacier, Skagit Valley for eagles, Oak Creek Canyon in AZ for fall color, and Hawaii (wife's bucket list). Most have been relatively easy to reach since I live in Las Vegas. I still have Yosemite (spring, fall, and winter trips), Bryce and Zion in winter, and Colorado as major destinations. And sometimes I want to spend a month in Ireland (ancestry thing), and other times I'm not so sure about that one.</p>

<p>As to the best one place - that's easy. Years ago my wife gave me a winter week in Yellowstone as a Christmas gift, and while on a snow coach tour, I asked the driver/guide what time of year he'd recommend as best to see Yellowstone. He answered without hesitation "the third week in May." He went on to say it's late enough in the spring that a vacation-ruining snowfall is unlikely, all the hibernating animals will be out of hibernation and hungry (and therefore out eating), most everything will have been born, so there will be new cubs, calves, kits, etc, and it's before Memorial Day so it won't be crowded. So it was the first place on my list I hit after retiring at the end of April 2012 - 3rd week in May. He was as right as a fella can be. Yellowstone in May is still on my list - I'll be going back.</p>

<p>The remaining biggie is Yosemite without crowds. Being retired really helps, because I can avoid weekends. (Even so, Jackson Hole is suffering from its own success - this past week the place was jammed all week long. Imagine 200 people pushing and shoving for a spot at Oxbow Bend for a sunrise photo - not an exaggeration. Every bear jam had 100-200 visitors, but just a single ranger trying to manage crowd control, with only limited success. I can only imagine what it's like in summer.)</p>

 

[allenahale]

<p>My bucket list would actually be places that I would like to go back to. It is nice to photograph places the first time but it is wonderful to return with greater understanding and improved skills.<br>

As for giving inspiration - Grand Palace, Bangkok; Machu Pichuu, Peru; Angkor Wat, Cambodia; Phuket Vegetarian Festival, Thailand; Hmong New Years, Luang Prabang, Laos: Foz Igaucu, Brasil, Jasper, Alberta</p>

[Matthew Brennan]

<p>Patagonia</p>

[tudor_apmadoc]

<p>I have a list a mile long....</p>

<ul>

<li>Machu Pichuu</li>

<li>Tibet</li>

<li>Phuket</li>

<li>Cambodia</li>

<li>Japan</li>

<li>Hungary</li>

<li>on and on</li>

</ul>

[charles_stobbs3]

I'm with Allen. return rot favorite places. Tuscany, Skagit Valley, Quebec City. But would I bring my

Retina IIa or my Sigma Dp1?

[craig_shearman1]

<p>"I'm just back from Washington, DC"<br /><br />Sitting here on the 12th floor on New York Avenue looking out at the Capitol dome in one direction, the Washington Monument in the other, driving past the Supreme Court this morning and occasionally walking past the White House... I guess I should bring my camera to work sometime. :) When you work some place too long (20 years) you stop realizing that a bucket list stop might be right outside your own window. :)</p>

[glen_berry1]

<p>Antelope Canyon with a 14-24 zoom. It's a magical place.</p>

[glen_berry1]

<p>Antelope Canyon with a 14-24 zoom. It's a magical place.</p>

[anne_dirkse]

<p>Iceland<br />Bhutan<br />Iran<br />Yemen<br />New Zealand<br />Prague<br />India<br />Sri Lanka<br />Greenland<br />Alaska<br />Howland Island<br />The North Pole<br />Scandinavia during the Northern Lights<br />rural Japan<br>

and back to everywhere I've already been!<br>

<a href="http://www.annedirkse.com">Anne Dirkse</a></p>

[vivid_earth_photographics]

<p>I've been to some "bucket list" places that I would say should be on any landscape/wildlife photographer's dream list:<br>

Antarctica and South Georgia Island<br>

Iceland (the entire country)<br>

Alaska (just about anywhere but especially Prince William Sound, Denali, and the Brooks Range; Kaktovic for the polar bears)<br>

Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica<br>

Volcanos National Park, Hawaii, HI<br>

Kauai, HI</p>

<p>I'd still like to see (in no particular order):<br>

Japan (anywhere in the country sounds great to me...maybe mix of city and countryside)<br>

Borneo<br>

Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos<br>

China (but I know so little about the country I don't know where)<br>

Iran and Iraq and Syria (if they were ever safe enough)<br>

Croatia<br>

Pantanal and Amazon<br>

Turkey<br>

Madagascar</p>

[lex_jenkins]

<p>A bucket list is something you do just before you die, right? I'll take the Ambrose Bierce tour.</p>

[gungajim]

<p>Places I would double dip (go back to a 2nd time) with my bucket: Namibia, Chile, Antarctica, Uzbekistan, Romania, Burma,Madagascar.</p>

[greg_campbell1]

I have a number of fairly small regions I'd like to explore, but really try to avoid the site-by-site bucket list mentality. I have ZERO interest in shooting Mesa Arch at dawn, or the classic Zion Watchtower shot from the touron infested bridge. Photography should be more about the trip, and exploring cool places, than 'bagging' some stupid 'Icon' that has already been machine-gunned to death.

[sridip_nag1]

<p>Short List<br>

- India... all of India<br>

- Egypt<br>

- China (rural / not the disgusting over crowded, smog filled cities)<br>

- Greece<br>

- U.S. (Western States / Alaska / Aleutian Islands)<br>

- Greenland<br>

- Iceland<br>

- St. Georges Island / Antartica<br>

- Chile / Peru / Argentina<br>

- Malaysia<br>

- Thailand<br>

- Japan<br>

- Madagascar</p>