You can spend a whole year chasing the next trip and still miss what actually moved your work forward. This recap is built around that tension: the gear and locations change, but the real lesson is how you respond when the day refuses to match the plan.
Coming to you from Adrian Vila, this reflective video walks through 12 finished photos and pulls out the choices that made them work. Early on, Vila starts in Yosemite during a rainstorm, wanting snow and getting drenched instead, then commits to a long exposure from Tunnel View anyway with a 28-200mm super zoom lens. That’s the first gut check: when conditions disappoint, you either keep hunting for the fantasy shot or you build something honest from what’s in front of you. If you’ve ever driven hours with a specific frame in mind, you know how easy it is to get stubborn. The point here isn’t “make the best of it” as a slogan, it’s deciding fast what the scene can actually give you.
The video keeps that same pressure in different settings, including a snow return trip that isn’t guaranteed and a Midwest road trip where access is limited by mud and lingering winter. Vila’s favorite from Lake Superior is a shed with an American flag, not a postcard vista, and it lands because it shows how quickly a small subject can carry a whole frame when the light and timing click. Summer shows up as a problem season, then immediately turns into a string of surprises: a long-held fog idea near Vila’s hometown finally becomes possible, and a family trip to Valencia still produces a keeper because a compact camera is already in the bag. That detail matters if you tend to leave your camera behind unless the outing is “serious,” since the setup that catches something real is often the one you can grab without negotiation. You also hear how Vila scans for structure and gesture, not just scenery, when construction workers and scaffolding suddenly become the subject.
Then the travel narrative twists in a way that feels uncomfortably familiar: a thunderstorm forces a long layover in Charlotte, a flight gets canceled, and four hours of waiting turns into images of planes in bad weather. Later, back at home, the chase becomes even more literal as nighttime storms roll through and Vila shoots for lightning off a balcony, close enough once to leave ears ringing. Out west, you get both sides of the location coin: a classic Oregon coast scene at Ecola State Park when conditions cooperate, and quieter wins like a bird cutting through fog at Trillium Lake when the “main subject” is still sitting there in the background. There’s also a detour-driven fog encounter near a dam that Vila describes as some of the best conditions he’s had, which is the kind of line that should make you wonder what you’d find if you took three unplanned exits on your next drive.
The last stretch gets more strategic: anticipating a bison crossing in an Iowa reserve, waiting it out, being ready when it happens, then returning to a familiar snow train spot because repetition sometimes buys you variation. Vila points out something that can sting a little if you lean on bucket-list locations: most of the favorite frames could have been made almost anywhere, with only a couple tied to famous destinations. That idea pushes you toward a different kind of discipline, where you practice noticing in the in-between hours instead of only when the map says you’ve arrived, like spotting fog texture before it turns into gray mush. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Vila.