Long before our recent trip to Michigan, I had found a photo of this covered bridge by northern Michigan photographer @snaphappymichigan (Heather Higham). Per my normal process, I saved the photo and cataloged it as a potential future destination…. I do this all the time when I find a unique photography spots around the world. I usually find these while scrolling through social media sites or sometimes by conducting a specific Google search. The result is a database of thousands of sample photos from hundreds of locations world-wide. That means that when I’m heading to a specific location, I can go to my database and have locations ready queued up to go explore. Often, I want to capture a photo similar to the sample photo I found from another photographer, but most often it just gives me an idea of the location allowing me to explore it looking for my own angle and perspective at a site I might otherwise never know about.

About a week before we left for this trip, my friend Karalee Kowatz shared the same photo by Heather Higham that I had saved over a year ago. Karalee has a habit of finding and sharing the best photographs from around the world on FB. So below you can see Heather’s photo and my version which I took this week.

To view a larger version, click HERE