A Winning

Straight from the heart.

As of today, I want a new face to cover my blog. One that is deeply personal, down-to-earth, and genuine. All friends, family, and clients are welcome to take a sneek-peek into the business behind my photography, and the life I feel blessed to live.

A week and half ago or so I received an email from PDN (Photo District News) telling me that the landscape image I entered into their World In Focus Ultimate Travel Photography Contest was a winning submission! Let's just say I could hardly breathe because of my screaming. I called my husband, parents, and three closest friends to tell them, and none but one picked up...poor Mom. She thought I was being attacked over the phone, since she couldn't understand a word I was saying (screaming at the tip-top of my voice, of course).

So what does this all mean?

My winning image, which can be seen in my Creation & Life gallery on my site (www.photohibbs.com), is the only picture, at this time, with snow in it. "Cozy snow meets harsh desert from the first snow in Tucson in over ten years." It's taken at Saguaro National Park East, last February, I think. Although I will not receive the $1200 in prizes that the category winner receives, I still get a year's subscription to PDN's magazine, a published page in their February 2008 issue, which will exhibit all of this year's winners, and a published page on their winners gallery, online at www.pdnonline.com. Woot!

Don't stop reading now, the fun stories are coming up! Let's just say that there are some God-moments behind this winning image. Here I go!

So, I am from Indiana. In Indiana, we have a lot of months of colder, snowy, overcast weather. We also have four seasons, and lots of water, humidity, and mosquitoes. Sometimes ya win, sometimes ya lose. As much as I love the desert, moving to Tucson three years back was quite the switch (why did I move? I got married to my hubby, a guy from Page, AZ). So needless to say, the day it snowed in Tucson was a winner for the locals, but was a screamer for me. I direly missed it.

The morning it snowed, in spite of my screaming excitement, Jesse (my husband and I) remained boring students and climbed into our car to make the 10 mile drive to the U. Now please, mid-westerners, realize that Tucson is not prepared for snows, let alone ice, which is altogether unheard of out here. So hopping into our little white Camry, we roll out onto the road and noticed that it's covered with ice in many places. Note***Locals that have never seen ice do not know how to drive on it. That is scarier than words can say! Especially when Tucson does not have volcanic rock, or salts, to coat the roads.

Trying to get to school, we made our way all of two miles from our condo in two hours because the traffic was so bad. What the police didn't tell us was that all six roads north and south of us, headed westbound (toward the U.) were closed, do to ice over the washes (no, we don't have rivers, they're washes). So all of this traffic was going nowhere fast.

Jesse and I flipped a "u"-y, (again, for mid-west folk, that's a 180 degree turn around a stop light), and sprinted back to our condo to grab my equipment. We headed out again, except this time dropped to the Southeast, about 10 minutes, to Saguaro National Park.

The Park wasn't permitting cars to go through their gate due to ice, but pedestrians could walk the road. There's only one main, black, paved road that winds 8 miles through the park, and 5 minutes after we got there, at least 50 other photographers showed up to take pictures of the desert covered in snow.

It was chilly but absolutely timeless. It had the quiet of winter with the gentle "click" of the photographer's shooting in the background. The most beautiful part of the whole morning came when the sun, only three hours after the snow, started to melt the blanket off. The fog rose, the sun shone through the clouds and lit up the snow on the cacti, and "wha-lah", I got my picture. The gentle "thuds" of the blankets falling off the desert as they melted stirred my heart's cry for winter.

I am thankful I got to keep a small piece of it through the gift from God of snow that day, prevention from going to school, living so near to that park, and understanding the art of photography.

Last words on the issue: when I received notification that the amateur portion of the contest was finished, I was sure that the pro portion was, too. At that thought, I gave up hoping for a win, so when I received that email, I could hardly believe my eyes. Praise God; He's steering my ship.

PS. Thanks to Lizzie for inspiring me to write.