Uvas Canyon County Park, Santa Clara County, CA, 4/12/2016
I visited Uvas Canyon near Morgan Hill, California on a spring Sunday with a friend, and one of the snapshots I made of a waterfall turned out so well, I decided to return two days later to make a high-quality photograph of that fall. When I arrived Tuesday, another photographer was already there at work, and as I set up my camera, I noticed that in the pool below and on the ledge above the fall there were now about a dozen cairns that had appeared since Sunday, spoiling the view. I was there to create a photograph of a natural waterfall, free of any signs of human activity. I asked the photographer if he minded having the rock piles in his shots, hoping he'd say it was OK for me to knock them over. He wasn't bothered by them. In a half hour he departed, and after I made sure the coast was clear, I quickly pushed all the decorative cairns into the water. This was satisfying! At last, I went about making my nature photograph.
