Alternate title: embarrassing myself in front of the pros.

I read an opinion online (probably on Fark) that Texans are a unique breed.  They’re overly proud of themselves – not for what they’ve done or what they can to, but because of where they live.  As if they have an overly-inflated sense of value ’cause their state is big.  And the only people worse than Texans, according to this opinion, are Alaskans: convinced that they’re something special because they can somehow survive in a giant, frozen state.

There’s some truth to this.  For the better part of the last two decades, I could easily leave state (well, to anywhere other than Hawaii) and say “I’m from Alaska.”  The response: instant fawning.  Usually you become the life of the party, making up crap about how hard the winters are (they’re not usually hard in Anchorage, just long – it’s usually far worse in the midwest).

Don’t do this with a well-travelled person.  Like I did, with Moose Petersen.  Yes, I made an ass of myself to the moose, but I learned something in the process.  Imagine this conversation:

Me: so, I’m from Alaska.
Moose: yeah, so?
Me: um, so we have a bunch of unique lighting up here and I was wondering…
Moose: No you don’t.
Me: Um, nevermind, I’ll go away now.
Moose: You had a question.  Ask it.
Me: um, I was wondering… how to properly shoot… snow?
Moose: who cares? Snow is snow, it’s white.  If you blow it out, who gives a rip?  Everyone knows what it is?
Me: I’m going to slink away now…

Well, that’s pretty much what happened.  Wording has been changed (feeble memory and all that), but there are some important lessons in there.  I walked away with these thoughts:

• Seriously, who cares about properly exposing snow?  I mean, unless it’s the primary subject.  Even then, who cares? Duh.
• Who cares that I’m from Alaska?  Moose doesn’t.  Shoot, his photographer base camp was in Anchorage last year and it easily looked like one of the tamer places he’s been.
• Don’t try to out-cool Moose.  He camps with bears.  I avoid biking trails where bears occasionally wander.

Since this conversation, I’ve read at least two articles since our exchange where the mighty Moose has talked about properly exposing for snow.