Back in 1997(my friend Harmony loves it when I begin my stories this way) we were responsible for taking a picture each day that would be the lead photo on the front page of the Meadville Tribune. The policy was simple. We put the most important and best photo taken that day above the fold of the paper so that we gave our readers the best that we had to offer locally. Sometimes, when there wasn't anything really newsworthy we were tasked with finding what they called 'Wild Art'--something picturesque that we would then tie into some tidbit of information useful to our readers. Sometimes this came from a construction project, but mostly it was a 'weather feature.' Weather features allowed us to make a picture of the weather today and then explain what the forecast says for the day the paper came out--and perhaps an extended forecast. Now this was sometimes difficult. In a small community sometimes you can go days and days without much going on that is front page newsworthy. So out of 365 days in Crawford County we probably had to come up with 200 or more 'Wild art' features each year. Since I was new at it in 1997 I really enjoyed this. I hadn't photographed everything yet so it was always fresh for me. I remember driving around on a Sunday(now Sundays were tough in Meadville because no one ever comes out on Sunday in downtown). I saw all this flower petals had fallen off the trees in front of the parking garage on Water street. It was quite beautiful. But I find pictures are 1,000 times better with people in them so I found my composition and then waited for someone to walk by. And I waited. And I waited. I kept remembering all the lessons about patience and waiting for the right moment. So I stuck it out. Over an hour passed and not a single person walked into my frame. Two people had walked nearby only to turn off just before or they crossed the road before they got into my composition. Then finally it worked out and I got my picture. It was film then so I had to go back and develop it and when I did I discovered I didn't have enough depth of field to have everything I wanted in focus. Since then I keep my eyes open for these petals to fall and did try a couple years ago again and again wait wait wait. Yesterday was my third try at it and this time I waited about 40 minutes. Its a little different from the original, the trees have grown up quite a bit and the original angle just doesn't exist any more, but I was glad to revisit this idea again, its old school stuff--like the 20th century masters we studied who found there way up on things to document the world below as if it were all so new! Thats a nice approach--feeling like it is all brand new. Meadville Tribune photograph by Richard Sayer.