Renowned 20th century photographer Ansel Adams coined the phrase "pre-visualization" when it came to imagining a scene and how it might look when photographed and printed. Sometimes he was referring to a scene that already existed, and he was using pre-visualization to imagine what part of that scene he would include in his camera's viewfinder. Other times, he was pre-visualizing a scene that was before him with different conditions – different quality of light, different time of day, different direction of light, different season.

The scene in the photograph above, which I took out at Tumalo, Oregon a few mornings ago, falls into the category of one of those I imagined in my mind when I first visited the site and returned to it several times until the environmental conditions matched my vision of the scene. I visited the site when there wasn't enough snow on the mountains or the alpenglow just didn't materialize. I also visited the site when clouds obscured the mountains completely. It was only on this particular morning that "I got lucky." Another way to put it might be to say that I knew what I was after and waited for it to appear. In fact, I remember that on this morning I was waiting in the dark thinking to myself that the alpenglow probably wouldn't materialize. It was too dark to see the thin veil of clouds that were behind and over the mountains. When it got light enough, I could see those clouds and I thought it just might happen. And it did.

Now, I'm not purporting to be a self-improvement guru. My wife is the Life Coach in the family. But I have to wonder if you can use the same power of visualization to move your life forward; to achieve your goals; to fulfill your destiny? Of course, you have to have a certain amount of faith and determination that if you keep at it, what you visualize for yourself will come to pass. See it. Believe it. Create it.