As I was reading Larry Lynch's recent article on photographing exotic animals, one huge point caught my eye. In this discussion, Larry mentions that the term "exotic" is somewhat relative to geographic location and uses the squirrel as an example. Having grown up in an area where the squirrel kingdom easily outnumbered the human population, I never would have considered these pesky little things to be exotic. But now, living in the desert, I know that I would be hardpressed to find one of these critters to snap a shot of unless I was willing to drive for a few hours.
That's not the real reason this point struck home, though. I'm currently working on a project where I could really use some photos of a clump of trees - nothing that special, just a few nice shots of several trees in close proximity. To many, this would be no big deal. In fact, a lot of people could probably just go in their backyard and snap a photo of exactly what I'm talking about. But, as I mentioned, I live in a desert. I could hop in the car and take a little road trip to get what I need and have a great time doing so. The problem is that this little trip would eat up a whole day and an entire tank of gas. So, in the end, I decided to just shop around the stock photo sites where you can pick up some wonderful photos for only a few dollars each (maybe less if you only need smaller dimensions). Not only was this the quickest solution, but when you factor in the price of gas and other related travel expenses, it turned out to be the most economical as well.