Sometimes you risk things to get a shot- I’d noticed this farmhouse before, but stopping nearby always seemed to get my vehicle attacked by swarms of horseflies the size of canned hams. No way was I getting out of the truck into a swarm of angry, biting insects. On this occasion, I stopped by and caught the last rays of the setting sun raking across the fields and the unkempt grass, and rolled down the window just far enough to get this shot.

Photographs aren’t always about an instant frozen in time. You can also use the camera to show us a succession of instants by choosing a slower shutter speed, and mounting the camera on a tripod, as I did here at the Indiana State Fair. I shot this in that magic few minutes where the natural light balances the artificial, just after sundown.

Looking for color part II. This pale blue flower was nice in the greenhouse sun, but when I moved to put the red lilypads behind it, it really popped. Always look at your background.

The Blue Angels executing a formation loop at an airshow. I used a 70-300mm telephoto lens to isolate the airplanes and the smoke trail from the huge expanse of sky. Also important was to make sure of the location of the sun relative to the angle I was shooting from- too close and the sky washes out and you lose that wonderful deep blue.

Get low to the ground with a wide angle lens and watch your perspective change.

Look for color. This pale yellow Chevy started looking really good against the blue sky in the afternoon sun. I composed to put the hood ornament in the upper right rule-of-thirds node, and shot.

Even uninteresting subjects can be more interesting with a careful black and white conversion. This factory in the color version of this shot, was fairly blah as photographs go. A black and white conversion, a layer blended with soft light , and a little differential toning for the highlights and shadows made a lot of difference.

Corvette Museum, Kentucky USA

Bold color and geometric shapes can lead to arresting photos. I knew I wanted to get right up next to this section of the National Corvette Museum, and do it when the sunlight was close to 90 degrees from the side. Why 90 degrees? Two reasons: One, it would provide a little modeling for the curved surfaces of the Museum, and two, it would put the maximum effect of the Circular Polarizing filter I wanted to use to cut down the glare from the sky right behind the Museum, deepening the sky and closing down the dynamic range.

Mooresville, IN

When you first start learning about composition in photography, the very first rule they teach is “Don’t put your subject in the middle of the frame.” Sometimes you break the rules, because it allows you to show other aspects of your subject. Here I wanted to show the open area through the barn, that allows the image to show some sense of the interior space and the scale of the structure.

Indiana USA

Sometime extraordinary things are just a few seconds’ investigation away. The only road near this barn was on the other side from this picture. From the road, this looked like a perfectly ordinary, if somewhat weather beaten barn. Just walking around to the invisible side uncovered this magnificent decay.