People often ask me questions about my photography. How did I capture that or this? What kind of camera do you use? Etc. Most people say, “You have great photos. You must have a really nice (or expensive) camera. I could never take photos like that.” Not true my friends! I simply take photographs of things that I like to look at or things that catch my eye. There may be no such thing as a bad photograph. There are no dumb questions either, just some questions that are better than others! Ok, ready for me to step into creative writing about photography? As one of my college professors said before we dove into spherical trigonometry and how celestial bodies move about the universe, “Bring your mushrooms to class tomorrow.” Here it goes…. Photos preserve memories. Photos capture moments, and a camera never fails in its task to capture a given moment. The photographer might fail to let the camera capture the moment in the proper way (exposure, no tripod, etc) just as a writer might not convey his or her thoughts clearly in a sentence. The significance of the moment and the way in which it is captured (composition and lighting) is what separates a great photo from a good photo….I think. Photos can show someone a new way of seeing something that they see every day. Photography is a medium of artistic expression. Anyone can draw a picture. Anyone can take a photograph. Opinion is what makes people say one drawing or photograph is better than another. Right? Make sure that you never say your photos are bad. If you get the photo that you saw through the viewfinder, then your camera did its job and you have that memory saved forever. If you do not like the photo you captured for one reason or another, look at why you do not like it, and make positive corrections the next time you are shooting something similar. Some specifics about my photographs: CROPPING As a rule, I do not crop my images. I am usually shooting with zoom lenses, and if I cannot compose with a combination of physical position and zoom, you will not see the shot on this web site! I have difficulty seeing the image inside an image….one of my creative shortfalls I guess. If I have severely misrepresented a horizon line, and I really like the photo despite the crooked horizon, I may crop the edges a bit – the equivalent of tilting the photo behind a mat before the glass and frame are secured. On my web site of over 1100 photos, I would say that less than 12 have been cropped and of those, 11 were only to shave a hair off of one side to level a horizon. LIGHTING 99% of my photographs are taken with available light. I do not own a speed light – the cameras have built-in flashes but I only use them when shooting snapshots of people for work or posterity. Finding the right light for the subject is one of the challenges I face in my photography. There are times when I am forced to return to a location to get the image in a better or different light, but I have sacrificed the chance for an artistic image and left with only a “snapshot” due to adverse lighting conditions and have never returned to that location.