In our workshops, we always say that each person brings a different view to a scene. If you have ten photographers interpreting a certain scene, you are more than likely going to get ten different views.

This happens with Arnie and me. I would hazard a guess that with the majority of couples, if one is a photographer, the other is not. If that is in fact true, Arnie and I are unusual. Two photographers, married, living together, and working together. And, we’re still talking!

“For better, for worse, happily for lunch … but separate offices,” is our motto!

Our work has changed since we melded our photography businesses. When we first joined forces well over ten years ago, my mother, a New England landscape painter who lived next door at the time, would point to a photograph and say, “Now, that’s Arnie’s,” or “I can tell that this one is yours.”

I remember the first time she looked at our shots from a just-completed assignment and pointed to one as being mine.

“Actually,” I said, “That one is Arnie’s.”

She looked surprised, but undaunted, selected one that was clearly Arnie’s.

“Uh, actually that’s mine.”

Arnie, having started out with LIFE and other editorial origins, traditionally shoots the broad view, while I usually seek the more intimate, close-up one. Now, however, we sometimes find that for a scene that I would traditionally shoot close-up, I’ll use a wider lens; at the same time, Arnie also reverses his usual mode of shooting and selects a zoom lens. It is interesting and not surprising. Artists working so closely together cannot help but influence each other and serve as inspiration for one another.

We always find it interesting to review each other’s images. Sometimes when one of us cannot make anything out of a potential scene, the other one will, such as this one of some interesting rocks:

As those of you know who follow this blog, we’re on a long, three-week road trip. The first leg took us from North Carolina to Boise, Idaho, with a detour down to part of Flaming Gorge in Wyoming and Utah. We didn’t have a lot of time to shoot because of our schedule. 1,100 miles the first day, another 800 the next, and 700 the third day. With both of us driving and getting a really early start in the morning, we can do this.

We did stop a couple of times the second day in Nebraska, as we were both attracted to the russet and golden colors of the fading corn stalks in contrast with the lush green of soy plants. We kept looking for the right scene where we could safely stop. Finally we found it.

“Stop!” I said.

“I can’t,” said Arnie, “We have a truck behind us.”

There was a place to turn around shortly, though, and we quickly returned to the spot.

The textures were wonderful, and each of us found something different to photograph from basically the same spot:

The corn rows, we treated in completely different ways. What’s more, this was a case where Arnie and I reversed our usual modes of composition:

Our third day on the road, I really wanted to show Arnie Flaming Gorge. He had never seen it before, and it is one of my special places for photographing.

The first stop was in the reservoir area. We crossed a feeder river, and before we knew it, the car did a 180, and back we went. Both of us saw the same scene, but since Arnie got out first, he grabbed “my” spot, so I did the classic thing; I turned around. Here are our two scenes:

On the map, I saw a road that I thought might produce a shot or two, so we turned in. We both found a lot of photographs in this area, including the one used to illustrate where one person can sometimes find something that the other cannot. We both saw this tree. I lay down on the ground, gingerly avoiding the Prickly Pear cactus under the tree, while Arnie framed it with the rocks:

After stopping here, we headed down into the gorge area. The deep canyon walls in red contrasted with the green of the — what else — Green River. Again, we treated the essentially-same scene quite differently:

So, when you come to a workshop or go out shooting with a buddy or buddies, share your photographs. See what others did. It doesn’t mean that you copy them, but we each have different eyes and can take inspiration from others.

We are next headed to Moab, Utah, for our Arches & Moab workshop. The next blog may be devoted to the scouting process. One never knows where my fingers will take me on the keyboard!

Upcoming workshops: Arches & Moab (UT); New England Fall Foliage (NH & VT); and Lighthouses of the Outer Banks (NC). For more information, go to our Barefoot Contessa Photo Adventures website. We also have spring listings, so check those out, too.

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