Anyone who has been a photographer for a while knows the value of scouting, whether for an job, a personal project, or in this case, a workshop.

Regardless of the number of times one has visited an area, things can change. A wonderful old barn may have collapsed under the heavy snowfalls of that last hard winter. There is construction going on, and the background for your favorite scene is a sea of cranes and orange, plastic fencing that you really don’t want to feature. The list goes on, and we’ve all seen them in one form or another.

Given the changing landscape, it is always wise to …

OK, OK, sometimes blue skies are really stunning against, say, a white Greek building with a terra-cotta roof, and I’m not going to sit inside just because there are blue skies. But Arnie and I think cloudy and stormy skies are so much more exciting. My mother was a very accomplished artist. She used a lot of Paynes Gray for her own moody skies, as there is a lot of violet in that color. If you think of the color wheel, that is why spring greens, that contain a lot of yellow, pop against those stormy skies. Those color combinations make images sing.

A couple of years ago, during our workshop in Virginia, we had terrible weather — torrential rains and gray skies — and we made amazing photographs. The colors were …

In the evenings, one of our pleasures is to walk Corso Umberto I, the cobbled street that runs the length of the historic Medieval town center. We often stop to enjoy a glass of wine or two at one of the outdoor cafés. It is one of the things to do on a warm evening in Taormina. There are those who sit or strut by conspicuously, so they will be seen. Others, like us, just enjoy “watching the scene.”

I’ve always loved the way the light plays off this piazza at night. It glows. I ducked across the street from where Arnie and I were sitting and quickly did a vertical shot, using the …