One Shot – Telluride Sepia

As we got closer to Telluride, I was struck by the odd color of the snow. It was not white, and I asked about it. My daughter explained that western Colorado had been very dry, and the winds had gathered up the red dirt and dusted it all over the snow, giving it a sepia cast. It was fascinating.

Hayden is a very sociable little person, so when it was his bedtime, his mother suggested that with all of us in one room, Granny was a distraction, and this would be an excellent time for her to leave and go out photographing for an hour or so.

And so I did. One of the lesser roads beckoned, and I turned left and …

One Shot – Early Start

I know it’s not new, but I thought that occasionally, I would present a single shot — the kind where I only did one “frame” — and find out what you like about it … or not.

The first one is from Georgia. We were there on a workshop, Savannah & Her Lowcountry. In one of the famous cemeteries, Arnie and I had given the participants assignments based on their needs. After checking in with those AI could find — you’d be amazed at how quickly people can disappear in a graveyard — I wandered down to the water, as I am wont to do.

The previous year, I had found a shot I really liked, and with the fog on the river, I thought the chances were good that I might find another.

I did. In fact, I found a couple. As many of you know, I grew up sailing. It’s in my blood, so I perk up whenever I see a sailboat.

I was enjoying the gentle light on the river, the fog drifting in and out and giving an ethereal calm to the scene. The soft thrum of an engine announced itself, soon followed by this sailboat, trailing behind it the quiet ruffle of a wake.

It was too much to hope that the boat would go where

Same Place — Different View, Spain ’10, Curves & Composition

Arnie always says that I can leave out information in a photography and still make it read right. Well, so can he!

You do not always need the full scene or the full object in a photograph, to wit the four examples here where your eye and your imagination fill in the rest.

Is there any question in your mind where these lines continue? Can you envision what the photograph would have looked like if Arnie had included the whole sweep of the building? Probably a lot less dramatic.

He left just enough in to allow your imagination to fill in the blanks, yet enough to set off the stormy sky. And it was stormy that day in the Alhambra. Rain. Buckets of it. But it did not dampen our enthusiasm for this amazing location.

In fact, during one of those deluges, I ducked for cover, not far from where Arnie did the photograph above. At first, it was pretty dark, but then the skies lightened and there was some wonderful, natural-fill light coming in from the open “arena” that lit up my scene.

I tend to be attracted to scenes where elements fold over one another. This image immediately grabbed me; there was no other possible composition for me, and I clicked the shutter just once.

Any further efforts to compose the scene differently just didn’t work for me, and I happily …

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