Vision

When we first started seeing each other, Shirley gave me two coins.

On one side of one of the coins is the word vision. A very appropriate word for a photographer. At the time I was a photo editor, but I have handled a camera since my senior year of high school.

She thought the word spoke a lot about my work. She had seen images that I had taken that had not been in the newspaper. Only a handful of people had seen that work.

The hard part of doing a blog is writing about yourself and showing your work. When I was working I had a team which was important and I would promote them instead of myself.

I don't believe people take the time to stop and smell the roses. I am

not sure most people even see the roses.

One of the things I try to do with my photography, is show folks what they have missed. The images from Williamsburg show what I mean. The one image was shot of the silver smith in the 1980s. All of the tourist were going in and watching the man working. I walked in, looked over the shop and decided to use the window to frame and back lit the image.

Using natural light I caught the detail of what he was working on and street scene reflected in the container of water.

Two weeks ago, while in Williamsburg, we stopped in a store that had glasses in the window. Remembering the shot from above, I focused on the center of the glasses for a reflection. Bingo. Oh I was so happy to get the wagon passing by.

It takes time and patience at times to get an image, but you have to see it to make it happen.

To often people take a photograph of a person with a pole or something coming out of their head. Just slow down and look at the image through the viewfinder.

The image of the flag and Carroll County courthouse only happens for a couple minutes each year. They down the flag to half staff for Memorial Day and raise it by the end of the ceremony in the Westminster Cemetery.

The shot of the farmer planting, I saw the box cars packed near Linwood. I waited for over 45 minutes for the farmer to be framed in the opening.

The steam train is pulling into Sykesville. I had scouted out the area ahead of time and knew of a spot where there was a break in the trees to get the angle.

The other side of the coin says what photographers should be aiming to do in their work.

On the other side reads "Vision is the art of seeing things that are invisible to others''-Jonathan Swift