DAY EIGHTY

At yesterday's Digital Days workshop in LA, Marc Reis made a statement that I hope stays with me forever. He said, "As a photographer, sometimes we're always looking for a photo of what's in front of us. Sometimes the photo is behind us, to the left of us, or the right of us." As soon as he made that statement, I realized that I too am sometimes guilty of tunnel vision and need to make a conscious effort to keep exploration in the back of my mind.

When I first got my D-SLR, exploration was all I did! The camera stayed in Auto and everywhere I went I was actively exploring my environment for pictures. Now that I'm a little more advanced and working on my 365 project, my camera is either always in aperture/shutter priority or manual and I find a shot and become fixated at times at capturing exactly what's in front of me. I'm not saying that's a bad thing...planning and preparation are definitely essential to what I do as a photographer. It's just that I'm going to make a conscious effort to continue exploring even though I see a shot right in front of me. Who knows, my big money maker could be right behind me or beside me - actually my first money maker since photography doesn't pay the bills yet. haha

I put Mark's advice into action today with this shot. I took a series of photos to create an HDR image and said to myself, "I'm going home. I've got my shot." Then as I started to drive home, I looked to my right and saw this scene of the approaching storm clouds coming over Goleta and knew I had to have this one.