We choose to shoot with early light on the fringes of Kingman, too early for much activity. I wanted this image to speak of silence – a lone car and a single person surrounded by empty streets and sidewalks that stretch as far as we can see. (I am not sure if the light changed to red while the car was already in the intersection or not – but at this time and place, a traffic violation would hardly matter.) I compose the photo by using the wideangle lens to emphasize the massive scale of the sidewalk in the foregound, which gets smaller and smaller as it flows into the background. I interrupt the flow with the silhouetted man sitting on the corner, staring into space. He has been stopped in time, just as the camera has stopped the car, and just as the stop sign above him requests.

The subject is just water gushing out of a big pipe. Yet by using geometric principles to compose this image, I can make an ordinary subject become part of an extraordinary image. The key is the low angle of the light. It is late in the day, and I move my camera position to take advantage of the light passing through the flow of water that is frozen in place by the shutter. That translucent light turns the water flow into an illuminated arc, positioned over a rectangular trough that is illuminated only along one plane. All else falls into abstracting shadows. The illuminated planes of the trough and the upright board that anchors it in place, create a series of diagonal and vertical thrusts that support the illuminated arc of water and give the image its coherence and meaning. Out of a very small place, a glowing and precious resource brings life to the vast lands that sprawl beyond it.

This composition expresses beauty and mystery. The shadowy ceiling on the inside of the entrance arch dominates the image. The delicate lantern hangs from the ceiling – its silhouette adds an ornate touch the scene. Meanwhile, the textured red sandstone walls add a rainbow of warm colors. The Mogul Emperor Akbar built the fort in 1570. About a century later, Emperor Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Mahal, was imprisoned here by his own son.

I was fortunate to be standing on the bank of the Mekong River just as this woman was bringing her boat home. I immediately saw the rhythms present in the scene – her red jacket echoed by the boat’s red trim, the curving boards alongside the ship repeated by the reflection in the water, the upright stance of the woman reinforced by the upright line on the bow of the ship. I also noted the massive negative spaces created by the shadowed areas and the sky reflected in the water. To make them all work, I took a gamble and framed the woman well up into the far left hand corner, significantly above the magical “sweet spot” dictated by the so-called “rule of thirds,” which would be down a bit and somewhat to the right of where she is now. But rules are made to be broken. I compose my pictures not for aesthetic effect, but for meaning. I wanted to detach her from everything else, yet still make her responsible for bringing the ship safely in to the dock. It is the incongruity of her precarious perch in the distant corner that energizes the image for me. She seems to be navigating the ship by remote control. The conical hat is just as important – it is the brightest spot in the frame, it stands out against the black shadows in the negative space, and I place it so close to the edge of the image that it generates considerable tension. All of which proves my point: there are no rules for photographic composition and we don’t put together our pictures primarily to please the eye or the senses. Rather, we compose our pictures to best tell the story we are trying to tell.

The El Tovar Hotel is the architectural crown jewel of Grand Canyon National Park. A registered National Historic Landmark, the hotel commands the South Rim, offering dizzying views of the canyon from some of its guest rooms. Built in 1905 of Oregon pine logs and native stone, the rustic but elegant hotel is often sold out a year in advance. Several American presidents have stayed at El Tovar, including Theodore Roosevelt, who was instrumental in preserving the canyon as a U.S. National Park. When I think of Teddy Roosevelt, a moose comes to mind – he loved to hunt them, and their heads still adorn his home at Oyster Bay, NY. He also ran for a third term as President of the United States in 1912 as the candidate of the Bull Moose Party. The head of this huge moose is mounted on a varnished wall of the El Tovar’s lobby. It has looked down on visitors as they have passed through this lobby for more than 100 years. I immediately noticed the huge pine logs supporting the ceiling overhead, and composed this image to relate the rhythms of the prongs on the glistening antlers of the moose to the rhythmic flow of log beams just above it. I tilted the camera to create countering diagonal thrusts of both the log ceiling beams and the log wall holding the moose head. I made this image hand-held, at one full second. Thanks largely to my camera’s image stabilization system, the photograph holds its detail well at that slow a shutter speed.

Alcatraz Island has one of the largest Western Gull colonies on the Northern California Coast. Two of these gulls fly over the Cell House that once housed federal prisoners. Built by the US Army in 1912, the Cell House was once the largest steel-reinforced concrete building in the world and housed military prisoners until it became a federal prison in 1934. The prison was a place of incarceration. The gulls in flight are symbols of freedom. I composed this image to compare contrasts and similarities. The gulls in flight echo the forward and recessed facades of the prison, as well as the two poles that extend from the building. The building is large and brown, while the birds are small and white. Both the building and the birds thrust forward, and are aligned on the diagonal. How could I “arrange” the birds to fit so neatly into my composition? By anticipating what might happen, waiting, and shooting profusely. A number of gulls were nesting on the roof of the building, and were constantly coming and going. I found a vantage point creating this triangular block of space in the sky, and waited for the gulls to fly into and through it. I put my camera on “multiple” burst shooting, and held the shutter button down whenever multiple gulls flew through that triangular space of blue. The beautiful thing about digital imaging is that every shot is essentially free. I shot several hundred images over ten minutes and found ten that worked fairly well in terms of gull position, wing configuration, etc. This was the most expressive of them.