There’s one in every crowd.

It always seems when you are trying to capture a special memory, you have to prepare for something, or a situation, that causes it to change.

Every year I take a lot of pictures; my kids say I am obsessive, I say I am into it. Both of us are probably right, however after the photos are taken, and placed in iphoto on my Apple computer, they are looked at countless times. I guess they appreciate, in some way, my obsessiveness.

But it’s when you are really trying to capture the picture, and all is going right, that you need to prepare for something to change the composition of the photo. This past fall, as I was preparing to shoot the local high school band doing its march down to the football field prior to a home game, another photographer stepped into my line of sight. I was not happy and she had no idea what she had done so I could not be angry. What was the big deal? I was being paid for the picture and it was one of the last home games.

Fortunately I got it, but I had to do something I rarely, if ever, do. I took multiple photos of the band, and made sure I photographed the band member who had been blocked from my sight. Once I got home, I removed the photographer, and put the band member in her place. There is no way to tell of my cheating to get the photo. Why do I not care to admit this? If this were a news photo, or one that ran in National Geographic Magazine, you could never get away with it. However, since it is a photograph, for the sole purpose of being placed on a wall---with no insinuation of it being news worthy or realistic---it didn’t matter. I also never told what I did when I turned over the digital file.

Recently I was in downtown Chicago,  and went to “Cloudgate” also known as “The Bean,” to shoot some reflective photos. It is a very cool structure that debuted around 2003 I believe. I would have to imagine more than 1 million photos have been taken since its unveiling.

The photo above is of “Cloudgate;” as I adjusted my camera, sure enough a man in a bright yellow jacket stepped into the photograph. I took photos of him because it reminded me that if you take a picture of the same thing a million times, something is going to make it unique on the million and first.

Thanks for stopping by.