From a self-assigned stock shoot at a playground on a wet day.

One of a series of photo shot today for an editorial client for a story about the prices of durable goods such as washer, dryers and refrigerators.

This is an assignment I do several times a year for this client. Getting fresh, storytelling photos for a number-crunching economics story is a real challenge.

I’ll let this frame speak for itself.

I’m usually an advocate of a clean, crisp arrangement of objects in photos. This wasn’t one of those times.

The rolling ridges of this farm field, a lowered roadway where I stood and an overcast afternoon sky all contributed to a difficult setting for good photos. I’ve used the house in the background in a series of photos over the last several years and a nearby grain elevator has been shot in every weather, cloud condition, and season so this was common territory for me.

The colors were muted, basically tones of blue and brown. The flat lighting removed any chance of great detail through contrast with the exception of possibly silhouetting the house and tractor against the skyline.
The only way to get the tractor silhouetted against the background was to squat in the roadway and wait for it to move far enough towards me so the cab stood above the horizon. That required including the edge of the field in the foreground.

The field was covered in corn plant stubble from the harvest making me search out a position where the vertical spikes didn’t interfere with the tractor or the house on the horizon. There was not a place to position myself to eliminate the stubble. It had to be in the frame.

One of the rules I offer to young photographers is to decide if everything in the viewfinder contributes to telling the story. If they don’t eliminate them. Change position. Use a different lens. Wait until the scene changes. Or, if they can be removed, find a way to make them work.

The stubble remained in the frame placed in position to not interfere with the primary objects yet contribute a foreground that adds a third layer of depth and a hint of more work to be done, even on a cloudy day.

One of those days when the mythical lighting gods smiled on me for a brief time.

I didn’t carry my lighting gear into the indoor climbing wall for the few quick frames I needed. I was more interested in the expanse of the all, not a single climber. That changed when a shaft of light creeped through the narrow path across the front window creating contrast and a shadow for a single climber.

Long glass from an oblique angle, timing and luck to have her face unobscured by the right arm.

I knew when I was shooting this frame as one of the collection for an editorial assignment on Chrysler canceling production on the Pacifica that it wouldn’t make it past the editor’s cut. Despite my effort in adjusting my position, focal length and f-stop setting to line up the grain elevator reflection above the car’s name plate, the photo failed to tell the story of Chrysler’s decision. If the reflection had been Chrysler headquarters, an assembly plant or a customer exploring a purchase, the framing might have worked.

But, not today. All I got was a bad photo well executed.