Let’s start first today with two photographers who are anything but common.

Colorado’s Dan Waltersfrequently displays some great wildlife action.
He caught this Red-tail Hawk “coming at us”, with a very serious
expression on its face.

Landscape/abstract artist Guy Tal resides in Utah and is one of my
favorites when it comes to the abstract landscape. To me, there is
nothing more fulfilling than finding a series of rock forms, and
visually isolating a small grouping to share with others.

The rest of today’s images are mine and I will begin in fact in Utah.

It is easy yet gratifying to travel to special places such as Monument
Valley, wait for some great light, and then pick a rock form and click
away. It’s hard to miss making powerful images at locations like this.

Common subjects are err, well, a common subject on this blog.  I have written and illustrated many articles on such.

Nobody can always be at a great location. I could not even guess how
many times I have been driving down the road at an “unappetizing”
location, and spotted a bunch of colorful flowers in a roadside ditch.
Not being somewhere great never stopped me from making pictures, nor
should it stop anybody.

I just pointed my camera at these roadside wildflowers, or better said
weed flowers, and just moved around composing the colors.  Beauty is
indeed in the eye of the beholder.

Every place in the world becomes special at sunrise or sunset. Find
some great shapes, such as an old pier and some overhanging branches,
compose, compose, compose, and meter from the mid tone area of the
picture frame, and beauty is bound to ensue.

No lions or tigers where you are? How about a common Mourning Dove, or
the Common Crow?

Barbed wire fences and power lines are pretty common too.  A fraction
of a second in the life of some common birds perched on common
subjects, is not necessarily common.

In my part of the world, the tiny Checkered White Butterfly and the
Milkweed Beetle are as common as it gets. So what? Can anybody say
they are not great subjects?


So, from places, flowers and animals, let us celebrate the commoners. Without them we would be poor,and we would be the lesser for it, whether we speak of photography or
life.

God Bless, Wayne