You Have My Interest

Photo by Bob Lasher ©

One of my best friends, a guy named Bob Lasher, is an amazing photographer. He has a sweet camera setup, a great eye for composition and hard drives full of museum quality images. There are some nights I will visit his family for dinner at his home, and while we are eating, he has his computer displaying his images on the TV while we eat. Each image outdoing the last.

I eventually had to ask him how he got so many amazing pictures. He looked at me as if I had grown a second head or a third eye and gave me the ultimate head-slapper of an answer. "I point the camera at things that look interesting and snap away." As you can see from this photo he took from the Amalfi Coast in Italy on a recent vacation, it would be just about impossible to take a bad photo with this kind of subject in front of your lens.

It sounds so elementary, but that really is the key to getting interesting shots. If you fill the viewfinder with an interesting subject, the resulting image is going to look interesting.

I put this into practice one autumn a few years back while visiting my dad's house in northern New Jersey. It started as an overcast October day, and after my first cup of coffee, we decided that it would be fun if we headed out to pick apples. Yes, I was nearly 50 years old at the time and I can get as many apples as I wanted at my local grocery store, but something about that trip sounded so appealing. 

First, though, I looked out the sliding glass door onto the lake neighboring his house. While the color in the trees wasn't spectacular due to a drought, it was the first time I had seen autumn color in years. The reds and oranges in the leaves took my breath away, so I had to snap a shot. It wasn't until later that I realized that the reflection on the water helped to enhance the look. A keeper!

My dad, stepmom, older brother and I piled into my rental car, and off we went into the extreme northwestern part of the state to a place called Windy Brow Farms. There, we

 could each buy a bag, head to the orchard and pick our own apples fresh from the tree. 

While we were waiting for the tractor to come pick us up for the ride to the orchards, I took out my camera and snapped a shot of an interesting barn door. It was rustic, green and flaking, and it contrasted with the white board siding. 

What really stood out on this one was the texture of the paint. The vines growing up the side wall. The balance of the shot.  Another keeper!

After we picked more apples than we could possibly use in a month, we headed back to the barn to enjoy a cider donut sundae with maple bacon ice cream - Don't Judge!  That's where  I noticed signs identifying which varieties of apples were available for purchase. 

I started snapping a few shots of the signs, to help us identify how a Northern Spy was different from a Jonagold. That's when I stopped looking at the small signs and took in the entire image. Bushels of brightly-colored apples in the barn. I backed up, set my camera, and took the shot. To this day, that photo takes me back to the exact moment I snapped the image.  I can almost taste the crisp, tart apples and smell the heady aroma. 

That's exactly what an interesting photograph can do for you. And, all it takes to get an interesting photograph is to keep your eyes open and see what inspires you.