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What is it about color that gets our juices flowing as photographers? What is it about light that can make a difference good… or great?
I’m not sure I know the answers to those questions, frankly. But I’ll tell you this: having been a photographer for nearly 25 years (yes, I’m only 25-years old), I am just as stunned today by the power of color and light in photographs as I ever have been.
Now here’s the thing: I don’t know about you, but sometimes I kick myself realizing that I’ve passed an extraordinary image countless times while never having quite seen it. My photograph above is a great example of this. Wanna know where I shot it? In the parking lot outside the grocery store just across the street from where I live. Yep - a full 100-yards from my door.
I have lived in this area and shopped at this store since 1994. And all that time, I have considered myself to be a fairly “active eye” photographer (always looking out for images). So how then could I have missed such a beautiful, if simple, scene?

Obviously, the fact that it rained had something to do with it - the water on the ground that night made the colorful reflection possible. And of course, by chance I parked in such a spot of the empty lot where the image came into view. Maybe I never did that before. I honestly don’t know. Or maybe I had and for some reason just missed it.
What’s remarkable to me is that an image like this can literally be underfoot and I could just as easily have looked past it that night as I had every other night I’d gone shopping there. And it forces me to wonder: how many other photographic images might I be missing?
I blogged the other day about the advantages of finding inspiration in travel photography. And it’s true. Traveling to new places can really kick-start your photographs with inspiration. At least it can for me.
But my unfamiliar destination is someone else’s home. Is it possible that locals may miss photographs in their own neighborhoods or towns simply because they are too close to the subject matter to quite “see it?” I suspect so. And I suspect that’s exactly what happened to me.
A grocery store across the street from where I live just doesn’t usually inspire me as a photographer. I think perhaps when I visit the store, I’m thinking about food more than photography! But I think it’s a great lesson when one realizes that images are everywhere. If an outsider can see those images close to us better than we can, why is that? And what can we do as photographers to ensure that does not happen?
I’m sure you’re expecting me to answer that question, but frankly, I don’t know. Do you? If you do, please, by all means leave a comment on this post and share your ideas with others.

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