Sometimes a photo is just a photo.

I'm temporarily leaving the contentious issues surrounding film use and digital dogma to just revel in the fun of shooting with just about any kind of camera. The image to the right was taken a few years ago on an Annual Report shoot for Southwest Water Company. It was done with a Fuji S2 camera and a Nikon 12-24mm zoom lens.

The assignment was pure fun. Essentially, the brief that the art director and I followed called for finding fun and artful images at waste water treatment plants across the southeastern U.S. Sure, we did the obligatory "project manager in a hard hat" and the "three engineers looking at plans" images. We even did the CEO portrait in front of a very high tech water treatment system. But the images I really loved were the ones of "Moonrises over the #1 tank" and nobly rusted apparatus kissed by the last rays of a crimson setting soon.

We got to a plant in Biloxi around 3pm and nothing seemed to click but then the sun started to set and the magic of mixed light and weird color balance ruled. We were like little kids who just discovered a box full of fireworks. The five or six days on the road were hot and long and tiring. We were still hauling around studio strobes in those days, just in case. That meant a lot more to carry.

But in recent memory it is the most satisfying project I can think of just because it was an journey of encouraged visual discovery. Kicking over rocks to find something wonderful underneath. Who would have thought that a trip to the waste water treatment plant would trump Maui or Monte Carlo? But here's the deal: a trip like this is all about looking and problem solving and inventing and it's more engaging than responding to some boring general concensus of naturally occurring beauty that's been postcarded to death. It's the real thing. The hidden infrastructure that makes our lives work. As photographers we're privileged in that we get to see the cogs and gears under the hood (bonnet) and better understand the interconnected nature of human existence.

Marketing note: My first book, Minimalist Lighting: Professional Techniques for Location Photography, is now available as a Kindle book for those of you with Kindles or with Kindle software loaded on your Apple iPod Touches and iPhones. Wow. I feel so 21st century......