This morning I was out for a walk with a friend who asked me how I decided what to take a picture of.  Did I have something in mind and go looking for it?  I replied that I sometimes, usually, just SAW things, and sometimes I took pictures from my library and made them into a picture.  I’ve said this many times and should probably write a song with these lyrics; if you want to take good pictures, get over the fear of taking bad ones.  In fact, go out and try to take bad pictures.  Take the worst picture you can imagine, laugh at it, and then show it to someone else.  Be prepared to explain what makes it a bad picture.  If you follow this simple formula, you will start taking BETTER pictures, I guarantee it, because you are forced to observe.

To illustrate this concept, I snapped a picture of a piece of heavy equipment, and then made two edits of it.  It took, all told, about 4 minutes.  Nothing you would frame, but that’s not the point.  The point is to practice, try new things, and see if you like what you did.

The original version.

The edits:  cropped and B&W, and then a vintage effect added.