y gracious wife didn’t mind if I took “the scenic route” home from work last night, which was a real blessing. It’s been a LONG time since I’ve been able to do my trademark “just drive around and find stuff to photograph” thing that I love so much, and every little bit helps. I took a couple of interesting shots for the subject “close up” as part of a “Photo a Day” activity that I’m doing, then found myself at Fox Island.

The combination of dramatic clouds overhead and a perfectly calm Missouri River made for ample photographic opportunity. The river, smooth as glass on this rare occasion, made for a great reflection of the clouds overhead. But I’m a stickler for an interesting foreground object, so I worked the scene a little more.

The little dock near the boat ramp served as an interesting feature, jutting into the shot from the left. Its location was pretty good for my purposes but I still couldn’t find a good way to compose my shot with it where I wanted it while still getting the clouds and their atery reflection.

My solution for this was my solution for a lot of things in the 80s and 90s: go vertical. Since I couldn’t get close enough to the dock to keep it more prominent, it loses a little…but that’s why we take multiple exposures I guess.

I started out with my favorite shot being the vertical because I was able to fit in everything I wanted, especially the reflection. Arranging them for this post, however, I actually began liking the second one the best. Again, it comes down to an interesting foreground object. The dock just isn’t prominent enough in the vertical shot since I couldn’t get closer to it. Maybe if I cropped it differently to retain more of the reflections instead of the clouds:

You know, this just doesn’t do it for me either. There’s something about the propertions that just doesn’t seem harmonious to me. I think I’m going to have to focus less on the reflections, regardless of how great a catch they were, and stick by my choice of photo number two. As always, I welcome any feedback. Have a good weekend!