Documenting our Landscape

In late December I was in Phoenix visiting my 11 year old grandson. He has an interest in photography and asked me to help him learn something about making pictures. Off we went on a journey of discovery. I gave him a few assignments, a digital camera with a normal lens and we each went off shooting. He lives directly across the street from Chase Field, home of the Arizona Diamondbacks so we decided to look for pictures around the field. The image in this post was shot in response to an assignment I gave him to find form in the city. Like most beginners, he wants to shoot the whole thing, to capture all there is to be seen. Early in the day I told him to shoot everything twice. First, shoot what he sees and then take three steps closer to his subject and shoot again. When we were critiquing images at lunch and he saw this image of a Palm Tree Trunk located directly in front of his building he said, “Oh, now I understand, get closer Poppa, get closer.”