Mike Broadway – PhotoBlog

Garbage cans, White Sands

Some things are hard to arrange, you just have to be there. I know of photographers who spend a day or two scoping out an area to calculate the camera positions and times of day to get the shadows to fall just right for their planned compositions. Most of them make their living from landscape or commercial photography; for them the time is a financial investment. I doubt that I would have that much discipline even if I could devote the hours necessary; instead I must rely on serendipity. No matter how much time you spend planning, some things are just luck – even if I had calculated the length and angle of the shadow cast by these cans, I could not have predicted that a row of clouds would conventiently align themselves with the shadow.

Don’t go to White Sands hoping to add these cans to your portfolio; this image was made in 1990, when we went back with the family in 2005 the cans were gone, replaced by ugly brown plastic bins. Some photographs get better just because they are older and cannot be made any more.