“Show me something I’ve never seen before, or something I know well – in a way I’ve never seen it.”

  — Mike Dressler, Photographer, Time Magazine

My favorite moment when capturing an image comes when I spot something interesting within a larger scene. On a run through the streets of Santa Barbara I recently I spotted this old metal newspaper box with a patch of sea green shapes on its bottom panel (Pics #1 and #2). The ripped white paper poster seems to have been sprayed by a local tagger.

Blown up, it became a sweet abstraction that reminds me of a pattern that might make a cool background for a comic diflucan super-hero or villain like video designer Mike Henry’s take on Batman’s nemesis, Mr. Freeze (Pic #3).

Then, near the iconic Santa Barbara pier, I saw an awful over-ground pipeline stretching out over the beach, and zoomed in there too. As I moved in closer, I could see black and white striations that turned out to be bird poop. Again, close-up, it turned out to make a really nice vertical pattern (Pics #4 and #5). Even when nature “unloads” on us, it can be a beautiful thing.