At top, Leah Taylor, 8, donned a hat that said 'awesome' on the side during Clearview Elementary School's Read A Hat Day on Tuesday. Below, Sam Posey, 8, declared that he was, indeed, Sam, with his hat. The Red Lion district school allowed students to wear hats with appropriate messages to celebrate Read Across America Week.

We're always on the lookout for good news here at the YDR, despite newspapers' reputations to the contrary. Bad news is easy to find--just listen to the police scanner. Our living section feature writers do a terrific job finding the good news, as do the sports writers. As an old (and generally true) newspaper adage goes, the good news goes on the sports page-- the bad news on the front page.

So we depend on readers...

So we depend a lot on the eyes and ears of our readers to help find the good news. Don't assume we know about it. And it doesn't have to be Big News for a good photograph to come out of it. Smiles and bright eyes are much easier to look at than a fatal car crash or a house fire, or a bad guy being arrested for drugs.

These Clearview Elementary School students participated in the Read Across America, and while the photos won't win a Pulitzer, we can celebrate kids learning, laughing, playing and singing. If you see a particularly interesting photograph, or know of an active visual event going on at your school, let me know.

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It's been said that a wildlife photographer's greatest asset is not his eye, equipment or experience, but patience. And that in a nutshell is why I never even tinkered with making wildlife or nature photography my life's work. A cocker spaniel puppy has more patience. If a picture's not there in 20 minutes, I'm gone. Outa there. History.

Check fatali.com for Michael Fatali's exquisite scenic work, mostly from the U.S. southwest. Click on his images, click again on his field notes, and you'll see he sometimes waited four days for the light to be just right. FOUR DAYS! Dallastown's Cliff Beitel spends days looking just the right bird photo, and it shows in his amazing artistry. Once they see it, they click into 'artist' mode, and experience and equipment join in. Both of their links are along the right side of this blog.

As much as I love the outdoors, my work isn't going to be on Country magazine's cover anytime soon. Instead, it'll end up in a shoebox under my bed, just like everyone else's.

So, driving to Hanover, I spot two majestic swans swimming on Spring Grove's pond. Now, how can I miss?

Oh, it's easy to miss. I do it all the time.

First, the swans' pure white feathers disappear into a blob of nothingness when the camera's meter reads all the dark water and not the white. (Trick the meter, and underexpose to get the swans' detail.)

Secondly, the sun is behind me. Shooting with the sun over your shoulder is a good rule, but one that occasionally should be broken. Today, the water dripping off the swans' beaks disappears when shot that way. (Water generally shows up better when backlit.)

Thirdly, the swans' posture just doesn't work for a photo. The pond, half frozen, gives a nice line to the image, but the birds are too close, too far, too high or too low. (When approaching a subject, sometimes it's better not to have a pre-determined photo in mind. It clouds or even erases other possibilities.)

Lastly, one more way to mess up a photo, and one that most people don't think about. Dragging out the heavy artillery, the big lenses, isn't necessarily the best way to shoot nature. Filling up the frame with the swan might have been too close, and it could have been shot in a zoo. Show a little of its environment, the water, the shore. (Just because you can get photographically on top of the bird, doesn't mean you have to. You don't need a picture of its eyeball. Or maybe you do. But make that decision, and don't automatically put out the big guns.)

And there's plenty of other ways that a picture just doesn't work. The water's too rough. Too smooth. Too dark. Too many reflections.

This photo is OK, certainly not up to Fatali or Beitel standards. But it took 10 minutes, and I was headed to Hanover to buy pretzels.

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Some of my favorite people visited the office Friday. Amy introduced her new son Noah to the staff, and while all the women in the room drooled over her little munchkin, I was taking pictures of her ever-so-bubbly four-year old daughter Sam.
Kids are generally cute, full of energy and terrific for photos. So, please, never, EVER, have them say 'cheese'. They don't even have to look at the camera. Let them play with a favorite toy. They can stand on their heads, do somersaults, jump around, stick their tongue out, pout or laugh. Let them be themselves. Isn't that, after all, what we're trying to catch? Look at your favorite photos, and it's a good bet they aren't the ones of him/her sitting stiffly, staring glassy-eyed at the camera.

I simply showed Sam the chair and we spent the next 10 minutes shooting. It was that easy. Then we started taking pictures of all three for proud papa. But that's a totally different story...

Does this work while taking pictures of your kids?

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When the weatherman got it right Tuesday night (some might say finally), Wednesday morning was a shining, glittering ice show. On trees, power lines, roads and sidewalks.

Is there a better way to show how much ice coated the area than to show birds trying to hang on to the ice-crusted limbs?

The problem, of course, is how to get the photos in the freezing rain without frying the mucho-expensive digital camera. A trusty WalMart plastic bag works as well as anything. Just tear a hole in the bottom, poke the lens through and stick your hands through the handles. It works. Chris at the Camera Center of York says he doesn't sell a 'camera raincoat' because he's never found anything that works for many different cameras, or any better, than a plastic bag.

It certainly doesn't look very sexy, but a plastic bag could be a cheap life saver for your camera. And digital cameras, it seems, 'fry' at the hint of humidity.

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How can we not smile ourselves when we see laughing, cute kids who remind us of how happy we'd all like to be? Tuesday, Mia and Jake Giglio and their mother, Holly, were looking for viola music at Menchey Music in Springettsbury Township.

As they banged happily on the bongos (I'm guessing they were bongos), I was thinking that the owners might have been nervous, the noise disturbing the other customers. But they didn't say anything. The kids were smiling, laughing and doing what kids do. To their credit, Menchey's let the music go on.

It made my day.

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Former York Daily Record photographer par excellence, Kristin Murphy, has left sunny York to work for the Park City, Utah, Record. It's got to be a tough job. Ms. Murphy is an excellent skier, and she's living in the middle of The Greatest Snow on Earth (Utah's state slogan). 'Work' is certainly a relative term.

Like most skiers, Ms. Murphy probably skis for the excitement, the exercise and the adrenaline rush. I ski for the view from the mountain top. Or maybe to provide entertainment for real skiers going up on the lift who have applauded some of my more spectacular crashes.

This view is from Sugarbush, Vermont and the view is so amazing it almost makes you cry. Natural snow covers everything, including the mountains that go on forever. The van, where I left my sanity and my shoes, is a dot far below. The view is beautiful. Me getting down, on the other hand, is downright ugly.

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Like a lot of people, I had always accepted the myth that robins left this area when winter came, and returned once snow ended. The fine folks at Nixon County Park corrected me, and said our red-breasted friends are indeed here all year. Not all of them, but some just head into the woods to find shelter from winter storms.

This robin was one of probably two dozen that descended on a lawn in Springettsbury Township. They always seem to have a quizzical look and this one might have wondered, like many of us, where winter went. Or when the snow will begin.

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Despite rumors that I sat behind Civil War photographer Matthew Brady in school, it's not true. But I've been shooting pictures for a long time, and there still aspects of photography I just can't master. Winter, for example. I love the season-- it's purity of scenes, the cold, the activities. But I have a tough time making it look as good in the camera as what my eye sees.

Here are a few sites I've read to help improve my winter shooting.

http://www.corel.com/uk/pdfs/press/071121_winter_photography.pdf
http://www.creativepro.com/printerfriendly/story/18632.html
http://www.betterphoto.com/gallery/dynoGall2.asp?catID=450

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Took a long weekend to ski in Sugarbush, Vermont, recently. While that was our primary reason to head north, we usually manage some free time to explore the state's backroads, trying to capture Vermont's stereotypical charm of its pastel yellow homes, blue homes, bright red barns, its snow-covered mountains and nearly-frozen rivers.

I've always struggled shooting winter. No matter what I try, winter always looks better in my eye than in the photographs I shoot. But I keep trying-- keep looking for that perfect picture.

But on this day, it was just a house and barn that captured our attention. We were on our way to Magog, Quebec, and our favorite restaurant for dinner (about three hours away) when we spotted a long, winding road that crept up a hill through the snow. Being a firm believer of always taking the road less traveled, we drove up to look over the entire scene. At the top of the hill was a beautiful house and old farm.

Suddenly, the road wasn't important anymore. This farm house told stories about its life and its hard working owners. We knocked at the door to ask permission to take photos of this big white house and the farm across the road. The white-haired lady answered, looked at me rather strangely, and said "My house looks like hell. But go ahead."

Oh, the house could have used some paint, and the gutters were filled with leaves, forcing huge icicles to drip down. The Christmas wreath and other decorations maybe should have been taken down last month. But the place had character. Old rusted locks kept the barn doors closed now; the tractor hadn't plowed anything in years. The fences needed mending and the posts needed to be straightened. An old shirt hung at the broken garage window.

It was plain to see the owners had retired now, and had earned the right to swim in the lifetime of memories made here. And I thank them for letting me photograph this chapter of their life.

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