The hull of the famed US Aircraft Carrier Midway, now a museum in San Diego Harbor, dwarfs this small Naval Security ship on patrol.  I made this photograph from the opposite shore with a 210mm telephoto lens. The message conveyed by this image comes as much from my crop, as it does from the scale incongruity of the small ship cruising below the wave-like pattern painted on the side of the Midway’s huge hull.  A tiny boat protecting what once was one of the largest warships on earth is in itself an incongruity. My initial task was to find an appropriate vantage point, choose the right lens length, and find the best subject placement make it work as a photograph. I waited for the small security boat to move beyond the center of my frame, and then pressed the shutter, creating a moment in time that is rich in both energy and tension. Later, I cropped the entire flight deck out of the top of the frame, and retained only a small amount of water at the bottom. This extreme crop abstracts the subject, reducing the image to its essentials. It also creates a long, thin frame, which intensifies the horizontal thrust of both large and small subjects, as well defining the energy created by the sweep of the hull markings and the echoing wake of the patrol boat.

Phil Douglis, ABC, directs The Douglis Visual Workshops, now starting its 37th year of training communicators in visual literacy. Douglis, an IABC Fellow and “Communication World” columnist, is the most widely known workshop leader and columnist on editorial photography for organizations. He has presented over eleven hundred photographic workshops to more than 10,000 organizational communicators. Starting this year, Douglis offers all of his training programs as one-on-one tutorial workshops in digital imaging and photographic communication. These tutorials provide flexibility in cost, length, and content, extend from one to four days, and can be adjusted to cover everything from basic digital photography skills and photo-editing, to photographic expression. The tutorials are offered in Phoenix, Arizona, on dates selected by participants. You can request information, or schedule training, by sending an email to pnd1@cox.net. You can view Douglis’s multi-gallery cyberbook on expressive digital travel photography at http://www.pbase.com/pnd1