Anyone can take a picture and I do mean anyone! You point and click and voila! You have taken a photograph! Your subject matter, framing, focus, light source, color contrast and balance are not important, what is important is that you’ve captured that moment. That moment that is special to you.

Sometimes it’s important to scout out a location for the perfect viewpoint, the one no one else will get. Sometimes it’s important to use a tripod so that the photograph comes out crystal clear with no blurring. Sometimes it’s important to wait patiently for the perfect moment to snap that picture.

And then there are the other times when you can forget all that and just hope for old-fashioned good luck. Would you believe that some of the below were taken from a moving vehicle…while I was the driver? Or that I just held up the camera, without looking through the viewfinder or the viewscreen, and just clicked the shutter? Believe it!

I’m particularly prone to taking pictures of state-crossing or informational signs.

I also highly enjoy taking pictures of the road ahead of me.

And occasionally taking a picture of the road behind me. This was taken on a fundraising walk across the Manchester bridge. While walking straight ahead, I held up my camera above my head, turned it around and snapped.

While on tours, I usually pay more attention to getting pictures than I do the tour guides’ schpeel. 90% of the pictures I took in Charleston & Savannah were taken on a bus or buggy tour. But that will be a separate post ;-)

Trolley bus tour around the San Diego Zoo.

This was a bus tour along the Amalfi Coast into Positano, but luckily the tour guide let the view speak for itself.

Rocking boat in Bar Harbor.

Self-guided driving tour around town to see all of the “Tacky Lights.”

Self-guided driving tour around Gettysburg National Park.

Sometimes I get to be a passenger and can take more time and care into shooting out of the car window.

This was my most recent “drive-by shooting” and was the inspiration for this post. I literally rolled down my window, stuck my hand out, and clicked (while watching the road of course!).

Photography isn’t just about perfectly framing your subject matter, or “finding the light,” or getting a crisp, focused, high megapixel photo. It’s about memorializing a point in time that will never occur again exactly in the same way. And sometimes that means literally pointing, shooting and hoping for the best!

Anyone can take a picture and I do mean anyone! You point and click and voila! You have taken a photograph! Your subject matter, framing, focus, light source, color contrast and balance are not important, what is important is that you’ve captured that moment. That moment that is special to you.

I have an affinity for taking shots with what I have dubbed the “peek-a-boo” effect. Your main subject is further in the distance, but to give it some texture and depth, I shoot through something, like trees or shrubbery. It just gives your photograph a bit of substance rather than just a square building against a plain blue sky.

Or add some greenery to that white waterfall against the brown rocks (while beautiful in and of itself, sometimes you need a punch of color).

I try to get a little creative, sometimes a little too creative, and the effect my eye caught either doesn’t translate to the photograph or it just looks silly.

Point is, you don’t have blinders on, you don’t just see what is directly in front of you. Walk around, squint, squat and tilt your head and see what else your mind’s eye can capture.