It's a lot easier to take a great picture when you have an impressive subject, but, composition is still important no matter what your subject matter. This picture is of the Church of the Holy Cross in Sedona, Arizona. The mountains are really that reddish color and the sky that day was a perfect blue.

There are many ways to take a picture but I chose the classic "rule of thirds" composition for this shot and it worked out fairly well for me.

Getting the right picture sometimes requires that you take some really long exposure shots. The picture featured in this article was taken with ISO 100, F19 and required a 10 second exposure at those settings.

The scene is that of a Mexican 'tianguis' after it has been closed and most everybody has gone home - a tianguis is comparable to an open air flea market. The lighting was way less than what the picture leads you to believe, it was very dimly lit with dark corners and shadows everywhere.

I chose this location and time because I knew it was going to be a challenging and difficult picture to take. It helps me learn by taking pictures that challenge my photographic abilities.

What I like about the picture.

Getting your whites really white while taking pictures is a lot harder of a task than it sounds. But, if you want to take great pictures of objects, getting a real white is an important part of the shot.

Start with a soft box, or a light box. A soft box is a fabric box that allows you to light up the object you want to take a picture of without crating hard shadows. The light doesn't hit the object directly so no hard shadow are created.