A Place to Pass – Tracey Capone Photography © 2012

Taken in the Scottish Highlands, today’s Photo of the Day, “A Place to Pass,” serves two purposes for me. The first was to flex my depth of field muscle while we were out in the middle of nowhere (but of course still surrounded by amazing scenery) and the second was to serve as a reminder of the, “never a dull moment,” driving experience in both Scotland and Ireland. Since I was working the camera, I passed much of the driving off to my travel companions, but sitting in the passenger seat (for me, on the wrong side of the car) was an experience all in of itself. To say my heart leapt in to my throat on a number of occasions is putting it mildly.

Along the narrowest of roads were tiny, and I do mean tiny, pull offs which the most experienced drivers would simply tuck in to, while still driving full speed, as an oncoming car, also driving full speed, was passing them. It’s very difficult to explain just how nail biting witnessing that was. For those of us who were far less experienced, we opted to tuck ourselves in to the passing places and simply sit there, much to the dismay of the rare car behind us, and wait for the oncoming car to pass. Sufficed to say, as amazing as Scotland was, and despite how much I missed it when I left, I was very happy to be back on the other side of the car and road when I got back to Chicago.

In any event, while the sign itself is really nothing spectacular, this particular sign provided me an opportunity to play with exposure settings to capture a beautifully colorful background while still focusing on the sign itself. This photograph was shot with my Nikon 24-70 2.8 lens at 1/2500, f/4.0. As always, I am a strong supporter of taking your SLR off the automatic settings, knocking it in to manual and taking as many shots as you can, at different settings, to exercise your creative chops, and this photograph was no exception.

Enjoy!
*tracey*