Most photos of sports action are made from close range, in order to express both emotional and athletic content. However in this case, I was seated in a far corner of the stadium, and was not equipped with the specialized long telephoto lenses required for most sports action photography. Instead, I take advantage of this moment when the entire baseball diamond itself is involved in the action during a game between the Colorado Rockies (in white) and the visiting Los Angeles Dodgers (in gray). I easily embrace the entire scene as a long horizontal image, using my frame to tell the story of a particular moment in the game involving at least eleven people -- players, coaches, and umpires. We see a Rockies base runner about to touch first base while the Dodger fielder awaits a throw. Meanwhile, we see another Rockies base runner sprawled on the ground at second base while a Dodger fielder looms over him. Two umpires in black intently study the situations at first and second base, while two Rockies coaches, along with two Dodger infielders and the Dodger pitcher watch the chaos unfolding around them. A slice of the 50,000 spectators in attendance make up the background and foreground. The white foul line leads us into the action from the lower right hand corner of the frame, while the illuminated panels of advertising slicing across the top of the image echo the horizontal sweep of the baseball diamond below it. Where is the ball itself at this moment? It is most likely in flight, although it is too small to be visible in this shot. What we see here instead are the rhythms of the game itself on simultaneous display, placed, spaced, and paced within a long horizontal frame that displays the action before us.

I based this image on the nature of the frame itself. A frame is boundary, and I use it here to abstract the image and reinforce the role of the frame as part of the artistic process. I deliberately slice the painting in half vertically and at the same time slice into the artist with it. A smaller version of the painting is horizontally sliced in half by my frame at the bottom. The painting itself ironically remains unframed.

I use my frame to abstract a barren tree, dividing it in half and leaving the trunk out of the image. The framing forces the imagination of the viewer to see the trunk and the other half of the tree in their mind’s eye. It also increases the energy of the branches, which seem to be reaching for help. By eliminating the central trunk, I’ve made the branches somehow fly on their own.

I use my frame here to humorously juxtapose the bare feet of the shopkeeper with over a dozen pair of shoes.

A long narrow alley between a busy city street and the Mekong River gives me an opportunity to frame a woman doing her washing as if we were looking at her through a keyhole. The jagged sides are the result of twists and turns in the alley itself, which, in turn, reshape the Mekong itself into a long reflection-filled sliver of water. Without the woman in the conical hat, the image would not say what it says – this is a quick and narrow glimpse of daily life in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, where the Mekong and hard work combine to become the washing machine.

Sculptor John Whipple has framed the face of this subject in a porthole. I move in on this frame with my own frame. The closer I come to the subject, the more I limit context with my frame, and the more I can activate the imagination of my viewers. Those who actually viewed this work of art at a Denver's Cherry Creek Arts Festival saw it sitting on a table with other Whipple sculptures. But with this image, I can restrict vision by limiting the subject to just Whipple's own frame and nothing more. The result: a shockingly incongruously abstracted frame-in-frame image.