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.

While visiting the chapel of the historic Mission San Francisco Solano in Sonoma, I noticed my friend and fellow pbase photographer Tim May shooting from within a window niche. I used the glowing white walls of this niche to simultaneously abstract and frame him – showing only the lens of his camera and the arm supporting it. This frame within a frame transforms the arm and hand of the photographer into an abstract symbol of an artist at work. I reinforce this concept by leading the viewer to that niche with the gradually darkening 19th century painted wall decorations.

This tomb commemorates the Sultan and King who enabled Morocco to achieve independence. Built in 1969, it’s four marble doorways are fronted by slender columns of Carrara marble, and songs of holy praise carved in Maghrebi script. A caped sentry stands guard over each entrance. In this image, I frame one of the sentries between four different hues of marble. Boxed in, his cloak still blows in the wind.

A coast guard patrol boat passes beneath the gothic towers of one of Newport’s striking Art Deco bridges. I intensify the relationship between the series of triangular pilings framing the boat and the triangular designs on the facing of the bridge tower by organizing my picture into twin, side-by-side frames. The pair of frames within a frame creates a striking contrast, and draws attention to the activity of the tiny figures on the patrol boat.

There is barely enough room to read a newspaper in this Guilin street shop, let along get up and walk around. Working space in China is often at a premium, and this woman makes the most of every inch of it. I framed this image as tightly as I could to intensify the tension created by a human form so casually and tightly squeezed into such a small space. I also cropped the image slightly as well to get as much squeeze as I could into the shot. It is the boundaries of the image that make this photo work as much as the boundaries of the shop itself.

Two policemen, wearing traditional costumes, patrol the streets and plazas of San Miguel. I use a frame within a frame to increase the illusion of depth as well as abstract the image. The policemen are riding on a street well below my level. I am standing in a raised plaza, and I frame the subjects so that they will fit between two ornate posts. The first frame – the edges of the photograph itself -- set the stage. It is the second frame, created by the dark plaza, the two posts, and the horizontal decoration on the background wall, that makes the riders recede into the distance and implies depth. The deeply shadowed plaza in the foreground also abstracts the horses by removing their legs. In seeing less, we leave room for imagination to enjoy more.

I watched this woman, leaning heavily on her cane, take very slow steps as she carefully maneuvered past a series of houses, each with a set of steps of their own. Suddenly a younger person, wearing athletic shoes, emerged from one of those houses and began to descend the steps just in front of the woman with the cane. I used the top edge of my frame to abstract this person, including only the legs. In using my frame in this way, I create an incongruous symbol of youth and vigor. These symbolic young legs contrast to the infirm legs of the woman with the cane. She never looks up. The person coming out of the door stopped and stood silently on the step as she slowly passed.

Using the frame to express meaning does not always involve all four outside edges of an image. We can also frame or enclose a subject within a picture itself by creating an internal boundary, which can guide the eye to the subject as well as express an idea. For example, in this image of two monks passing through a temple compound, I created an additional two-sided frame within the four edges of the image itself. I placed a long white wall, topped by a long row of fearsome golden Nagas – Buddhist Serpent Gods – deeply stacked along the left side of the picture. At the end of that wall is a small building with a triangular gable. I moved the camera to align the outside edge of that long wall with the left edge of the building. The monks were walking back and forth along a pathway between the end of the long wall and the small building, as they worked on maintenance chores. I photographed numerous monks as they moved along this path, and finally was able to relate two of them within a single instant of time. The towering golden wall of Nagas complements the vivid colors of the monk’s robes, yet also dwarfs them, creating scale incongruity. The tall frame echoes the upright posture of the monk at right. More importantly, the frame within the frame pulls the eye into the picture to effectively express the glory and scale of the setting these simple monks inhabit.

A monk examines my world from his cloister in Luang Prabang. I use his open window to symbolize the connection between his world and mine. The window is a frame in itself, a device that allows light into the darkness of his cloister and also allows him to look out beyond the walls that confine him and study life on the outside. This window, a frame working within the frame of the image itself, serves both this symbolic function and a structural purpose. A black hole always pulls the eye to a picture. And the window frames a back hole, creating a focal point. Strong colors draw the eye as well, and few subjects are as vividly colored as the orange robes of a Buddhist monk. The colored robes are bounded by both the frame of the window and the blackness beyond, multiplying the power of the focal point. The window also sits within a white wall, and is bounded by a reddish brown frame of its own, and green shutters. The wall provides strong contrast for these elements as well. I also placed the window off center, so that the monk, whose body faces to the right, has more space to lean into. He looks over his shoulder at us as he leans, one hand on the window ledge, as if to ask us what we are looking at.

This old yellow Thunderbird parked along Bridgeport’s Main Street, is looking for a buyer in front of the town’s “deer processing” facility. During our three-day visit, neither plant nor car was attracting much attention. Bridgeport is a rural Sierra town that looks back with pride at its past. I use my frame to abstract the image, linking these two symbols of vintage Americana without distraction and in an incongruous manner.

Since July, 1997, Hong Kong has been part of China under a special "One Country, Two Systems" arrangement. It is free to pursue its capitalist lifestyle and its own political, economic and social systems. It only submits to Chinese authority in foreign and defense affairs. In this photo, both the Hong Kong and Chinese Flags fly from Hong Kong's City Hall, against a backdrop of I.M. Pei's Bank of China skyscraper. I used my frame to contain eight thrusting diagonal lines and three strong vertical lines, creating a dynamic display of energy that complements the fluttering flags and hanging palm frond. The frame here is an editing device, unifying both the new building and the old, and creating a field for the elements that flow within it.

I saw the corrugated metal fence first, with its great red arrow directing pedestrians around a major construction site. Then I noticed a tree spreading its leafy canopy over the sidewalk. And finally, I saw how the stairs, curb, and sidewalk pattern complemented the thrust of the arrow. I photographed a number of different people walking through this frame, but none of them told a story until this man and woman came along, each of them carrying a child. China, now the world’s most populous country, has had a “one-child per family” policy in effect for over 20 years now, particularly in its urban areas, yet this couple had two kids in hand (assuming of course, that they were actually their parents, and not just friends out for a walk with their children.) In any event, it makes a provocative picture because it focuses on China’s family planning policies, and it’s the nature of my framing that makes the picture work.

We can feel the walls pressing in upon us in Ushuaia’s old jail, now a prison museum in the world’s southernmost city. A jail is designed as a series of oppressive frames or rectangles, and I frame this wooden prison guard to intensify this feeling. His body defiantly takes its stand within a steel pen. A doorframe wraps around him from behind. To each side of him is a series of receding cell doors. A long row of steel pens lead the eye down the middle of the photo. We don’t see the prisoners, but we can imagine their presence in this stifling place. This image uses frames within frames as subject matter, a perfect metaphor for a picture from an old jailhouse.

Masses of visitors approach Hanoi's Temple of Literature at Tet, the Chinese New Year. Although there are actually less than twenty five people in this picture, their placement in the frame implies that there are many more than that. They flow towards me, and then seem to continue beyond the confines of my image. This is largely because I have pushed both the bottom and right hand edges of my frame into the crowd to funnel it into the lower right corner. I leave no space around them except at left , which gives form to this long line of visitors.

I wanted more than just another picture of gilded church domes. I wanted a photograph rich in energy, particularly tension. I chose a camera position allowing me to shoot one dome emerging from another. I noticed a thin span of blue sky running between the big dome at center and the smaller steeple on the left. That small area creates tension, and I increased it by zooming in to apply pressure on all four sides of the picture at once. The gilded tiles glitter in the morning sun. The decorative sunburst coming out of the steeple is an appropriate touch for this sunsplashed picture. But the key element is the pressure I applied to those structures from the edges -- it makes the entire image crackle with energy and tension.

This photo of two sleeping Alaskan sled dog pups brings viewers a closeup view of an intimate moment. By choosing to frame it tightly, I kept everything else out of the shot and intensify its sense of intimacy. The closer I came to these pups, the more tightly they cuddled. How we use our frame can determine what our pictures will express.

McCarthy, Alaska, is an unconventional place. So I used unconventional framing to express the character of this rough and rugged place, truly America's last frontier. We are trained to frame things whole. But when appropriate, why not express an idea with fragmented framing? I feature the dawn light striking the Moose antlers that adorn the facade of McCarthy's general store, but deliberately fragment its sign. McCarthy itself is a fragment of the past -- one of Alaska's hidden gems. The infamous McCarthy Road ends at the Kennecott River. You have to hike the final mile into town, crossing two footbridges. The place once hosted carousing copper miners from nearby Kennecott. With the mines long closed, McCarthy manages to survive virtually unchanged, a charming ghost town that refuses to die.

I was originally attracted to this facade because of its brilliant colors and the effect of mid-day light. But I needed to somehow bring it to life if the picture was to communicate. I use a technique I call "stage-setting" to energize the shot. My camera's frame becomes a stage. The colorful store is the backdrop. All I needed were people to walk on stage to spontaneously create my play. I framed the building and waited for passing pedestrians to enter stage left. As they passed the first window, I made this picture -- a couple with perfectly matching strides marching past a row of shuttered windows. It is siesta time in Brazil, and everything shuts down. Our couple does not even notice the storefront -- they are intent on getting where they are going. They are oblivious to the brilliant colors, the long shadows, the white arches, and the lantern over their heads. What they take for granted, we see with fresh eyes. And all because of how I framed it.