Congratulations Garey Gomez! - April 2019 PFRE Photographer of the Month

Thank you so much for this wonderful honor! Thank you to the jurors who spend so much of their time giving thoughtful feedback on the entries; there is so much to learn from those comments, and I can never seem to get enough of it. And I suppose that over the last few years, thoughtful feedback has been the number one driver in my development as a photographer. Education in general is so critical for progress, as is constructive criticism from others, and I can't stress enough just how big of an impact it has made on me.

A huge THANK YOU to all who have taken the time to teach. A special thank you to Tony Colangelo whose coaching gave much-needed context and clear definition to my intuition and impulses as a photographer, and set the framework for how I compose every shot. And, I suppose, thank you also to Scott Frances, who brought me to this incredible piece of architecture in Palm Springs during his workshop last May (more education!), and for showing me a thing or two before I got to shoot this photo.

This house was the last created by Donald Wexler, and I can only hope my career takes me inside more architectural gems like this one. There really were only two places to put the camera in this room. One shot was from the door, which is immediately camera right, and the other was this one-point from inside the closet. I felt compelled to shoot this one-point (as I often do), and some important decisions were made about precisely where to put my camera, based on the cantilevered beam outside, how much of the bed I wanted to show (or how much I wanted to omit is more like it), and also wanting to have a clear path to walk through the photo.

Farther to the right and I would have had more of the cantilevered beam, but the bed became too dominant. A step to the left, and I lost too much of the outdoor view. I landed here as a result of those decisions. We were not allowed to move anything but here, I don't think that was much of a limitation, thankfully. If I could have, I would have moved the small table next to the chair and I would have better positioned the outdoor chair. I shot this on a Nikon D750 and a Nikkor 19mm tilt shift lens shifted a little to the right and maybe up a touch as well. I shot a wide set of brackets, but only used two of them for this blend. No flash was used; was not needed, and I feel it might actually ruin the shot. I made some finishing touches in Luminar and made a slight crop off the right side. Very simple edit here, just letting the perfect conditions and perfect location work their magic.

Thank you again to all involved in making this community so helpful and for facilitating this contest in such a way that allows me to learn. I'm really enjoying myself here!