My name is Steven Gotz. I refer to myself as a Zootographer, but this post is really about photography in general. On the AYP Club Facebook page I suggested to a photographer that he might have benefited from working the scene. Then, I realized I really needed to explain myself. After I showed Marc Silber what I had written, he suggested that I post it here in order to share it more widely with the Advancing Your Photography family. It is a bit of a long story, but here goes…

My wife is a huge fan of the Eagles. Not the ones with wings, the ones that sing. You know, “Hotel California”, “One of These Nights”, “Peaceful Easy Feeling”, “Desperado”, and more.

The founding members were Glenn Frey (guitars, vocals), Don Henley (drums, vocals), Bernie Leadon (guitars, vocals) and Randy Meisner (bass guitar, vocals).

One of the most memorable songs ever written, “Take It Easy”, was actually started by Jackson Browne in 1971 for his own eponymous debut album but he had difficulty finishing the song. Glenn Frey lived in the same apartment building. When Jackson played the unfinished second verse for Glenn, the one that starts with “Well, I’m a-standin’ on a corner in Winslow, Arizona…“, Frey finished the verse with “Such a fine sight to see. It’s a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford, slowin’ down to take a look at me.” That led to them finishing the song together and it ended up as the first track on the Eagles debut album and their first single.

Enough music talk. This is about photography, right? So, moving on… There is a corner in Winslow Arizona, a small town in the middle of nowhere on the famous old Route 66 that could benefit from tourists, where they erected a statue of a guy with a guitar, and called it “Standin’ On the Corner Park”. They painted a mural on the wall of the building that made it look like there were windows and there is a painted, simulated reflection of the girl in the Flatbed Ford. This place is heaven for Eagles fans and fun for casual photographers.

We were in Arizona some time back visiting her relatives, and being the great husband I am, I suggested that we take a three hour drive from Phoenix, through a National forest, over to Winslow so my wife could have her photo taken next to the statue. She jumped at the chance and off we went.

When we arrived, we parked nearby and walked over to the famous corner. We came upon this scene. Apparently there are people from all over the world waiting in line to take photos almost every day of the year. OK. Makes sense to me. So I suggested to my wife that she could wait in line and call me when it was our turn to take a few snapshots. That is all I expected to get. The sun was high in the sky, and I really just needed “Look where we were” and “Isn’t this cool?” snapshots.

They painted the famous Route 66 emblem in the street to emulate map software

That said, off I still went in search of a photograph. First off, you know how in some map programs, you can see the name of the highway written on the street in big letters?

Winslow took it to the limit*.

They actually painted it on the pavement. You might notice that the wall is standing there by itself. No building. Odd? Well, the building burned down in 2004 but the wall survived. Not much of a photograph here, but I could see I might be building a story for my wife’s Facebook page if I kept looking.

Statue of Glenn Frey erected after he passed away in 2016

I went over to look at the statue they erected of Glenn Frey after he passed away in 2016. It is just down a little ways from the statue of the guy on the corner. The light was just too harsh to get much of a photo but that didn’t stop me from clicking the shutter. I knew for sure that some of these shots would end up on my wife’s Facebook page.

Closeup of the Glenn Frey statue in the harsh sunlight

If I had brought a large reflector or something to use to mitigate the harsh rays of the sun, I might have had a photo. But sadly, in my opinion, still just a snapshot. I pointed and took the picture. I didn’t “Make” or “Discover” or “Shape” the image. This is after I lightened the shadows in Lightroom. No amount of dodging and burning and other editing is really going to be worth the effort. It is just a statue.

Making Route 66 and “Take It Easy” T-Shirts across the street

Being in Arizona, it was a hot day, so I went across the street to get a Route 66 Root Beer. Which really hit the spot, by the way. In the back of the store, around the corner from the restrooms, if I recall correctly, I found this fellow, Nick, making T-Shirts to sell in the store and I watched him work for a while. I asked if I could take a photograph of him working. He thought I must have heat stroke or something for wanting to photograph him, but he agreed. Seemed silly to him, but what the heck. I shot the scene above just to help me visualize what might be possible, and then I waited. And waited. Then I found the photo I wanted.

This is the first of only two “photographs” I got that day

When I saw what I had captured, I was reasonably pleased. I liked the composition, and the subject matter was new to me. So I went back out to find that my wife was next in line. Good timing as luck would have it. Any later and I would have had some explaining to do. Here are a few silly snaps of her, but stick around for the rest of the story afterwards. By the way, I did get his email and I sent him the shot when I got home.

Laura with a Route 66 Root Beer and the statue of Glenn Frey

I rather liked this one. The love of my life and a cold root beer. Great combo.

Laura with the statue of the guy Standin’ On The Corner

Then I took this one when it was finally our turn, and even though it is a snapshot, and intended to be a snapshot, I just felt that I needed something else. Something better. The girl’s reflection was there in the window but I decided I needed more context. So I shot this next one.

This one just had a little more context

I was happier with this shot. More context. I got the guy on the corner, my wife, the girl in the Flatbed Ford, and the entire name of the town. Those really do look like windows don’t they. But they aren’t. It is just a mural.

When she was sure I had enough snapshots for her to show her friends and family, she went off to see what they had in the store, and to get another Root Beer for me, and I stood staring at this red Flatbed Ford that someone had parked on the street in front of the “park”. Apparently they park it there whenever it is not in use to enhance the ambiance of the area and increase tourism. Seems like a great idea to me.

All three in the shot during a rare quiet moment on the corner

So I went about figuring out how to get a nice shot of the truck, the statue and the painted reflection. The results were OK, but nothing special. There had to be something more here. I could feel it, but I couldn’t yet see it. If my wife had been next to the statue I probably would have taken that shot and been done. But as long as she was still shopping, I was going to find that darn photograph if it was there to find.

Was that Glenn climbing into the truck???

I looked high, I looked low, I looked left, I looked right. I moved left and right. The voice of Joe McNally, one of my favorite photographers, echoed in my head. “Work the Scene!” he kept saying.

While I could not move up, at some point, I crouched down (I am 6’3″ tall, so I had to crouch) to see what the shot looked like from the window level of the Flatbed Ford parked on the street. It was at that point that I saw something that jumped out at me and yelled “PHOTOGRAPH”. Was the statue of the late Glenn Frey appearing to climb into the truck to take a ride in the Flatbed Ford?

I tried zooming in a bit – but that really wasn’t what I wanted

I tried zooming in to see if I liked that better but it didn’t help. It made it worse. It needed something different. I kept looking.

I zoomed out a bit and finally got what I wanted. This was my photo!

I zoomed out a bit. This was pretty much the photograph I wanted. I could see Glenn appear to be getting into the truck. I got all of the truck with the girl in the mural. And I got enough of the “W” in “Winslow” to make it obvious. In retrospect I should have gotten all of the “W” and then cropped to 16:9 later to help the composition.

In my defense, this was only about three years into my studying photography. But at the time, it really made me happy. When I got home I looked everywhere on the Internet trying to find a photo like it. None could be found at the time through a reverse Google search. I just looked again, just now. I stopped writing this blog post to look. I am pretty sure that out of the many thousands of tourists, many of whom are likely fine photographers, nobody else has this shot.

However, if you can find a shot that has the statue of Glenn Frey that appears to be climbing into the truck, please let me know. I would love to see that someone else worked the scene and found the same shot.

I hope that you caught the two ideas I wanted to throw out there. The first is that if you see someone you want to photograph, don’t be afraid to ask. And make sure to share your results with them. After all, how many people get to have a photographer come take a photo of them doing their job?

The other idea and the point of this post is to “Work The Scene”. Look high, look low, left and right. And remember to look behind you to make sure that the reverse isn’t a shot also.

Thanks for sticking with me on this little journey. This kind of thing is not my specialty. I don’t shoot travel, or street very often. But I had fun doing it. So go out, have fun, and make photographs. I am a Zootographer, so if you can’t figure out where to go, or what to take photographs of, visit your local zoo soon, or when they reopen. There is always something interesting to point your camera at when visiting a zoo. Animals, people, plants, architecture, food, you name it.

One more thing. If you get the chance, “Get your kicks on Route 66!”

* That was a pun. “Take It to the Limit” is another Eagles song.