I get a lot of pictures for this assignment, and frankly none of them would appear in a magazine or a newspaper. But this one is obviously extremely newsworthy. What a picture!

You say you were at an 80mm lens here, you weren't all that far away. Of course this car could blow up - so without question, it's a newsworty situation. Did this just happen to happen while you were in the area and you just happened to have your camera with you? [photographer's note: the car was on fire on the street in front of the building where I work.] Talk about good timing.

Now I see this is an inkjet print. It's a nice looking print. I'm curious if it was scanned from the film or from another print? [photographer's note: It was scanned from film.] Keep in mind always that there is just the potential for a far greater tonal range within the negative than there is within a print. So whenever you have the option, you would certainly be much better off to scan from the negative rather than to scan from the print.

The only change here I would have made is that the bulk of the center of interest here is in the shadow because this is somewhat backlit. I would have increased the contrast. Now its true that the little bit of highlight detail we have in the background is very frail already and we would lose it but it's not important to the scene and most of it's gone already. I think a little more contrast would make everything stand out so much better and make that fire just pop out at you.

I would also be curious as to whether this was the actual cropping of the negative because it is just extremely well composed. Of course, because it is a digital print you would easily have the option of cropping it exactly the way you wanted it. That's one of the many beauties of being able to do your own digital prints.

I would really be curious to know how long it took these guys to get this fire under control. It looks as if they are just arriving. It looks like the water has just been turned on because right now its going down toward the ground and I'm sure that very shortly they moved into a different position where they could get more of that water actually onto the engine. At that point it would probably be more difficult to get as good a balance and composition as you have in this particular shot.

Again we want to have a photograph that we think might have a fighting chance to be used in a newspaper or magazine but this time we want it to be a sports photograph. And we've got here a picture of a girls' basketball game. Again, just an excellent shot.

Now this time this was done with the digital camera, and so the first thing that I'm curious about: it says lens 21mm, now is that converted to a 35mm concept? [note: 102mm equivalent] The problem when you're dealing with optics for a digital camera of course is that you really aren't dealing with 35mm coverage and consequently you don't know. I don't know if 21mm for this is a very wide angle lens or not. What I'm getting at is that this picture has a very long depth of field. It says that the f-stop was f/3.5. This is a very long depth of field for f/3.5, but it may be because a wide angle lens was used. But, because I don't know what the actual coverage for this camera is, I don't know really what 21mm relates to. [photographer's note: the large depth of field is a byproduct of the short 21mm lens on the digital camera. An 102mm lens on a 35mm camera wouldn't yield as much depth of field.]

Here we've got a very tight action shot, and so again I would be curious to know to what extent this picture was actually taken this way and to what extent it was cropped in the computer. This is just about perfect, actually. There's no wasted space here; there's action and movement taking place in all of the picture. There's just a touch of blur in the ball and it's pretty close to a stop action shot even though the shutter speed according to this was only 125th of a second.

It's so nice to see a shot that is done with natural available light because so many of these shots of course are done with flashes. And then what you end up with is the players themselves being way overexposed with very little detail and the background of course nearly black.

The print quality here is absolutely excellent. I wouldn't recommend changing a thing. It's not too often that I make a comment like that.

Now again, this is a beautiful photograph. Of course whenever you're photographing anything that's shiny and metallic there's a tendency for it either to go to black or to white; very bright or very dark. And, of course, when you're working with the window you're totally dependent on the quality of the light that's actually coming through the window. But, this is just excellent, the way we've got all the bright reflections in the center of interest coin and yet the other coins are slightly out of focus and they have a very dark, very soft lighting which really makes the center of interest stand out and really pop out at you.

Now, unless I'm mistaken, under filter you have NDx4, so I think you're telling me you actually used a 4 stop neutral density filter. I don't encounter too many photographers who use neutral density filters and yet I -- you know there are so many gadgets and so many gizmos that you can buy it just doesn't make sense to even attempt to buy all of them. But I really think a neutral density filter is a very valuable instrument. It's very important. When you hit a situation where you need one, there's nothing else that's going to do the job.

Now you must have intentionally wanted to have a short depth of field here. That's the only reason I can think of as to why you would use a neutral density filter here. The f-stop is 2.5, so that all by itself is certainly going to give a short depth of field. What I like about it is - well we know 2/3s of your depth of field is always beyond the point at which you focus the camera, so I'm going to assume that you actually focused on the center of interest coin. Of course then we had enough depth of field so that the edges of the stack of coins right behind it are sharp but by the time you visually get to the other side of the coins it's out of focus.

I think the layout here is excellent. It's a good use of the rule of thirds; our center of interest is pretty much in the exact 1/3s, 2/3s relationship on the diagonal going from the upper right to the lower left.

The lighting is fantastic. It's just well thought out and well executed.