Jody Dole Photographs Objects that Catch His Eye (cont.)

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Ultimately, the subject doesn't matter. "I never limit myself-I'm just as happy photographing a stick or a stone as a Tiffany watch," Jody says. "There's no difference. I just say to myself, let's see what we can do here.

"Maybe the subject has a fascinating design or a great shape, great color or texture. If it's a mundane object, I'll create a setting for it, an environment, and that environment is my response to the challenge."

Sometimes the subject's beauty is at first entirely in the eye of the beholder, imagined in a place where art, craft and vision play in the same sandbox. Take the second photo you see here. How many of us would think of photographing a tumbleweed...in a studio...against a white seamless background?

"That's a story, that tumbleweed," Jody says. "I was on vacation with my family in Sedona, Arizona, and I saw the tumbleweed out in the desert, and I knew it would be great to photograph, but not out here. I wanted to get it back to New York.

"I called the UPS office in town and told them I had this big item that I needed to ship to New York—it was over four feet in diameter. They said, 'Just bring it over.' I was a little embarrassed, but I brought it in, and the guy there laughed, but he found a box big enough. He said it was going to cost 80 dollars because of the size. I said that was OK.

"About a week later we were in the high north desert past Flagstaff, and we picked up other stuff I thought I could use for photos—some stones, dried grass, bones from a cow skeleton—and I took all of that to the UPS office. There was a woman behind the counter this time, and I brought out these bones, rocks and clumps of dirt and grass that I wanted to ship. She saw that I was a little sheepish about it, so she said, 'Oh, don't be embarrassed. Last week some jerk paid 80 bucks to send a tumbleweed to New York.' "

To see more of Jody's work visit his website.