SIGHT UNSEEN: Our favorite photos that didn’t run this year

Sunday, Dec. 23, 2007 | 6:56 a.m.

These photographic orphans are some that I have taken on other assignments but were never meant to be published. Sometimes an image presents itself and I shoot it. I look at the preview on the back of the camera and maybe pull it up full-size on my laptop later.

Sometimes I'll make it the wallpaper for my laptop monitor until something else catches my attention. Then it is filed away, destined for a DVD or hard drive somewhere, likely never to be seen again.

I don't know why I don't do anything with them. Maybe it's a little voice in my head - courtesy of a college professor - saying sunsets and silhouettes do not make good photos. But to me, the photo of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis is less a silhouette than an exercise in playing with lines. And the photo on the front page isn't a photo of a sunset per se, but of the leading edge of an airplane wing reflecting the darkening sky somewhere over Utah.

Occasionally I will come across a scene that appeals to my odd sense of humor and appreciation of the absurd. When I saw the Wisconsin marching band seated along a guardrail, eating box lunches, all I could think of was the same scene being played out back in Wisconsin, but with a few dozen starlings on a country telephone wire instead.

Thank you for looking.