I’ve been trying to make this type of image at Rehm Pool in Oak Park for two years. It’s a very simple image to make, one that probably most photojournalists have succumbed to shooting at least once in their career, but getting access here was trickier than I ever dreamed it would be.

I shot this from the lowest level of three tiers of high dives at the pool. It overlooks a diving board about 15 feet below. I tried to get pre-approval to shoot from there last year, but there was some sort of hangup. Insurance reasons or something as I recall. Anyway, I just stopped by the pool last Tuesday on a whim and essentially talked my way past the front gate despite a few manager types stopping me to ask a variety of questions. Once I got past that, I figured what the heck, let’s give it a try and simply climbed up the ladder and began shooting photos of kids leaping into the pool below.

Lasted about four minutes before a teenager working at the pool came up and told me I wasn’t allowed to be up there without the presence of a lifeguard. So that was that, but not before I shot this photo of Spencer Smith, 11, half way through a flip.

My encounters with Lindner were occasional at best. During my days working as a journalist in Cincinnati, I’d see him now and again at various press conferences. Maybe at the Reds’ ballpark when he was the team’s owner for a stint. That’s about it. He shook my hand a couple times, though our conversations never once extended past a polite, “Hello”.

Once, at the opening of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, I got a glimpse inside his banana cream-colored Rolls-Royce Phantom. Rumor had it the car was so rare it came with its own driver, but what impressed me most was the umbrella that popped out of the door for quick necessity when it was raining.

Patrolling downtown one day as a staff photographer for The Cincinnati Post, I noticed a street performer playing his guitar for spare change outside a drug store on Walnut St. I was trying to juxtapose the smiling faces on the wall with the forlorn man trying to earn a buck. I worked on it for some time and eventually one of my colleagues at The Post, a Cincinnati legend himself, Melvin Grier stopped to talk after seeing me.

Melvin and I chatted for a few minutes and if it wasn’t for him, I would not have noticed Lindner pull up in front of the musician. Melvin pointed him out and I quickly snapped two frames before Lindner drove away. It never ran in the paper, but like many images, this photograph has layers that might not be obvious to the masses.

At a time when the populace seems extraordinarily attuned to the vast differences between rich and poor in this nation, this type of photo may have some added significance. Lindner was among America’s richest with a net worth reportedly in the billions, and while I’m not here to suggest he didn’t earn every darn dime of that, it is nonetheless striking to see the range in prosperity even in a modest Midwestern town like Cincinnati. Occupy what you will.

You’re worth what you can earn in this country. Still, the difference between rolling around town in a $500,000 convertible and strumming your way to your next meal can appear as narrow as a one-way city street. Where pigs fly and a river runs through it.

An evening shower gave the road a shimmer and so I thought, “What the heck, let’s shoot it again.”

No matter where I go, I tend to shoot near or at water stands. I think many shooters do, mostly because the stands are at every mile along the course, but also because it offers something other than shots of people simply running. Water is splashed. It provides back light. It adds a connection between the runners and those who line the race path.

When I photograph a large race like this — there were some 40,000 runners — I try to cover only the slices and edges of the area I’m in. You can’t cover it all. No individual photographer can. Besides, there are hundreds of people photographing it, so I simply concentrate of trying to photograph something “different” in the precise area I’m at. The one photograph I shot that I liked this go around was of a woman who stopped to watch runners pass by as she collected beer cans left over from the drunks the night before. Next year, who knows where I’ll go? I’m open to suggestions!

I might post other images, but this is one from above a country club as a lone golfer sizes up about a four footer. Tough to concentrate when a hot air balloon is hoovering above. Not surprisingly, he ran it past the hole and gave a look skyward as if to say, “Are you kidding me?”

We elevated more than 1,000 feet in the air and floated for nearly six miles before landing in a subdivision in Cary, Ill.

I was far more interested in the spectacle setting overhead. Instead of shooting the first half with my longer glass, I decided to use my wide angle to try and document the overall scene. Sort of a kickoff image for the fall.