Scott Bricker's loupe, the magnifying eyepiece he uses to examine jewelry, recaptures the flowers in a photograph he took in Le Mars. Bricker's photography hobby took him to the state fair where three of his photos earned ribbons. [Click to enlarge]

As a jeweler, the Le Mars man flips down his magnifying eyepiece to examine gemstones and their settings for perfection.

It's not surprising that, when he's off the job and behind the lens of his camera, he's looking for a little of the same.

A spider perches on a leaf near the Le Mars Municipal Park pond in this photo taken by Scott Bricker. Entitled "Big Daddy Longlegs," this photo won second place in the Animals, Black and White division at the Iowa State Fair. [Click to enlarge]

An abandoned gas station. A ticket seller at the state fair's midway. A spider balancing on a single leaf.

Those are three of the scenes Bricker caught on camera -- each one earning an award at the Iowa State Fair's photo competition among thousands of entries.

But Bricker isn't into photography for the awards.

Scott Bricker returned to the state fair last year for the first time since 1977. He went to see the photography display, which included his award winning photo of a western salsify, which looks like a large dandelion gone to seed. While he was at the fair he snapped this black and white shot of the midway, which earned first place at the state fair this year in the Black and White Night Visions category. [Click to enlarge]

"I like the challenge of taking the ordinary and trying to make it interesting," he said. "Ninety percent of what I do is taken around the county. You end up looking at the world a whole lot differently."

He's the guy you might see out in front of his jewelry shop on a sunny morning taking pictures of a curled leaf in the slotted shadows of a street bench.

Or standing in the freezing cold with his camera catching the sunset in tiny icicles hanging from a barbed wire fence.

At a recent track meet in Le Mars at the Jim Lorenzen Field, Scott Bricker caught the starting line of a race with each runner's foot just taking flight. Bricker said he enjoys how black and white photos reveal textures and shapes. [Click to enlarge]

"I have my favorite spots," he said. "And I start making mental notes -- I want to come back here in the fall; I want to be here at sunset."

And he has a strange attraction to milkweed, which he blames on his sixth grade science teacher at Le Mars Community Schools, Tom DeKoster.

"I can't pass by milkweed without stopping to look for monarch caterpillars," he said.

Scott Bricker spotted this old gas station in Craig when he was out driving around the county with his camera. This photo, entitled "The Good Old Day$," earned a second place ribbon in the Black and White Still Life category at the Iowa State Fair. "It seemed kind of a timely thing," Bricker said of the scene. [Click to enlarge]

Once, he was photographing one such crawler and brought it into his kitchen. Then he stopped to load his digital photos onto his computer. When he came back to the kitchen, the caterpillar was nowhere to be found, despite a search by him and his four kids.

"We forgot about it. Then one day my daughter came running up to me, 'Dad, there's a monarch in the kitchen,'" Bricker remembered. "The thing hatched in our house."

Bricker's love affair with the camera started in high school.

"I had my folks get me a nice 35 mm camera for graduation," he said. "I fooled around with it for awhile, then went completely away from it."

Fast forward several decades. Bricker was headed to Des Moines to pick up his daughter from dance camp, and on a whim he dug out the camera to see what he might catch on film along the way.

On the interstate headed back, Bricker had his eye on the back of a storm system.

"Suddenly a tornado dropped down and crossed the interstate. I grabbed my camera and took a whole series of shots," he said. "I bought a digital camera a week later and I've been nutty ever since."

He says he has a fetish for weather, once again thanks to his sixth grade teacher, but he'll shoot about anything, especially still lifes.

And he has an affinity for black and white.

"In a color photo you tend to see color. With black and white, even when you're shooting people, you tend to see shapes, colors," Bricker said.

He plays with color photography, too. A while ago, Bricker joined a Sioux City camera club. Each March the Sioux City Arts Center displays their works, based on a theme. This year the theme was simple: red.

"You'd be surprised at how hard it actually is to find something that's red, other than a stop sign," Bricker laughed.

He ended up catching a railroad crossing sign with flashing red lights at night while the train blurred by in the background.

Bricker likes taking pictures of the ordinary, but at a different angle.

"It's like when you're talking to a kid, you get on their level," he said. "It's the same thing when you're taking a photo."

Bricker has picked up a few tips along the way, even though he's never taken a photography class.

"The best time to take pictures is evening or morning," he said, explaining that the slanting light catches subjects. That's when he took the picture of a dandelion-like "Western Salsify," which won him a third place ribbon at the Iowa State Fair. "The sun was just perfect."

Another tip: use the rule of thirds. Divide a photo into thirds vertically, then horizontally. Action or focus in a photo should be at the intersections of the lines separating the thirds.

"You never want to center a subject," Bricker said.

And if you're an aspiring photographer, Bricker said, take your camera with you wherever you go. Something may catch your eye.

Maybe the silhouette of an old water pump on an abandoned farm. Maybe a leaf floating on a still pond. Maybe a flower blooming amid concrete in a back alley.

You might even see Bricker there.

Does being a jeweler affect how Bricker takes photos? A little.

"Sometimes I do pictures like I do jewelry -- I stress myself out looking for perfection," Bricker said.

But for the most part, when he slings the soft leather backpack he uses for a camera bag over his shoulder, he leaves the stress of work behind him.

"If you see me out driving in an old red Oldsmobile on a country road on a Sunday afternoon, you might want to be careful," he laughed. "I might be looking up at the sky."