This is the facade of the Reuter Center, home of the University of North Carolina/Asheville’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute—also known as the College for Seniors. It’s a wonderful resource for folks who move to Asheville to retire, offering diverse educational programs and the companionship of like-minded learners.

Here’s the unaltered image as produced by the GF-1. I was pleased with the intense blues and lines of the building. I debated briefly whether I wanted to get rid of the tiny tree branch protruding into the frame in the upper left, but decided that I liked the little living imperfection.

But I was unsatisfied by the blankness of the glass facade and the lack of drama. I wanted something more abstract and more ambiguous. I made a straight conversion to black-and-white, but that was even duller. It was time to bust out the heavy-duty image filters.

There was some high-pass filtering. Some detail enhancing, some curve manipulation, some toning. Honestly, I can’t remember all the steps, because there were a lot of them. I fiddle with these things pretty relentlessly, trying one thing after another, in various combinations, until I’m happy with the result. My guess is that I spent twenty minutes or so to arrive at this picture.

In this case, I was after an image that would be both optimistic and a little ominous. I love that you can now see into the building, as well as being dazzled by the reflections and the light. The altered version has a retro-futuristic feel that I associate with the golden age of science fiction and—further back—the robo/deco sensibility of Metropolis. To me, this poster for The Age To Come is glamorous, but maybe a little menacing too.

This is not documentation or journalism. It’s not about what was there when I took the photograph, but about what’s in my head and heart when I get it ready to show to someone else.

We all yearn to be acknowledged, to be recognized for who we are what we have contributed. Acknowledgment costs so little and yields rewards all out of proportion. If we are acknowledged, perhaps we will be remembered. Perhaps our time will have been well-spent. Maybe we will leave some trace of our passing.

Memorials are covered with names. We honor people by recording their names in public, and yet—except on rare and special occasions—we then promptly cease to really see or read them. They become background noise, visual wallpaper. They become the texture of the pavement we walk on without noticing at all. Like Ozymandias, our defiance of obscurity and mortality is in vain.

Our best and most enduring memorials are in the living, from generation to generation: those we have loved and who have loved us, whose lives we have nourished with generosity, kindness, guidance, challenge, fun, and creativity. Our legacy lives in the ideas we share with others, whether they remain attached to our names or not.

Drink the tea, leave the dregs, enjoy the light through the empty glass.

This is another image that feels autobiographical: emblematic of my betweenness. The old and familiar have passed away, but surely left their marks. The new is struggling to realize its potential. Nothing is established or settled.

The sun was shining brightly, but there was a chilly breeze. We walked a segment of the Mountain to Sea Trail off the Blue Ridge Parkway. It was a lovely little intermission.

Many outlets, no flow.

This beautiful Biltmore denizen strides along an electrified fence. He’s walked this line before. He knows he’s being observed, admired even.

This is an animal with dignity, grace, and power. The constraints don’t touch his essence.

One of challenges of camera phones is that it’s not always easy to tell what you’ve focused on. I wasn’t really sure what I had until I got it back to my desktop computer and saw it on a large screen.

When I took the photograph, I thought it was entirely about pattern and distortion and texture, but in the end I found it was more about the color. I hope you like this metalic/ecru palette as much as I do.

You’ve probably already seen this video based on an excerpt of David Foster Wallace’s Kenyon commencement address, as it’s gone viral over the last several days. If you haven’t, please watch it. Our responsibility as adults is to choose how we will approach the world, not simply operate on our default setting.

If forced to pick, I suppose I would choose Japanese maples as my favorite tree. They come in so many varieties. Their elegance is unmatched. And they change so brilliantly with the seasons.

A black-and-white representation, then, is a counter-intuitive choice. The original photo is a symphony of new greens, and quite lovely in its own right. But I want to emphasize the delicate texture of the leaves and the contrasting bark and showcase the filtering light.