I wandered through the dark forest with a feeling of sadness and dread. Ancient spirits floated among the branches. I was lost. Unmoored.

I made this image on November 6, 2024. The day after the election. Stunned by the results. Wandering aimlessly through the ironwood forest at the Kalaupapa Lookout on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. A silent monument to another time when we took something that didn’t belong to us, in order to hide what we didn’t want to see, because we feared what we didn’t understand.

Eventually, I stumbled upon this scene, which seemed to encapsulate what I was feeling. The limbs of one tree spread eagled in resistance, even as they were locked within the arms of another. Courage in the face of futility. Belief in the ability to survive the storm.

When we first descended into this dark place, I gave my fellow citizens the benefit of the doubt. They had been lied to and manipulated, and didn’t know what they were signing up for. Because, of course, if they knew the truth they would never have supported the charlatan’s call for change.

This time is different. No one can claim to have misunderstood the truth. It was plain as day, out there for all to see. At best, they didn’t care. Maybe they thought the ends justify the means. At worst, they chose to believe despite all the evidence to the contrary. Either way, they got what they wanted. And what they deserve.

Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.

I was lying prone on the sidewalk, squinting up through the viewfinder at the singer belting out a tune. She was into it, and so was I. I was just along for the ride, trying to hold the camera steady against my body that wanted to rock to the tune. Rolling around on the ground without a care in the world, barely conscious of the other people nearby enjoying the music. And all because of a playing-card-sized piece of plastic hanging around my neck.

I had volunteered to be a photographer at the San Rafael Porchfest, an annual event where 70 bands take over two dozen porches in the historic Gerstle Park neighborhood for an afternoon of music and dancing in the streets. While I am an occasional street photographer, event photography is pretty far outside of my comfort zone. I often joke that, outside of my street work and some family candids, I don’t really like shooting things with eyes. Portraits, weddings, wildlife: Not my usual jam.

Even street photography makes me uncomfortable. I am a self-conscious and therefore surreptitious street photographer. Shooting from the hip, using a longer lens, shooting wide while pretending to aim at a distant landmark. Because I assume (correctly or not) that no one really wants their picture taken by some random old guy with a camera.

But event photography is different. People expect you to take their picture. Sometimes they even ask you to. And as a result, my self-consciousness faded away, freeing me to get closer to my subject. To point my camera with abandon, reacting to the moment. To concentrate on what is in front of the lens, rather than distracting myself with the self-doubt behind it. Which is where I found myself at Porchfest, happily snapping away with a plastic card hanging from my neck, proclaiming me to be an “All Access Photographer.” That was all it took to free me from myself. To get me to interact, rather than avoid eye contact.

I embraced the moment, snaking my way through the crowd as I looked for better vantage points to capture what I saw. I pointed my lens without fear or doubt, sending a smile of thanks as I snapped someone’s picture or briefly blocked their view. Without that little piece of plastic, I would have hung back on the edges, blending into the background. Unnoticed and unobtrusive. Creating forgettable images that recorded the moment but revealed little else.

There is a lot to be said for forcing yourself outside of your comfort zone. To stretch yourself and try something different. Take a risk. Embrace the fear and see what comes of it. You might be surprised by what you find out about yourself. And maybe that will lead you in a new direction, or influence a path you are already on.

San Rafael Porchfest, Sept. 15, 2024. You can learn about the bands appearing at the festival, and see more of my images, and those captured by other volunteer event photographers, on the Porchfest website.

We had driven past the bar a few times on our way elsewhere, and I couldn’t take it anymore. So the next time we drove past, I made everyone stop and wait while I jumped out to make a photograph. I worked the scene as best I could, mindful of the three cars in our caravan idling just up the road, eager to get to the next shooting destination.

I’ve written about my attraction to anachromisms before. So it should come as no surprise that when I saw the corner bar with an iconic 7-up sign poking out I had to photograph it. The dated angular building with its wood panel siding, faux-rock foundation, and rusty air conditioner poking out of the side would have been enough to turn my head on any day. The old 7-up sign would have made me slow down and stop if I was on my own. But the name of the bar – oh the name – was just too good to pass up, even if it meant annoying some of the other photographers in our group.

Grumpy’s Tavern. I mean, how perfect is that?

It was 9:30 in the morning, and the bar was open. I glimpsed a single patron through the window, sitting at the bar sipping a beer. The streets were empty; the sky overcast. A sad and lonely place. I was in the small town of Garfield, Washington, in the middle of the Palouse, not far from the Idaho border. Grumpy’s occupies one corner of the town’s main intersection. While I was able to learn that Garfield was founded in the 1880s and named in honor of the recently-assassinated 20th president of the United States, I haven’t yet uncovered how Grumpy’s got its name. I wanted to go inside to hear its story, but didn’t have the time.

Resigned to staying outside, I moved quickly around the building, searching for compositions. I shot the building from every angle I could find in my quick circumnavigation before running back to the cars, apologizing for the short delay. I made a few mistakes in my haste (letting unwanted elements creep in at the edges and neglecting to observe some background distractions), but I was generally pleased with the images, given the constraints.

But while my photographs captured the emptiness I had felt out on the street, it still felt like something was missing. Whether that was in the photograph or the experience I could not say. Probably both. Because, had I been on my own, I would have slowed down. Had a beer. Spent more time wandering the streets, waiting for something to develop. A change in the light. Someone walking by. A dog sniffing at the door. I wanted to go back to explore some more, but never made the time.

That feeling of a missed opportunity persisted when I returned home and began editing the images. But what could I do about it, months later? Then I remembered a trip to Disneyland back in 2013. The parade down Main Street. Snow White twirling to a quick stop, looking straight into my camera and striking a pose before quickly twirling away. I remember the moment. Followed by the disappointment when I saw the resulting photograph, which was marred by distracting background and foreground elements. Not much use for anything but a memory. Filed away, mostly forgotten. Until now.

Grumpy’s. Snow White. Duh.

I don’t often play with composites, but Photoshop made it easy to pluck Snow White off Disneyland’s Main Street and plunk her down on Garfield’s. Creating images like this wasn’t what drew me to photograph Grumpy’s in the first place, but it was an interesting exercise nonetheless. The composites are neither better nor worse than what I started out with. Just different.

I only wish I had some pictures of Grumpy and the other dwarves to plop down there too. Can’t you see Sleepy passed out on the sidewalk while Doc bends over with a concerned look on his face? I suppose I could have generated that with AI, but I prefer to work only with images that I created, which left Snow White all alone on the street. Walking up to the bar to meet Grumpy and the other dwarves.

The Snow White – Grumpy connection was obvious. What might I do with some of my other photographs of old, anachronistic buildings? What kind of connections might I find between other images I’ve made? Where would that take me? It’s an intriguing path to think about going down.

June 15, 2024, Garfield, WA (Fujifilm XT-5, Fujifilm XF 16-80 f/8 @ 1/300) & October 25, 2013, Disneyland (Pentax K-30, Sigma 18-50, f/4 @ 1/640). When I made the image of Grumpy’s I was on a photo tour with Jack Lien, who I highly recommend if you are thinking of visiting the Palouse.

My computer was due for an upgrade. Lightroom was getting slow, and I was getting tired of watching the little thinking circle going round and round as the program tried to catch up to what I was doing. Photo editing and curation is often an intuitive process, and anything that gets in the way takes me out of the flow, making it difficult to continue with my work. So when I returned from a recent long road trip with 4,000+ images, I knew I couldn’t put off an upgrade any longer.

I build a new computer every 4 or 5 years. That’s about how long it takes for Lightroom and Photoshop to advance beyond my computer’s capabilities. Aside from the cost savings and ability to configure my rig to meet my specific needs, I find that building a computer is a rewarding process in and of itself. It’s not difficult. Most of the components are plug and play, and anyone handy with a screwdriver can manage it without much problem. But what I really enjoy is the sense of accomplishment when I press the On button for the first (or second or third …) time and everything works as it is supposed to. Like magic.

Having just finished building my new PC, I thought it might be helpful to share a little bit about my process for anyone out there who may be interested in doing the same. (All you Mac users can feel free to leave now. :-) Anyone who enjoys looking for new photo gear will get a kick out of designing their new computer system. (Just keep in mind that, like new camera gear, a better computer isn’t going to improve your lightroom or photoshop skills or make you a better photographer. It will, however, make you more efficient.)

Computer geeks – like photo-nerds and audiophiles – often share a deep interest in electronics, and love nothing more than debating the importance of esoteric technical specs, many of which have little or no practical impact in the real world. Which means there is a wealth of information out there to help you build your own computer. I’m not going to try to replicate that, much less tell you what to build or how to do it. But I will help you find the information you actually need to configure and build your rig, should you decide to follow me down that rabbit hole.

The first thing you need to do, of course, is pick your components. But there are a ton of parts out there to choose from, and three times as many opinions about which one to buy. So how do you choose? Especially when most of the information out there is geared towards gamers, rather than creatives? You might want to start by deciding on a CPU, which will narrow your choices when it comes to picking a motherboard and other parts. (Think of the CPU as the brain of your system and the motherboard as its nervous system.) When picking a CPU (and other key components) I first consult the hardware recommendations from Puget Labs, which designs rigs for photographers, video editors, animators and other creatives. Puget’s website has free bench test results for CPUs and other components, and includes specific hardware recommendations for both Lightroom and Photoshop users. (While you could just order a box from them and be done with it, their systems can be expensive. The rig I just built cost me $2,200 in parts; a similarly configured system from Puget would have cost north of $5,000.)

Once you have settled on a CPU and motherboard, add in the other components according to your needs – a computer case, power supply, graphics card, data storage devices, a couple memory (RAM) sticks, and a dedicated cooler for your CPU. Those choices aren’t that difficult and can largely be determined by price as you will find many parts with similar specs and reviews. The most fun (and difficulty) I had was in picking a new case, which can be based primarily on aesthetics (but pay attention to ease of use reviews too). My past builds used a case noted more for its silence than its looks; in the latest build I went in the opposite direction, selecting a white case with a glass side panel and light-up RGB fans inside.

As with camera gear, sorting through reviews can be a time-consuming headache. I found two youtube channels to be particularly helpful in researching parts for my new build: Tech Notice (one of the few channels geared towards systems for creatives) and Gamers Nexus (a channel primarily for gamers but with a consumer-oriented focus that provides information that is just as useful for people like us). Once you’ve narrowed your selection, go to Newegg (or Amazon) to check prices and read reviews before finalizing your decision. And don’t forget to check PC-Part-Picker, which will make sure the parts you selected are compatible with one another (or help you find others to use instead).

If you’re interested in the parts I chose, I’ve included a full list at the end of this post. But how you configure your system will depend on your specific workflow and needs, which are probably different from mine. For instance, I needed my motherboard to have lots of m.2 and SATA ports because I use a lot of different storage devices in my rig: fast m2s for the operating system and Lightroom, SSDs for photographs I am currently working on, and larger platter drives (3.5” HDDs) for photos that have already been curated, organized and edited.

Once I had my parts in hand, it only took me a few hours to put them all together. Tom’s Hardware has a nice step-by-step illustrated overview of the build process (and a helpful forum for when you get stuck). If you prefer to watch rather than read, Linus Tech Tips has a detailed, albeit lengthy, tutorial on its youtube channel. A video showing someone building a system inside the specific case you chose can be invaluable when you hit a roadblock; look around youtube and you’re sure to stumble into one.

Downloading the full motherboard manual (which is typically more detailed than the one they ship in the box) can help you identify what to plug in where. And there are always youtube videos showing you exactly how to install other parts (like a CPU cooler) where the included instructions are unclear. Once everything is connected up, just hook up a keyboard and monitor and you’re ready for the moment of truth. Press the button, cross your fingers, and hope the computer boots up.

Then it’s just a matter of getting everything set up. First update the BIOS (“Basic Input Output System”) and install your operating system (Windows 11 for most of us). From there, it’s just like setting up the computer you took out of a box, but with better bang for your buck, and a lot less crapware to deal with.

That’s all there is to it. When your new computer boots up, feel free to crack a beer and give yourself a pat on the back for a job well done.

Then get back to work.

Sunrise comes early in the summer. Too early. The sun was already well above the horizon at 6 a.m., when my eyes fluttered open. No one else was around to help get my lazy ass out of bed. So I laid back and closed my eyes again, enjoying the last few moments of sleep.

It was nearly 7 by the time I rolled out of the parking lot. I was in Prineville, Oregon. An hour west of the Painted Hills, part of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. I had never been there before, or even heard much about it. But a few weeks earlier I had spied it on a map, as my finger traced possible routes up to the Palouse. A bit of internet sleuthing had me convinced it was a worthy place to spend a few hours scouting on my way north. Which is how I found myself in an old ranch town in the Oregon high desert on day 3 of a 3-week road trip.

The Painted Hills are formed from mineral-rich layers of hard claystone created from ash and pumice released by ancient volcanic eruptions in the Cascade mountains 100 miles to the west. The alternating bands of color reflect millions of years of climate change: rust-colored bands rich in iron emerged from swampy conditions during periods of warm, wet weather, while yellow and tan bands pockmarked with black magnesium oxide deposits reflect drier and cooler conditions dominated by hardwood forests.

I saw hints of what was to come as I made my way east out of Prineville along the Ochoco Highway. The rural landscape quickly gave way to a dense conifer forest as the road began to climb, leading me through twisting canyons and over steep ridges of multi-colored volcanic rock. It was a beautiful drive, but there were few places to pull over, and I was content to soak it up with my eyes instead of my camera.

After descending a steep narrow canyon, I turned left off the highway onto a dirt road leading to the Painted Hills. Rounding a bend, I spied a low hill streaked with bands of red and yellow. Soft morning light floated gently over its rounded edges. I pulled over to stretch my legs and take a closer look. I was enthralled, but this was just a tease.

I soon found myself in an empty parking lot at the head of a short trail up a ridgeline overlooking a painted valley. I had the park all to myself. Not another car or person in sight. A gentle breeze fluttered through the cool air as I began to climb the trail, noticing the silence. I soon became lost in the abstract lines and patterns of the landscape. There was far more here to explore than I had time to see, and I already knew I would have to return one day. I felt a soft tinge of regret for those few extra moments of stolen sleep back in Prineville.

But the regrets quickly gave way to the joy I felt at having made the effort to get here at all. I spent an hour wandering up and down the trail, making images and soaking up the experience. The Painted Hills do not cover a large area, and over the next few hours I was able to walk most of the other trails in the unit as well. It was a magical morning, the kind that sneaks up on you, recharging your creative battery with its unexpected energy.

As the sun climbed higher in the sky along with the temperature, I reluctantly took my leave to continue my journey north. A hot summer morning is not the best time to visit the Painted Hills, which no doubt had much to do with the solitude that I enjoyed during my visit. Regardless, I am glad I stopped when I had the opportunity.

Whether or not I return one day – and I hope I do – I have no regrets about the way my brief visit unfolded. I might never have heard of, much less had a chance to visit, the Painted Hills if I hadn’t traced that line on a map before I left. Finding places like this is why I prefer to drive through rather than fly over places that are between where I am and where I am going. This was just a few hours out of a 4,100-mile, three-week road trip I made in June of this year, focused on the Palouse, Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. And while I found wonderful images to make in all those areas, I am just as excited about the images I made during my short visit to the Painted Hills. Finding moments like this is what makes all those miles worth the effort.

Painted Hills, Oregon, June 11, 2024. You can see some of the other images I made that day over here. If you find yourself in the area, I would highly recommend a visit. (Although the constraints of my trip dictated that I visit in the morning, it appears that evening is a better time — particularly from the overlook trail where I found myself shooting into the morning sun more often than not.) You can learn more about the area over here and here.

It was cold and foggy. Just another mid-July morning on the Oregon Coast. We had stopped for a night in Newport on the way up the coast, and wanted to take a short stroll on the beach before continuing our journey. Everything was bathed in soft morning light. A featureless expanse of sand spread before us as we made our way down a steep wooden staircase. The tide was out, and the ribbon of ocean in the distance seemed to meld with the indistinct horizon line just beyond.

As our feet hit the sand, the magic began. The landscape was not as plain as it had seemed. Abstract patterns created by wind and water appeared out of the mist, stretching uninterrupted into the distance. A shallow stream meandered across the shore, etching mountain ranges into the sand.

Rocks and shells were scattered about, wet and glistening with color. Clumps of seaweed and kelp pressed into the sand, like dried flowers between the pages of a book. Everything lay stranded where it had washed ashore. Patiently waiting for the waves to return. Or perhaps waiting for someone to take notice before it returned to the sea.

Our quick stroll turned into an extended exploration. A long stretch of beach is a wonderful place to lose yourself. Our feet were pulled along by our gaze, the fresh scent of salt air filling our lungs. Time slowed down, then disappeared. We spied a few other humans and dogs off in the distance, but the sand was mostly untrammeled by footprints other than our own.

My eyes were cast downward, searching for natural compositions in the sand. Sand patterns and ocean detritus can often be difficult to photograph, marred by footprints or harsh, overhead light. But occasionally the conditions coalesce, and I can spend hours searching for ephemeral vignettes that have washed up on the shore.

I am drawn to create images like this that reveal the transitory beauty we often come across and overlook in everyday life. Every once in a while, that beauty demands to be noticed. All you have to do is look.

Nye Beach, Newport, Oregon, July 20, 2023. You can see more of this work in a portfolio of images I call “Beach Scene.” It is very much a work in progress, and I am curious to see where it leads.

I was down in Cabo for a wedding last week. I brought along a camera and more lenses than I needed – as I always do – but the kit just sat there, ignored in the hotel room. I would glance at it in the morning, then shrug my shoulders and head out for another day at the pool.

Which, if you know me, is pretty unusual. I am a restless traveler. Always looking for somewhere to explore, and something to photograph. But not on this trip. I was uninspired by my surroundings. So I leaned into relaxation, telling myself to enjoy the creative break. And the mezcalitos that arrived soon after the late morning happy hour commenced.

Just hanging out with my family, chillaxin’ by the pool.

I finally picked up the camera on day 4, when we decided to wander down the beach. I was still uninspired, randomly snapping photos along the way. That’s when I made the picture at the top of this post. I wish I could say that I noticed the parasailer when I made the photograph, but I didn’t. I just wanted to photograph the gleaming white resort, crowded with umbrellas, and the DMZ between them and the few local vendors expectantly hoping to earn a few pesos if one of the guests ventured down to the beach.

I didn’t even see the parasailer until I got home and reviewed my images from the trip. But for me it encapsulates the experience. We were all just travelers parachuting in to soak up the sunshine in a hermetically sealed environment.

* * *

I only exposed 275 frames during the entire week we were there. Typically when traveling I will make more photographs than that in a few hours. But here there were only a couple potential subjects that caught my eye. A dilapidated building with a blue door on a street corner in Cabo San Lucas. An arched sign over the entrance to an abandoned water park adjacent to the hotel zone on Medano Beach. I made time to photograph both, even pulling out the infrared camera body when making images of the latter.

But even then, I felt like an outsider. Like a parasailer gliding over town, never getting close enough to see it. I just couldn’t get comfortable photographing in Cabo. It felt like eyes were on me, questioning what I was doing and why I was pointing my camera here or there. It was mostly in my head. I’m not sure why that was, but it made it impossible to lose myself in the moment. To unlock my creativity and find a flow.

The only time that feeling went away was when we made a day trip up to Todos Santos. Maybe it was the art colony vibe of the place, but it felt more welcoming, and I was less self-conscious as I wandered the old town with my camera. And I began to see a bit more. The wind rippling across fabric strung over a marketplace. Fallen leaves in the gutter. Dilapidated buildings like the one in Cabo, but here still a part of the daily fabric of life.

All of which reminds me that photography is as much about what is behind the camera as what is in front of it. There’s always something to photograph. You only have to lose yourself, so you can see it.

I don’t like sunsets. The Milky Way bores me. I’m starting to wonder about waterfalls.

Don’t get me wrong. I love being there at sunset. Whether at the beach or high on a mountaintop. Letting my mind wander along with the last rays of daylight, trying to find purchase somewhere in the quickening darkness. And I am awed by the majesty of the cosmos. Overwhelmed thinking about the immensity of space, and the tiny speck of dust we occupy in it.

It’s just that I have little desire to make photographs of sunsets or starfields. Check the forecast. Go to the location. Find an interesting foreground element to anchor the composition. Set up a tripod. Dial in a setting you know by heart. Press the shutter. It all seems so rote. Even if the images that result are beautiful, they feel repetitive. Like they could have been made by anybody. Or any algorithm.

But for some reason I don’t feel the same way about waterfalls, even though the process of capturing them can be quite similar. Compose the image, plunk down the tripod, slap on an ND filter, dial in an exposure somewhere between 1/15 and 1.5 seconds, press the shutter. Rinse, repeat. We’ve all seen them: Silky water flowing through a verdant green landscape, a magical and tranquil forest glen. Lovely to look at, but holding little of the photographer in the frame. Anyone standing there at the same time could, with the right gear and knowledge, have made much the same image.

As photographers, we are all too aware of the simple techniques that allow us (or others) to create photos like this. Like a magician watching someone else’s show, we can’t un-see the trick behind the illusion. Which may prevent us from sharing in the sense of wonder that those less versed in the technical details might experience. But even for them, there’s an obvious sleight-of-hand going on. We all know, intuitively, that if we make our way to that place it will not appear as it does in the photograph. Because we’ve all seen a waterfall, and (just like the Milky Way) it doesn’t look the same to the naked eye.

I was thinking about this a few weeks ago, when I made the photo of McWay Falls in Big Sur that sits atop this post. You can’t get down to the beach, which means almost all the photographs of the falls are made from a narrow strip of dirt between Highway 1 and the edge of the bluff. While the falls, and the images that can be created of it, are beautiful, there is little hope for finding a fresh composition, much less being able to express a personal connection to the scene. The best we can hope for is to be there when the light is right. Which I was, so I dutifully set up the tripod and made dozens of photographs of the falls as it was lit up by the setting sun. The pictures are nice, but there is little of me in them.

Which can be true of many waterfall shots. Despite that, I still get energized when photographing around waterfalls because I often find more opportunities to move beyond the rote, repetitive image. I’ll take the postcard shot when I get there, just to get it out of the way. Then I am free to look around, to find what else there is to see. Watch the changing patterns of the water as it falls. Notice how the light reveals the textures carved into the adjacent rocks. Explore the stream above or below the falls. Find miniature cascades that have a character all their own. Experiment with intentional camera movement, play with different shutter speeds, look for shifting patterns of light in the shallows, find reflections in sunlit pools. The possibilities are endless.

And waterfalls change over time and with the seasons, providing new things to explore each time you visit. Others might feel the same about stars and galaxies, or something else. Where I see only opportunities to create meaningless, mundane images they might be excited by something that most casual observers will miss. And that, in the end, is the magic and joy of photography. It’s not about your equipment or technical expertise. It’s not even about being there when the light is right. It’s about expressing your personal connection to the place.

So the next time you find yourself in a well-photographed iconic location, look around. Find your own flow. Let it carry you along, and see where it leads.

Thanks for reading. You can see more photographs I’ve made in and around waterfalls over here.

A golden moon hung in a starlit sky. Three rocket ships blasted by; fading orange contrails marked their passing. A twisted landscape lay below, multi-colored layers of rock reflecting eons of slow geologic movement. A distant peak seemed to kiss the moon. If I could make my way there, perhaps I could too. But the landscape was captivating, and I just wanted to sit for a while. To let my eyes roam into every nook and cranny. To take it all in.

As I wandered back and forth over this alien land, my imagination kept leading the way. Over there a strange beast was raging at the light. Nearby, a goat – or maybe it was a dog, or a rat – peered back at me, its eyes bright with curiosity (or was it hunger?). Elsewhere a strange cone-shaped man flapped his giant lips. Over there, a skull; someone in sunglasses gave it a sidelong glance as a fish swam by. I spied a mushroom cloud in the distance, frozen in time just past the point of detonation.

No, this wasn’t some drug-addled fever dream. Nor a midnight terror. I was down on the Monterey Peninsula , where I spent a couple of hours creating abstract compositions of the rocky tidepools and shoreline at Weston Beach in Point Lobos (named in memory of Edward Weston, at the suggestion of his friend, Ansel Adams). Everywhere I turned, there was something new to explore. Piles of smoothly weathered stones laced with reds, yellows and blues. Ragged tidepools, brimming with life. Tilted layers of wet sandstone, glistening in the sun, punctuated here and there with seaweed and shells. The tide slowly creeping in, creating a wash of reflections and patterns under a bright blue sky.

So where do you start? Creating abstract images is much different from shooting an iconic landscape. No parking lot or sign (Kodak Picture Spot No. 24!) waits to show you where to stop or what to look at. No strong point of interest dominates the view, riveting your attention (or your camera). Rather, it is up to you to find the interest and distill it out of the chaos. Sometimes that happens in the field, and other times it doesn’t until later, when you are developing and processing the images. Either way, the art is in the seeing, not the technical details about how the image was made.

And seeing is difficult, particularly when exploring a place you haven’t been before. Your mind explodes with possibilities. Look there! No, here. Wait! What’s that over there? You can quickly become overwhelmed. The only antidote is to slow down. Look around. Remind yourself that you can come back again. Promise yourself that you will.

Then take a deep breath.

Find something that captures your interest. Sit with it for a while. Explore the possibilities. Move around, see how it changes as you alter your perspective. Notice how your thoughts and feelings change as well. Go look at something else, then come back.

You never know what will emerge out of the chaos. What will attract your attention or capture your imagination. What you will have to say.

Fortunately, I had others there to remind me to do just that. I was at the beach with William Neill and Richard Martin, and a dozen other avid and accomplished photographers who were attending a conference put on by the folks at Out of Chicago. Richard and Bill are masters at making order out of chaos, and their finely honed sense of design, as reflected in the images they have created over decades of work, served as inspiration for our thoughtful meander around the small rocky cove.

As we set out that morning, Neill and Martin left us with a few words of advice. Mostly, just to be present. To try to look past what things were – rocks, pebbles, shells, sea creatures, and the like – and see what else was there. To be aware of shapes, lines, textures, colors, spaces and forms, and to notice the relationships among them. That, and point your camera straight down, parallel to the ground, to give you a better chance of keeping everything in focus when you click the shutter.

As we spread out around the small rocky cove, we each gravitated to something different that captured our attention. And how could we not? We had each brought our own unique blend of thoughts, feelings, interests, knowledge and abilities to the beach. That human gestalt of experience and emotion pulled us in different directions, leading us to create our own individual interpretations of the landscape … so long as we could be brave enough and confident enough to recognize those feelings and let them out.

“A thing is not what you say it is or what you photograph it to be or what you paint it to be or what you sculpt it to be. Words, photographs, paintings, and sculptures are symbols of what you see, think, and feel things to be, but they are not the things themselves.” -- Wynn Bullock

The longer we stayed on the beach, the easier it became to free my mind from the constraints of reality. To look past the prominent features of the landscape, and ignore the sight and sound of others around me. To begin to feel the connections between stone, water, weather and time. I barely scratched the surface of what was there to explore. But I came away satisfied that the images I made reflected, at least to some degree, not just what I had seen but also what I had thought and felt while I was there. And I look forward to going back.

Weston Beach, Point Lobos, CA. March 27, 2024, Fujifilm GFX 50R & GF 120mm macro.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the manipulation of digital photos, sparked by the recent controversy over the whereabouts of Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales. In case you’ve been living under a rock, or simply don’t care, the conversation boiled up after the Palace released a (U.K.) Mother’s Day photo of Kate and her children that was later discovered to have been digitally altered. Royal watchers were aghast (or at least pretended to be), using the manipulation of the photo to float theories that Kate was deathly ill as a result of a recent surgery. Because, the stories went, why else would you manipulate a photo, other than to conceal the truth?

But what interests me, more than the latest tale of Palace intrigue, is what do we mean by truth? We often think of truth as something that is objectively determinable, like the molecular weight of carbon. But some truths are subjective, and depend on your point of view. When it comes to photography, truth has always been a matter of perspective. Things as basic as where you stand and what you choose to point your lens at will change the “truth” about what was in front of you when you pressed the shutter. As will the photo you select to share, and how you edit it.

In the debates over Kate’s photoshop skills there is a repeated assumption that visual manipulation is something new that fundamentally alters how we understand photographs. In a recent article about the controversy, for example, Associated Press reporter Deepti Hajela writes: “[I]n a world where the spread of technology makes photo manipulation as easy as a tap on your phone, the idea that a visual image is an absolute truth is as outdated as the daguerreotype.” The article goes on to quote U.C. Berkeley journalism professor Ken Light, who opines that “[t]he role of photography has been to witness and to record for the moment,” and worries that the ease of visual manipulation “frays the fabric of the culture tremendously in the moment but also for the future.” Hajela echoes Light’s comments: “This Wild West of image-altering abilities is opening new frontiers for everyday people – and creating headaches for those who expect photos to be a documentary representation of reality.”

What comments like this miss is that even straight photographs are the result of visual manipulation, starting with when and where the photographer chooses to place themself, what they choose to include in, and exclude from, the frame, and what lens and camera settings they use to capture the image. A photographer may position themself to avoid an unpleasant background that detracts from the scene. Perhaps they use a long lens to compress elements in the frame, causing them to appear closer to one another than they are in reality. Or maybe they select a slow shutter speed to create the illusion of movement. Whether or not the photographer chooses to further manipulate their image in post-processing, they have already manipulated the photograph by choosing what to include in the frame and how to capture it. The resulting photograph depicts what the photographer subjectively saw as much as it reflects some objective “truth” of what was actually in front of the camera.

Take the iconic view of Yosemite Valley from Tunnel View: El Capitan on the left, Bridalveil Falls to the right, Half Dome in the far distance, a carpet of pine trees below. But nearly every one of these photographs was taken by someone standing shoulder to shoulder with other photographers at the edge of a small parking lot, just steps from a busy road running through the park. What is the “truth” of this image? The bucolic and apparently isolated scene depicted in the photograph, or the crowded viewpoint from which it was taken?

What is the difference, then, between placing yourself in a position where a distracting element is not in the frame, and removing the element later, in post-processing? Reasonable minds may differ about what is appropriate to do when editing a photo, but the notion that the ability to rearrange elements has somehow changed the way that photographs are, or should be, perceived, is simply incorrect. If Kate Middleton really did pose for a photograph with her children on Mother’s Day and looked as she was depicted in the photograph, does it really matter that some minor elements were altered to improve the look of the photo? Is that really much different from dodging or burning areas of a photo in order to draw attention to or hide elements in the scene? Even if Kate combined different frames from the same photo session in order to show each subject in their most flattering light, how is that different from combining multiple frames to even out lighting (as in HDR processing) or provide edge-to-edge sharpness (as in focus stacking)?

But what if Kate was photoshopped into the image from another photograph taken years before? That just feels different. Like the difference between sky replacement and HDR. The difference between deception and truth. Which brings up the main point: At the end of the day, the “truth” of the photo does not lie in how it was edited. It lies, instead, in what you say about it. And this may be the real problem with Kate’s photo. The Palace just announced that she is being treated for cancer, which raises the question of whether the photo it released on Mother’s Day was current, as it claimed, or an older image being presented as if it were current. We don’t (yet) know the answer to that, but in either case the truth of the photo has nothing to do with how or whether it was edited, as the recent AP article suggests.

To be fair, Hajela and Light were commenting on the role of photography in journalism, where a published image is presented as a literal representation of the truth. But even so, a photograph selected for publication in a newspaper or magazine cannot help but reflect the photographer’s (or reporter’s or editor’s or publisher’s) point of view, whether or not it also conveys some objective truth about the scene that it depicts. The editor selects a photo because it best illustrates the story that it accompanies, not necessarily because it provides the most accurate view of the scene. And the photographer on assignment probably had a pretty good idea through past experience of what the editor was looking for, which likely affected what they chose to shoot. Still, given the ease of digital manipulation, the news media has good reason to put guardrails on the type of post processing that is permitted of photos they publish.

When it comes to photography as a means of artistic expression, however, there is little reason to object to the artist’s use of available technology on grounds that it distorts the objective truth of the image. As photographic artist Guy Tal has written: “for photography to serve as a medium for artistic – subjective – expression, artists must knowingly and deliberately, at least to some significant degree, overcome, transcend, and depart from photography’s default mode of objective representation.” Digital editing programs are just another tool in the photographer’s basket – along with cameras, lenses, filters, f-stops, exposures and all the rest – that allow them to express their interpretation of the scene, and convey their experience to the viewer.

Which brings us back to the photograph at the top of this post, which I made last June. I pulled into the Tunnel View parking lot early one morning and was greeted with a scene out of a storybook. Refracted rays of light streaming into the Valley, lacy ground fog floating among the trees, Bridalveil Falls thundering with spring snowmelt, the fresh scent of rain in the air. It felt as if I was looking out at an enchanted forest. When it came time to process the image, I sought to capture that feeling. I edited the image in a way that I hoped would show the mythical nature of the forest, express the awe and reverence I had in the moment, and share what I experienced, while still preserving the integrity of the scene.

And that is my truth.

East of Interstate 5, on a 2-lane blacktop that zig-zags its way around irrigation canals and past orchards of bare trees, lies the tiny town of Alpaugh. In the center of town, at the crossroads of Avenue 54 and Road 38, sits the Alpaugh Grocery store. It’s not architecturally significant by any means, but something about it grabs my attention. It rears up suddenly out of nowhere, looming over its neighbors. It’s a jarring sight after miles of driving down empty roads with nothing but power lines and dirt on either side.

What was ubiquitous eventually becomes anachronistic. The devolution is slow and often escapes our notice. But zoom out a few decades and it becomes apparent that the changes happen relatively quickly. I’ve long been drawn to photograph buildings like the Alpaugh Grocery, to preserve these reflections of our past before they fade from memory. Some still serve their communities. Others are closed and abandoned. But what attracts me to all of them is the way they hearken back to an earlier time. Collectively, they form a mosaic that reveals the impermanence of our times, and ourselves.

I first saw the Alpaugh Grocery on my way back from Death Valley a few years ago, when I took a gamble on a rural road running between Highway 99 and the interstate. The old store wears its age with honesty. No one has tried to gussy it up. A dirty façade, streaked with years of rain; its lower half whitewashed in a losing battle with graffiti. Windows dark and covered by plywood. Blocky hand-painted letters announce its name. A rickety portico shields a dark entrance. It seems to be held together by a collection of temporary fixes that became permanent. It looks like it’s barely hanging on.

On that first trip I was through the town before I knew it, the old grocery store fading in my rearview mirror even as I kept glancing back at it. It was a foggy morning, and its’ white facade glowed as it rose out of the gloomy mist. It was one of those pictures you drive past, then kick yourself down the road for not stopping to make. But you don’t turn around, and the image haunts you. Still.

So when I was heading back to Death Valley at the end of January I retraced my steps backwards, hoping to see it again. Sure enough, about 30 miles east of the interstate, there it was. The foggy mist was gone, but at least there were a few clouds in the sky. I pulled over, and got out to take a look and make a few photographs. I’m glad I did, because there’s no guarantee I will drive past it again, or that it will still be there if I do.

As I stood there looking at it, my mind drifted back to other old stores I had come across in my travels. I thought about Buster’s Food Market, on the other side of the Sierras in Bridgeport, CA, where its weathered exterior under an ominous sky had caused me to do a double take, then a U-turn. I stopped to make a few photographs as a cold wind blew across its’ barren parking lot. Within a year, the building was clad in dark gray paint. The only sign of the old store was the “R” scavenged from its exterior, propped up in a window adjacent to its entrance.

Like Buster’s, most of the buildings I photograph will soon disappear. Knocked down by time, taking their memories with them. Had this winter’s heavy rains finally brought down the roof at the Desert Center Market that I visited last year? Was Clark’s Liquor still there? Has the Columbia Bar re-opened, or fallen down? Is the Cornwall Corner Store still “Small Enough to Know You and Large Enough to Serve You?”

It is not often that I return to one of these buildings to photograph it knowing it’s there, as I had done in Alpaugh. Rather, I typically stumble upon them when I am far from home, in the middle of nowhere and rushing to get somewhere else. It is tempting to drive on, telling myself I’ll return one day when I have more time and the conditions will be better. But I remind myself to pull over. To make the best of whatever weather and light is available. To wander around and soak it up, and try to preserve that moment before it disappears.

Because time is not on their side, or ours.

The trees are starting to bloom here in Marin County, a sure sign that spring is nigh. As I watched the wind ruffle a carpet of pastel pinks and whites against a bright blue sky, a ripple sent my mind wandering back to this time last year. I was in Kawazu, Japan, a coastal town on the Izu Peninsula three hours south of Tokyo. Throngs of Japanese tourists crowded a narrow path above the river, making a slow march upstream alongside a string of cherry trees bursting with color.

It was the Kawazu Sakura Festival, held each year in February to mark the earliest appearance of cherry blossoms – “Sakura” (桜) – in Japan. The cherry trees in Kawazu bloom about a month earlier than most others in the country, bringing upwards of 1 million visitors to the town’s riverbanks each February. We were among the few Westerners amid the crush of tourists visiting the town last year, shortly after Japan had re-opened its borders as it emerged from the pandemic.

But people are people everywhere, and but for the differences in language we could have been anywhere. Families walked in groups, children tugging at their parents’ hands or riding atop their shoulders, smiling and chattering as they made their way along the path. Couples walked hand in hand, stopping now and again to share a moment or take a picture beneath the colorful blossoms. Photographers politely jostled one another as they sought to frame their shots. A few adventurous souls made their way down the steep riverbank, where they could meander up the dry riverbed for an unobstructed view of the trees.

There are more than 8,000 cherry trees in Kawazu, known for their vivid pink blossoms that are larger than most other varieties found in Japan. Officially recognized as a sub-species in 1975, the Kawazu-zakura is thought to be a natural hybrid of the Oshima-zakura and Kanhi-zakura varieties. The first specimen was planted in 1955 in the front yard of a local resident, Katsumi Iida, reportedly from a seedling he had found in Tanaka. The original tree, a somewhat non-descript specimen, still sits in the front yard of his former house, where it attracts visitors posing for selfies out front.

I had come to the festival on a small group tour organized by Eddie Soloway with the help of Esprit Travel. A combination of thoughtful planning and good luck had brought us to Kawazu at the peak of that year’s blooming season. The paved river path, barely six-feet wide, was crowded with hundreds of visitors flowing in a slow current upstream. While the cherry trees were beautiful, the packed festival was not quite what I had expected.

Thoughts of blooming cherry trees atop grassy slopes had conjured idyllic images of a quiet pastoral landscape where one could quietly sit and contemplate the slow change in seasons. But what we found instead was a long, slow line of traffic leading to a crush of humanity that competed for attention with the beautiful trees above. Food stalls and souvenir stands lined the path; aromas of grilled and fried food wafting over the crowd. It all reminded me of a county fair, with stuffed dumplings, meat on a stick and mochi balls standing in for fried shrimp, corn dogs and funnel cakes. Yes, people are people everywhere.

In times like this I am reminded how expectations can get in the way of experiences. As I made my way up the path, I tried to soak up the latter and let go of the former. My plans to set up my tripod and create dreamy abstract images of cherry blossoms moving with the wind quickly fell by the wayside, as there was little room to do so without interfering with others’ enjoyment of the festival. So I joined the herd in admiring the trees that lined the riverbed, stopping now and again to photograph twisting tree limbs, brilliant flowers, and curious patterns on the bark.

As I wandered the river path I would occasionally look up through hanging branches clustered with flowers, imagining a swirling pink and blue universe above. When the frenetic energy of the crowd brought me back to Earth, I rejoined their slow march upstream, noticing the reactions of those around me as they marveled at the pink blanket floating just above their heads.

Eventually, I found a place to sit along the riverbank , content to just be a part of the scene. I smiled at those around me, and soon I stopped looking for things to photograph. I was just there.

And that was enough.

Kawazu Sakura Festival, Feb. 22, 2023. All images made with a Fujifilm X-Pro 3, mostly with a Zeiss 12/2.8, Sigma 56/1.4 or Fuji XF70-300 lens. (You can see some of the other images I made last year in Japan here and here.)

It was my first day in Tokyo and I had a little time to kill before dinner, where I would meet the group I would be traveling with for the next 10 days. I pulled out my Lonely Planet pocket guide and skimmed the entries for places near where I was staying. One place stood out – the Okuno Building, a pre-war apartment building that promised “a retro time capsule … with Escher-like staircases, an antique elevator shaft, and an ever-changing selection of [art galleries].” Perfect. A short power walk through the rain later, I found myself standing in its empty lobby.

A row of metal mailboxes was spread across one wall, ending at a wide entryway. Beyond that lay a shadowed hallway partially blocked by a set of drab green industrial doors. The antique elevator shaft stood in the center, right in front of me. A short set of stairs opposite led to a locked metal door; the stairs themselves snaked right, curling around the elevator shaft towards the upper floors. Dull brown tile covered the walls and floor. A cracked and stained white ceiling loomed above. The weight of time hung heavy, as if the building’s ghosts were shuffling past. I wondered if I was trespassing on their memories.

As I looked around the old lobby, I took a tentative step towards the stairs, looking over my shoulder to see if anyone would challenge me or ask what I thought I was doing. But no one accosted me as I made my way upstairs, and I quickly put such thoughts out of mind as I became captivated by the odd patterns of shadow and light that played along the stairwells. I wandered the corridors with curiosity, peeking into shops and galleries, nodding and smiling at the few merchants and customers who were there. I tried to remain as unobtrusive as possible, shooting everything handheld through a 35mm equivalent lens on my Fujifilm X-Pro3. I was drawn to photograph the building mostly in black and white, which seemed to fit the aging character of the building (as well as my own nostalgic journey into the past).

In its day, the Okuno was the epitome of high class, luxury living. Though built in 1932, it is one of the oldest apartment buildings left in Tokyo, as most others fell victim to WWII bombings of the city or the post-war building boom of the ’80s. Today, it is a window into Tokyo’s not so distant past: a blocky mid-century reinforced concrete structure a stone’s throw from streets lined with the ultra-modern architectural icons of the Ginza District. While most of the building is given over to an eclectic collection of art galleries and boutiques, the upper floors still house the apartment of its last resident, Suda Yoshi, preserved just as it was when she died in 2009. (Sadly, the apartment was closed on the day I visited, but you can read more about it – and the history of the building – here.)

The Okuno is actually two buildings side-by-side that have been linked together by an odd arrangement of passages and stairwells that still exists today. (The second building was added in 1934.) Windows from the original building peek through to adjacent stairwells in the second one, creating an odd sense of being inside out, or perhaps outside in, as you roam its shadowy halls.

It was a wonderful introduction to old Tokyo. Though I only spent about an hour exploring the old building, I came away with an echo of Tokyo’s recent past that reverberated with me throughout the rest of my time in Japan.

Okuno Building 1-9-8 Ginza, Chuo, Tokyo, February 13, 2023. All images were made with a Fujifilm X-Pro 3 and a Fuji XF 23mm f/2 lens, at apertures from f/2-f/5.6 and ISOs from 400 to 6400 B+W images are from JPGs shot using a high contrast B+W film recipe I built off the Fuji Acros profile. Color conversions are from RAW files.

The Okuno Building at right stands in stark contrast to its neighbors in the Ginza District, like the nearby building above.

When I head out on a road trip, the beginning of my journey is always unsettling. As the first miles roll by, my mind bounces between my “normal” life – bills, obligations, relationships – and my artistic one. Further on up the road it will be easier to be fully engaged. But at the outset there’s a transition to navigate. Until I do, I find it more difficult to be present in the moment.

And so it was last March as I headed east out of Los Angeles, climbing into the San Jacinto Mountains on my way to Arizona after a short family vacation in the Southland. My eyes scanned the landscape as I settled into the long drive, my mind wandering back and forth between the present and the past. At times like these I am alert to opportunities to stretch my legs and fuel my creative energy. But the drive before me was long, and though fields of wildflowers beckoned there was little time to stop and wander. The mountains soon gave way to the high desert: a barren brown landscape under a dull gray sky.

Then, a few hours into my journey, a flash of interest caught the corner of my eye. A ramshackle building or two on the left, just off the interstate. Maybe a chance to stop for a bit and stretch. A mile or so up the road an exit appeared. “Desert Center” read the sign. Why not? I pulled off to take a look.

There wasn’t much left of the former highway waystation. A graffiti clad gas station, an empty cafe, a market with a collapsed roof. A few abandoned shacks scattered about, littered with the belongings of their final occupants. Only the post office appeared to still be in use. As I wandered through the desolate landscape I couldn’t help but think about the people that used to live and work here, and the travelers who stopped by on their way to somewhere else. What brought them to this town, and what were their lives like? Why was this town built, and how did it die?

There were few clues in the remaining detritus – an old hiking boot caked with dust, a frayed box spring leaning against a wall, a portable vacuum cleaner standing guard against a battered door. After I returned home a little internet sleuthing provided a few answers. The town first appeared in the 1920s, when “Desert Steve” Ragsdale built a service station and café along a remote stretch of a new state highway. Over the next 25 years the town grew to provide housing and services to workers building the California aqueduct, then to serve General Patton’s nearby desert training ground for WWII forces, and finally to support workers at the Kaiser Steel Eagle Mine. The town’s claim to fame is as the birthplace of the Kaiser HMO system, formed when a steel executive devised a plan to pay a local doctor a nickel a week for each employee to cover most of their future medical needs.

The mine shut down in 1982, and Desert Center hung on for a bit, filling and feeding highway travelers until 2011, when the old café and gas station finally closed. When hopes for redevelopment faded, the entire contents of the town were auctioned off in 2019. Only a few empty buildings and scattered belongings remain today, stark reminders of the town’s heyday. But time continues to take its toll, and one day soon only a few concrete pads and tumbleweeds may remain to mark the town’s existence.

I have long been drawn to photograph places like this before they disappear. As I wandered this barren landscape at the outset of my journey, I felt a spark of creative energy take hold, fueled by my imagination and nostalgia for days gone by. Though the town’s zenith may predate my existence by several decades or more, it reminds me that one day, too, the markers of our own time will crumble and fade into dust. Left to rot and decay, like this forlorn town in the desert, or scraped and replaced, like so many parts of Los Angeles to the west and Phoenix to the east. Either way, our time here will soon be forgotten. In some sense, then, the photographs I make of places like this become meditations on impermanence and observations of a generation’s changing relationship to the world as it ages.

While this melancholy may lead you to believe that I left Desert Center depressed and morose, quite the opposite was true. I felt engaged and alive, ready for the road trip before me. Wandering among these ruins with my eyes open and imagination engaged, I had left my real life behind and embraced my artistic one.

I was finally present in the moment, recharged and ready for my journey. Excited to see where it would lead, and how it would end.

On the Road #2: March 19, 2023. Desert Center, CA, along Interstate 10 roughly 170 miles from my starting point and 200 miles from my destination. 1 mile (walking); 1 hour.

I found it on the map.  A little squiggly line heading south from where I was staying, in the shadow of Mount Rainier.  The road would dump me out on the Columbia River, from where I could continue my homeward journey.  A dirt road through the forest sounded way better than driving a couple hours west to the wide pavement and trucks of I-5.  So I turned left, and off I went.

 The narrow, paved road ran past overgrown farm- and ranchland that soon gave way to thick forest on both sides.  As I rounded a bend I spied an old snowplow parked among the trees.  I hopped out to take a look, chuckling at the life-size Sasquatch propped against the blade.  I wandered around for a bit, searching for compositions and enjoying the crisp morning air.  It’s good to warm up, creatively and physically.  As I worked, I soaked up the silence of the forest, broken only by the occasional car rushing by, curious eyes capturing a quick glimpse of the aged snowplow and photographer by the side of the road.

 The road snaked on through the forest, shortly coming to a split where National Forest Road 23 plunged off to the right, down amongst the trees.  I got a flutter in my chest.  The journey had begun.  As I drove deeper into the forest, the asphalt began to give way to dirt.  Deep potholes appeared, surrounded by spray paint that gave drivers a few seconds to avoid bottoming out as they navigated the tight curves.  I stopped along the Cispus River to take a look.  The sun was higher, taking the morning chill out of the air.  Dappled light danced on the moss-covered rocks lining the old riverbed.  But the water was mostly gone.  Just a few quiet pools and a slow ribbon of water to connect them.

 The road is all dirt now.  Washboard ridges rattling the cabin.  A small car comes slowly down the road towards me, the first I have seen in over an hour.  I breathe a small sigh of relief as I continue heading up the road, into the silence.  An unsettling feeling arises as I plunge deeper into the dark forest, the only car on this isolated rutted road.  Twenty minutes seems like an hour.  The feeling dissipates as I burst back into the sunlight along a bright green wetland.  Lilypads float gently on the water.  Two deer look up and bound away as I exit the car.  The air is vibrant.  Forest silence fills the air.

 Forest silence is not a silence that signifies an absence of sound.  It is the silence that signifies the absence of humans.  The quiet of leaves rustling in the gentle breeze, of dew evaporating off grasses stretching for the sun, of birds chirping in the distance.  The silence that fills the air whether we are here to witness it or not.  The silence that cares not a whit for us.  I try to soak it in but it is ephemeral, bouncing away as soon as my mind wanders.  The silence is not for us to keep.

 Alone, I bounce nervously up the road, over Babyshoe Pass, wondering how much longer there is to go.  I come to a high bridge over a deep gorge, its asphalt surface a mirage that gives way again to rutted dirt on the other side.  I clatter on.  Another 20 minutes seems like another hour until I reach the pavement again and exhale.  Faster now, down the asphalt mountain curves, music blaring.  Mount Adams, an old volcano topped by a shrinking glacier, rears up on the left, stark against the bright blue sky.  And then I am down.  I merge onto Hwy. 141.  A flat straight road, wide ranchlands on either side.  Disappearing towns dot crossroads along the way. 

In Husum, I linger on a bridge over its eponymously-named river, watching rafters navigate the pretty falls.  Now and again groups of life jacket-clad rafters, paddles in hand, walk single-file over the bridge, stopping to watch with me as their more experienced companions tackle the rapids.  Their bravado belies their fear.  But who am I to judge, standing there beside them?  I am entranced by the flow of the water.  It captivates and carries me away, even as it carries the slow parade of rafters downstream.

 Soon I reach the mighty Columbia River, and cross into Oregon.  The Bonneville Dam is nearby, so I stop to take a look at the massive monument to concrete and steel, constructed as America clawed its way out of the Depression and another world war.  I recall visiting the dam as a child, and it feels like I’ve entered a time warp.  The dam is both ominous and elegant, sitting there amid the torrent of water draining the continent, rushing to taste the sea.  Abstract patterns of water swirl before me.

I continue my journey south, jumping off the interstate again to traverse the Historic Columbia River Highway as it passes by a series of scenic waterfalls:  Horsetail, where families swim in a shallow pool beneath the fall; Multnomah, where a Disney-like crush fills the parking lots and trails; Wahkeena, where a magnificent creek cascades steeply through a narrow rocky channel; Shepperd’s Dell, a little-visited site missing from the official maps that I have all to myself for a while; and Latourell, a steep trail with views across a chasm to a carpet of brilliant moss covering a cliff of slick dark rock.

   But the day is getting long.  I leave the gorge and make my way overland, bouncing from one local road to another, feeling my way towards the Interstate.  I pass farmhouses and subdivisions, quiet forests and busy commercial strips.  There are photographs to be made along the way, but I snap them only in my mind.  My creative energy is nearly gone.  I make one final stop in Oregon City.  A ramshackle parking lot tucked along a busy two-lane highway.  I stop for a while to watch the reflections of Oregon City’s industrial past dance in the Willamette River. The sound of the highway fades as I lean into the silence below.

 I am mesmerized again, and float away for a bit before I leave.

On the Road #1: August 2, 2023.  Packwood, WA to Eugene, OR, via WA Forest Road 23, Columbia River Parkway and Oregon City.  280 miles, 8 hours.

It’s been a minute. Last time you found me in your inbox I had just returned from our long strange trip Down Under. That was 13 months ago. I had a hard drive full of images and a mind full of ideas to share. But I never found the time.

Just as I was about finished culling and editing the images from Australia, I was off to Japan on a trip organized by Eddie Soloway for some alumni of his workshops, followed by some time on my own in Tokyo. A few weeks after I returned from Japan, we were off on a family trip to SoCal. From there, I set off on a two-week road trip to Arizona, where I spent four days photographing two wonderful desert gardens (Desert Botanic in Scottsdale and the Boyce Thompson Arboretum nearby) with the folks from Out of Chicago. On the way back, I stopped for a few days to reacquaint myself with Joshua Tree National Park. Three weeks later we were off again, dancing with the Deadheads in Ventura at the Skull n Roses festival.

I took a break from travel in May, but by June I was back on the road to Yosemite to witness the floods. In July, we took off on another extended road trip, this time through the Pacific Northwest: A week up the Oregon coast, a week in the San Juan’s, and a solo drive back through Mt. Rainier and the Columbia River Gorge. Two weeks after I got back we were heading down to Lompoc to hang out with friends, taste some wine, and rediscover the place where I worked back in the ‘80s. Three weeks later it was the California Gold Country with old college friends.

A few days after that we were on a plane to Barcelona, where we spent a few days before embarking on a two-week trip through Portugal. Then another five nights in London, just because. By the time we got home I was cooked. Turns out, revenge travel is tiring.

I just discovered that phrase, in a New York Times article talking about what to expect for travel in 2024. Revenge travel, it said, was ending, so travel might be a little calmer this year. Though it’s been around for a while now, I hadn’t heard the phrase before, but it perfectly encapsulates what I was doing. The pandemic scuttled most of our travel plans in 2020. There was a slow return to travel in 2021 and 2022, but last year was the year the floodgates opened. And I, three years into “retirement,” was right there with the rest of you, making up for lost time. Revenge travel. Yep, that about sums it up.

And now I am finally crawling out from under the weight of all that travel. I’ve spent the past three months processing my experiences, along with the photographs I created along the way. I’ve got 20,000 images on my hard drives that were created over the last 13 months. More than double that if you count exposure brackets, RAW+JPGs, and alternate compositions. I’ve been slowly making my way through that trove of memories. Check out the Fresh page to see some of the images I made in Japan, Barcelona, Portugal and Australia.

Along with posting photographs from my travels, I’ve spent a fair amount of time reorganizing and re-curating the galleries on my website. That project still isn’t done, but if you haven’t poked around for a while you will see there are a lot of changes already. Build is where you can find architectural subjects and other work I’ve made in the built environment. Grow is where I now share images of gardens, food and other botanical subjects, including some of the photographs I made in the desert gardens in Arizona.

My travel photography has been split in two: Near, for images made on road trips around California and the Western U.S., and Far, for photographs from more distant locations. Near is where you can see what I was up to in Joshua Tree and Yosemite. In Far, you’ll find a couple new galleries of old photographs I made in Angkor Wat and Bangkok. (We spent a few days in each place around our 2019 trip to Viet Nam, but I only recently went back to look at the images.)

You’ll also find a few new collections sprinkled around the website: Jihanki is a collection of images I made of the many vending machines that caught my eye as I traveled through Japan. Urban Trees is an ongoing project photographing trees that have scratched out an existence in environments crowded by asphalt, brick and stone. Roadside Attractions is another ongoing project that seeks to document the slow decay and disappearance of the mom-n-pop restaurants and businesses that used to define our way of life. (Fossil Fuel is another collection that grew out of that work.)

And I finally got around to updating the slideshow on my Home page to showcase some of my favorite images that I have made over the years along with some recent images that may have the same staying power. Like most of the other galleries on my website, the order in which the images are displayed resets every time you open the page, so you’ll see them in a different order each time. I like how that gives a fresh look to the page whenever it is opened. (If you have the time and interest, grab a beer and just let it scroll through everything … it’s about a 5 minute show from start to end.)

That’s it for now. There is still more to do, including getting to the photographs I made in the U.K., the Pacific NW, and around the Bay Area. But those will have to wait. It’s been 3 months since we got back from London, and I am starting to feel that itch.

We’re just back from nearly a month Down Under. Friendly people, beautiful scenery, good food. Australia is about as un-foreign as a foreign country can get for an American tourist. Except for the endearing accents and their penchant for driving the wrong way down the road, it felt like we could have been rambling through the States sometime in the mid-70s. Don’t get me wrong. We loved it. We had a great time exploring a small corner of the country: Tasmania, Sydney, Melbourne and the Whitsundays. Tasmania, in particular, will draw me back one day.

This was not a trip designed for photography … just me and Denise traipsing about places we’d never seen before. But I was pleased that I found time here and there to create some images, rather than just taking pictures of what we were seeing as we moved past. On a trip like this, I’ve learned to take spontaneous moments to photograph when they arise, and be content to leave other opportunities behind.

I spent a morning wandering around the Sydney Opera House and the Royal Botanic Garden with my camera in hand. I woke up early to shoot the sunrise and rising tide in the Whitsundays. I found time for photowalks in Hobart and Melbourne, meandering the streets with wide eyes to see what I saw. I grabbed half an hour shooting street candids while waiting to meet up with Denise after she was done shopping (I found her in a café chatting with a newfound friend and enjoying a glass of wine.) I slowed my step to find a bit more time to shoot ferns while hiking through a rainforest as she forged on ahead.

Other times I was content to simply photograph what moved me as I walked past, making do with whatever light was available and working the scene as best as I could in whatever time I had there. And now here I am, jet lag fading away, thousands of images downloaded to my computer. Waiting to be looked at, culled, edited. Silently mocking me. You created this. What are you ever going to do with it?

Time will tell. Stay tuned.

* * *

I traveled fairly light (for me). Just a Fujifilm XPro-3 with a handful of primes (12, 16, 23, 35 and a 60 macro) and a bulkier 70-300 zoom that frequently stayed behind in the hotel room safe. I tried to go out with just one or two lenses at a time, but frequently gave in to my FOMO and threw a few more in the bag. The Fuji 16 f/2 and 23 f/1.4 were my most used lenses by far, with the Zeiss 12/2.8 close behind. (I’ve always loved the 24mm focal length that the 16 provides on a crop sensor, and the compact, lightweight lens fits perfectly on the X-Pro 3, feels great in the hand, and is unobtrusive on the street.)

I had some ideas for long exposures I wanted to make, so I made some room for my Peak Design travel tripod, and picked up a compact set of Kase drop-in ND filters to bring along. The drop-ins are postage-stamp-sized filters that are mounted in a thin plastic frame that goes into the camera behind the lens and in front of the sensor. Easy to carry, no bulky 100mm filters and frames to drag around. It sounded like a great idea, but in practice they were a disaster. Putting a plastic fitting over your sensor in the field with dust (and sand!) blowing around was no fun. When the ND10 broke free from its frame and landed on my sensor as I was shooting the early morning swimmers in Bondi’s Icebergs Pool, I’d had enough. Fortunately, I was able to pick up a set of Nisi screw-in NDs and a few step rings at a camera shop in Sydney -- an expense that allowed me to continue shooting the long exposures I wanted to make … and helped motivate me to make time to do it!

While we were spending a few days soaking up the sun in the Whitsundays, I made several early morning trips to a small rocky beach near where we were staying on Hamilton Island. Just offshore were several groupings of rocks that were exposed at low tide early in the morning, but rapidly sunk under water as the tide rose. The whole area would be submerged within a few hours of sunrise, leaving just a thin band of rocks between the water and the edge of the forest. It was a quiet, peaceful place. Soft water lapping, birds chirping, a warm breeze rustling the leaves. I had time to just sit and look, and I was able to find several compositions I quite like. You might recognize this image from a similar one I posted on Instagram. This frame was captured a bit earlier, when more of the rocks showed above the tide. I used a 4-minute exposure to accentuate the movement of the clouds, while providing an ethereal glow to the waters quietly rising around the rocks. For me, the image captures the serenity and the magic of early mornings at that spot.

I made the image at the top of this post from an overlook on the Great Ocean Road (in Victoria, outside Melbourne) on the last full day of our trip. We had joined a small group overnight tour that was making frequent quick stops at various overlooks and points of interest along the road, but rarely with enough time or good light to make an interesting photograph. The Twelve Apostles overlook, where the image was made, is a very well-known and photographed site along the Shipwreck Coast of Victoria. I knew we would be hitting it early in the day when the light was still on the stacks, so I planned to take a bit more time there whether the guide wanted me to or not (it ended up being fine). I walked quickly down the path and managed to get set up while the sun was still creating shadows of the cliffs on the sand, and quickly hit upon a 2-minute exposure as providing the right balance of sharpness and softness to capture the awe and mystery I felt as I looked out over the scene. My image may not be that unique taken as it was from a well-traveled vantage point, but I was glad to have been able to make it. (Next time I think I’ll drive myself and show up at night!)

* * *

If you follow me on Instagram you probably saw some of the pictures I posted during the trip. In the past, I’ve never found much time to look at images while I travel. I’ve always admired the bloggers and vloggers who find the time each day while traveling to post something about their trip as it happens. An image or two. A few words reflecting on how they are feeling or what they’re doing, and why. Where do they find the time? Do they ever sleep? I could never do that. Or could I?

So on this trip I tried to download images to my laptop every day or two and see if I could find a few to quickly edit and share. While I can’t say I spent enough time selecting or editing the images I posted, at least it was a start. Some of the images I posted I quite like, others were simply just good enough (or not). That I found time to post a picture a day on this trip motivates me to make more time on the next trip to do the same, to do it better, and perhaps to add a few words along the way. Baby steps. First you gotta crawl.

Let’s talk about photo workshops.  On-location, travel workshops have always appealed to me, particularly when thinking about traveling to an unfamiliar place on my own.  But I have always had a love-hate relationship with them.  I love going out with other photographers, sharing in the discovery of a new place and enjoying the camaraderie of each other’s company, and maybe picking up a few new tips along the way.  But I hate being told where to stand, what to photograph, or how to do it.  Photography, like other art forms, is mostly a solitary pursuit and I’m more interested in photographing what speaks to me than in re-creating someone else’s vision of how to interpret a place. 

Pre-pandemic, I might have gone to a workshop every two or three years.  But in the last year, I’ve been to four different travel workshops.  Two of the workshops were in Death Valley, one took place over a weekend in Chicago, and the fourth was a break in the middle of a road trip I made through parts of Nevada, Utah and Arizona.  As I’ve begun to think about where to travel next year, I’ve found myself looking back at what I gained, and what I didn’t, from these four workshops.  

Last fall, I joined Eddie Soloway at an alumni get together in Boulder, Utah, to explore parts of Grand Escalante Staircase National Monument.   Eddie’s been putting these together for years to bring together folks that have taken one of his more formal workshops.  These aren’t workshops per se.  Participants go out on their own each day, then come together in the afternoons and evenings to share stories and experiences.  Eddie will give a presentation or lead a discussion, but the focus is really on connection and creativity. 

Having never been to Grand Escalante before, and being mostly on my own, I was more frustrated than excited by the images I was making.  Too often I pulled myself away from a subject too soon because there was something else I had seen or heard about just down the road.  But when I remembered to slow down and be present, I was able to make a few images that mattered to me.  I recall one afternoon, walking along a narrow mud-filled creek below a red rock cliff under a canopy of golden cottonwoods, no sound but the rustle of leaves and crunch of my boots.  As I wandered through the forest, I just looked and listened; camera tucked away in my pack.  And it was then that I began to see. (You can see what I saw over here.) 

Last December I went to Death Valley for a Muench Photo Workshop. I had long-been lured by Muench’s glossy presentations of photogenic locations around the world and the glowing prose embroidering its itineraries.  And the Muench name still has magic for anyone like me who began their photographic journey back in the ’70s.  So I signed up to go to Death Valley with them last December, even though another Death Valley workshop I had planned to attend – put on by the folks at Out of Chicago – had been cancelled and rescheduled to January, a month after I was signing up to be there with Muench. (I assumed one or the other would probably get cancelled again … and if not, it would be easy enough to reschedule one of the two.  But procrastination won out, the cancellation deadlines passed, and there I was back in Death Valley again in January.)  You can see some of the images I made at these workshops over here.

I don’t regret going to the same location twice. Every workshop operator is different.  Some, like Out of Chicago, tend to focus on creative vision.  Others, like Muench, spend more time discussing technical details.  Regardless of their differences in approach, both workshops put us in the right place at the right time to capture the right light, which is one of the main things I hope a workshop will deliver.

Out of Chicago brought together 20 well-known photographers and 100 guests, who were divided into groups of 10 that went out twice a day around sunrise and sunset to shoot with one or two of the pros.  Out of Chicago tends to attract passionate photographers who are accomplished in their own right, and spending time with my fellow participants was just as rewarding as the time spent with the pros. And the collection of pros they attract is amazing. Among other adventures, we climbed around 20 Mule Team Canyon with William Neill and Michael Frye, wandered into Badwater Basin with Colleen Miniuk and Michael Gordon, and were entertained by John Barclay and Cole Thompson at Zabriskie Point.  The outings were kind of like speed dating.  You get a lot of short opportunities to shoot and get acquainted with some fantastic pros, and perhaps gain a few kernels of knowledge and inspiration from the encounter. 

Muench is a more typical small group tour, and seems geared as much to the casual photographer as the serious amateur. We had just 6 photographers and 3 pros on the trip (a somewhat atypical ratio – 2 guests had cancelled at the last minute and we had an extra pro who was auditioning for a permanent gig with the company). With a small group and two vehicles, Muench had more flexibility to chuck plans and chase the light.  And while logistics kept Out of Chicago to locations relatively close to Furnace Creek, Muench got us down to the Ibex Dunes at sunset and made an unscheduled trip to shoot the Joshua Trees up at Lee Flat when some promising weather rolled in. Both were enchanting locations I had not been to before, and that introduction led me to return to Lee Flat the following month on my way to join the Out of Chicago conference.

But, at bottom, it’s not where you go or who you’re with.  What you learn – whether at a workshop or on your own – depends more on how you approach the subject than on what someone else tells you to see. At both workshops, I enjoyed the opportunity to talk photography with the pros and other participants, yet was still able to spend most of the time in the field exploring my own vision. And I think I came away with images that were uniquely my own, even if made at a place and time selected by someone else. A workshop can open your eyes to new locations and ideas, but that is just a springboard to creativity. It is up to you to bring those lessons into your own work and make them part of your practice.

A few months ago I joined a much different kind of workshop with Angie McMonigal,  shooting architectural abstracts in an urban environment.  I had made a lot of abstract images and photographed a lot of buildings before, but I hadn't really put the two together all that often, and certainly not with any kind of intention.  I had seen a couple of Angie’s presentations at Out of Chicago on-line events, and thought her workshop would be a good opportunity to kickstart me in a new direction, so I signed up for her weekend workshop in Chicago.  It had been awhile since I’d been there, and I was hoping seeing it with fresh eyes in the company of a native Chicagoan would help break me out of my box.  Check out my gallery and decide for yourself if I succeeded.  (You can also see my more typical street and travel images from the trip over here.)

This was more photowalk then workshop.  We visited over 30 locations in three days, some for an hour or two, some for just 10 or 15 minutes.  At each location, Angie would whip out her iPad and quickly scroll through some images she had made, then we would spread out and begin to shoot.  No one looking over your shoulder, no daily image reviews or classroom breaks. This was a fast-paced just-get-out-and-shoot kind of workshop. While I am often a fan of going out without a preconceived notion of what to shoot, there are also times to narrow and focus your vision.  Going out every day, all day, looking at architecture and being hyper-attentive to shape, line, color, light and form really helped me start to see the urban environment in a new way. 

In other news …

If you haven’t poked around my website in a while you might notice a few changes around here.  I’ve been slowly re-organizing and redesigning the website (again).  I’m trying to do a better job of curating and organizing the galleries, and also adding a few design tweaks here and there. 

The Places gallery (as well as the short-lived Road Trips gallery I wrote about last time) has been replaced with two new collection sets – Near (for images made closer to home) and Far (for images made … well you get it.)  I’ve also finally gotten around to posting some pre-pandemic images I made in Oaxaca and Cambodia, in addition to adding galleries of more recent work. And I’ve brought back the Out & About gallery, with the intention of refreshing it with new images (and removing some old ones) every month with more recent work. At the same time, I’ve begun culling some of the older galleries to provide a smaller and more curated and cohesive set of images.  It’s slow going (it’s hard to kill your babies) and as of this writing I’ve only made it through a few galleries. But I’m committed to getting this project done by the end of the year.  Or maybe next spring.  Really.

On the design front, I recently discovered a couple of third-party plug-ins that fix two of the biggest things I’ve found missing in Squarespace.  The first randomizes gallery images so they appear in a different order every time you load them, and the second enables masonry layouts so horizontal and vertical images look better when presented next to one another in image galleries.  Click around a few of the galleries on my website and you’ll see what I’m talking about. The plug-ins only cost $19 each and were well worth it to me. Check them out if you’ve been looking for a similar solution.

Finally, I’ll close by sharing that a few of my images recently won awards in a couple juried competitions:

 These three images were accepted in the Sacramento Fine Arts Center’s Watery Wonders exhibition in June, and the black and white shot (from Cascade Creek in Yosemite) won Best of Show.

 And these two were accepted for the Found Objects exhibition at PhotoPlace gallery in Middlebury, Vermont, where the image of the bike and Lake Superior (shot in Duluth, Minnesota) received an honorable mention.

 Thanks for sticking with me to the end. See you next time.

Happy New Year!

I love a deadline. The turn of the calendar is just a silly construct we all buy into, but still it gets us every time. I mean, really, the difference between December 31 and January 1 is the same as the difference between April 3 and 4. But still, unlike April 4, January 1 has some extra weight to it. A bit of gravitas. A reminder that we are all marking time, and that time is not an infinite resource … much as we may try to fool ourselves into thinking it is.

So when the annual marker rolled around this year I took that as a kick in the pants to start cleaning up all the clutter around here. Some of the galleries were getting bloated, others were getting cobwebs, and there was no room to display the new knick knacks I’ve been collecting this year. I was tempted to just throw everything out (again!) and start over, but I’ve been down that rabbit hole before and I know it just ends up back at the same place. So instead I satisfied myself by rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, and bringing a few more out from storage.

Mid-year update: I reorganized and relabeled parts of my website in June 2022, so many of the links below may no longer work. It’s on my list to fix when i find the time. :-)

I started by moving some of the “furniture” around. The Places and Fresh galleries were getting crowded, so I created a new page, “Road Trips,” to hold all the galleries of images made closer to home. [Well, that didn’t last long. I re-organized the website again, and now you can find those images in the Near & Far galleries.] I seeded that with a couple new galleries of images from recent trips I took to Death Valley and to the Grand Staircase Escalante N.M. (with stops in Nevada and Arizona along the way), and then moved some of the older galleries there as well. Road Trips is where you’ll now find (a hopefully steadier stream of) images from my wanderings around the Bay Area and the rest of California, as well as journeys a bit farther afield. Anywhere I can, or do, reach by car will eventually find a home here.

Meanwhile, there’s now a lot more room to breathe over on the Places Far page, which now hosts galleries of images made much further from home. In the coming months I’ll be adding photographs from past trips that still haven’t found their way off my hard drive. Bangkok, Oaxaca, Cambodia [<- Hey, I actually did these two!] and Canada are just a few of the locations that I hope to virtually revisit and add to those galleries in the near future.

The Fresh page is a bit less cluttered as well, and will be the primary home for current projects I’m working on. You’ll find images from my Fallen series over there, along with photographs from the vegetables I’ve grown in my Garden or cooked in my Kitchen. Additions to the Spider Project will live there too, alongside a new gallery, “Roadside Attractions,” that I added to showcase faded and deteriorating bits of commercial architecture that always seem to grab my attention as I’m driving down the road (apologies to Tom Robbins for the title). My Flower gallery moved over there too, mostly because I had nowhere else to put it and, hey, the Flowers I photograph are usually pretty Fresh anyway (‘cept for the dead ones that is.). I’ve got some other projects on my radar too, and as those come to fruition you’ll hopefully start seeing some other galleries living the Fresh life too.

The Impressions page has expanded a bit, and is the new home for galleries of images of flowing and reflected water. My Horizons series still lives there, along with other Impressionistic images I’ve made using blur, soft focus, camera movement and other techniques.

The Streets and Snapshots pages are still around, and mostly unchanged, though I have managed to sprinkle a few recent images into the galleries over there. I hope to be better this year in consistently adding new images to those and the other galleries on this site. (Wait, was that a resolution? Careful. The best laid plans …)

There’s still a lot more to do around here. There are images from other trips and shoots still waiting to be looked at. The slideshow on my home page hasn’t been updated in months. Some of the older galleries could be culled and cleaned up. And overall I want to provide a more consistent, cohesive look for the website, and be more selective about which images I choose to post, and which I will just enjoy myself. That, however, is a much longer discussion and process, and one I am not quite ready to start yet.

There is still time for all that. And you know what they say about perfection being the enemy of the good. At least this is a start.

Maybe by the time next January rolls around I’ll be done. But don’t bet on it.

This week I forced myself to put down the camera and pick up the mouse.  We had made a few recent trips down the California coast, visiting San Luis Obispo, Paso Robles and surrounding areas.  I had made hundreds of images on those trips, but hadn't gotten around to pulling them up to really take a look at what I’d captured. After getting through a similar batch of images I recently made in Santa Cruz, my attention turned south and I realized it was time to look at those images from the central coast. I lived in Santa Barbara for a while in my youth, and fell in love with the central coast. Oak-studded grasslands, rounded sandstone mountains, and a rugged coastline create a unique sense of place. Between Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara life moves a bit slower. It has a bit of old California to it. That is what I was striving to capture as we made our way back down there.

You can see some of the images I made in a new gallery I just added to my website.  There are roadside buildings, many of them empty and abandoned.  Abstract impressions of vineyards and beaches.  Urban trees.  Old cars and trucks.   Most are in color, some in black and white.  There are deliberate images made with thought and intention, and grab shots made as I hurried to catch up with my non-photographing travel companions.  Most were made with a full-frame Pentax K-1. Others were created with the medium-format Fujifilm GFX 50R, or the Fuji X100T, a fixed-focal length crop sensor rangefinder camera.  There are even a few made on film with a Bronica s2a.

But regardless of the subject or equipment, each has the power to bring me back to where I was and remind me of what I was thinking (or not thinking) and feeling (or not) when I made the image.   And that is the magic of photography.  When you point your camera at a subject and decide what to include and what to leave out, you are making a memory.  Of what captured your attention and sparked your imagination at that moment in time in that particular place.  But it is not enough to press the shutter.  You need to go back and look at what you captured.  To edit and finish the image of course, but also to remember what you saw and think about why you pressed the shutter.  To appreciate your successes, understand your mistakes, and improve your vision for the next time you are out wandering the world, camera in hand.

* * *

Abandoned buildings always catch my eye.  When we were down in Paso last March I spotted an abandoned motel adjacent to the highway, so one morning as the others slept I went out to take a look.  The building was boarded up but I was able to wander freely around the grounds looking for compositions and light.  It felt lost in time, a sliver of a bygone era wedged between the highway and a new modern hotel that had risen to take its place,   I wish I had more time to spend there, to wait until the fog lifted a bit.  But I was happy with some of the images I captured even if I was a little aggressive in adding contrast and color to make up for my lack of time to wait for the light.  I was glad I stopped when I did, because the next time I was passing through town I noticed that the entire property had been fenced off in preparation for demolition or renovation. 

That in turn inspired me to find and shoot the Motel Inn when we were in San Luis Obispo. Reputed to be the first motel in the world, the old Spanish style lodge with a copper roof now sits crumbling behind its own chainlink fence, its former facade propped up by timbers a short distance away. A victim of its own invention, motorists now pass the Motel Inn by with barely a look as they head to or from one of the dozen modern motels it spawned just down the road. I wandered around the perimeter of the grounds, looking for images through the fence that might tell the story of this neglected piece of history. I think the long exposure of a car speeding past is a fitting tribute, the highway signs and old facade adding more layers to the tale. Yes, I blew the highlights on this frame, but I still think it works better than others that are properly exposed.

On another morning back in Paso in March I ventured out with my Bronica to capture a boarded-up auto body shop I’d spied near downtown.  I only shoot film occasionally these days, and my rust shows.  Without the luxury of histograms and LCDs or the ability to capture unlimited brackets, it is imperative to nail the exposure in camera with every shot.  I returned with more than a few images with blown highlights or unrecoverable shadows.  But there were a couple that turned out alright, including this one that I rather like.  The film (Portra 400) has given it a soft, vintage feeling, appropriate to the subject.  It’s been months since I took the Bronica out for a spin, but going through those old images has given me the impetus to pull it out again.

Fast forward to August. I again found myself wandering alone on a foggy morning while others slept.  Carrying only my X100T, I made my way through San Luis Obispo wondering what would catch my eye.  It was liberating wandering around with the compact camera, free from the physical and mental weight that comes with using a larger kit and looking for “important” images.  I pointed its fixed 23mm lens at old buildings, urban trees, and other things that caught my interest.  I used it again as we wandered around Morro Rock and through Cambria later that day. The limitations of the fixed focal length camera can provide a creative boost, as it requires you to focus on the scene in front of you and figure out how to make an image with the equipment at hand, rather than rooting around for some other lens in your bag.  Again, taking the time to look through the images I’d captured opened my eyes to new ways of using that camera in the future.

Thanks for reading. Please visit my central coast gallery to see some of the other images I made on our recent trips. I hope I’ve inspired you to take a trip down your own magic coast, or to go back and look at some neglected images you’ve made in your own corner of the world. You’ll be glad you did.