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Specimen — Massive Cottonwood Tree
Continue ReadingThis image comes from a locally significant nature preserve, mostly unknown among people from the larger world. On my last visit a prominently placed chalkboard on a wall in the visitor center listed more than two hundred wildlife sightings, occurring within one week — from tiny lizards to bobcats to birds of many kinds. Trees […]
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Specimen — Wild Apple Tree
Continue ReadingI made this picture near the entrance to a famous hiking trail in Arizona. In fact the place is so heavily visited and well-trodden there is typically a wait for a parking place. In earlier times this land was privately owned and farmed, planted with orchards bearing nuts and fruits to feed its historical inhabitants. […]
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Did It Really Look Like That?
Continue ReadingWhen I have shown pictures like this viewers frequently ask, “Did it really look like that?” Sometimes it is hard to convince people of the truth I have seen with my own eyes. There is so much possibility for deception anymore — and so many folks holding hardened opinions — it is often fruitless to […]
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A View From Sarah’s Kitchen
Continue ReadingI made this still life picture during a visit to Clarksdale, Mississippi at night from inside a soul food restaurant doubling as a nightclub — a mythical location in the homeland of Delta Blues now permanently shuttered, its founder Mizz Sarah deceased. The blues we heard that evening seemed a gritty, deep-feeling music. I believe […]
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The Power of Diagonals
Continue ReadingA slanted line creates a vector resulting in at least two (explicit or implied) triangles — a simple yet strong armature upon which to build a composition. Here the central diagonal incorporates the curvaceous qualities of an arabesque. Coincidences and other hard lines abound, made softer and more like a dream by reflections and fortuitous […]
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Quoting From Images, Vol. 2
Continue ReadingMany notables have photographed this wall of stains above White House Ruin. None that I know made images from this head-on wide-angle perspective portraying so much of the canyon wall. I am quoting from the work of two men, one at work in the 19th Century (Timothy O’Sullivan) and the other from the 20th […]
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A Curious Surrealism
Continue ReadingA strange scene like this seldom appears in the normal course of things; typically this must be manufactured — through double exposure or later sandwiching of frames. Finding a truly surreal image in real time is rare as platinum. This juxtaposition occurred during a musical performance when the piano man’s hand was somehow projected […]
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Entering the Phenomenological Realm
Continue ReadingPhenomenology — an extravagant word meaning the study of how things appear to us in our conscious — or lived — experience. Anger counts as this sort of phenomenon, while believing the sun will rise tomorrow in the East does not. Philosophers are fond of asking questions we might consider tedious, like: “Is there […]
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Mogollon Rim Still Life
Continue ReadingThe Mogollon Rim (pronounced locally: mug-ee-yon) is a high ridge — many miles long — running east and west across Northern Arizona. It is formally called escarpment. Some sections looking south provide views of mountains and timber as far as the human eye can see. Forest roads lead off the Rim into secluded places, […]
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