Author Archives: Melinda Green Harvey

campfire coffee

The photographer I used to be seems like a distant memory. That photographer who would never intentionally photograph people, and instead stuck to ragged buildings and empty landscapes – the photographer I thought I’d be forever – has left. And now I actively seek out places where I can photograph people doing what they do – even if they’re doing it on a very cold morning in Alpine, Texas, to cite just one example.

Alpine, Texas
photographed 2.22.2025

you who are the stranger

This place is special in ways that I can’t explain. I hope that all of you have a place or two just like it.

near Toyahvale, Texas
photographed 2.18.2025

toy explosion

This is why I’d rather have a road-trip lunch at a hometown place instead of a chain restaurant out on the Interstate. I love the randomness of it all – the lack of a baseboard, the way the wainscoting doesn’t quite match, the cord and outlet, the weird silver thing hanging off the wall, and (the best part) those vending machines.

Also we saw a man there who looked like Roy Orbison, if he was still alive and a lot younger.

Terrazas Restaurant
Pecos, Texas

photographed 2.18.2025

fake

This had the chance to be poignant scene – flowers and a candle next to wavy glass in a ghost-town church.

But it’s a battery-operated candle and fake flowers. I hope that at least the glass was real but I was afraid to tap it with my fingernails in case it was plastic: I couldn’t have stood the disappointment.

Terlingua Ghost Town, Texas
photographed 2.19.2025

the seat of god

Like many things I find on my wanderings, this place failed to offer any strong clues about what was/is going on. I know someone got fancy with the concrete block. And I know there was a random chair in front of a similarly random broom. But past that…

Redford, Texas
photographed 2.19.2025