Blog Archives
sand/snake, 1
If I told you how long I spent making this photo and/or how many images I made you’d have one of two reactions:
1. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU? It’s a stick. One stick. In an entire national park of stuff, you wasted that much time on…a…STICK?
or
2. Yes. That seems about right.
I do not think there’s any middle ground here.
White Sands National Park, New Mexico
photographed 12.13.2025
like a woman lying naked on a bed
It’s been a while since I’ve gone on and on about how a song lyric came to my while I was taking or editing a photo, but don’t you worry…I’m back with another one.
The title of this photo – “like a woman lying naked on bed” – is from the Dave Alvin song “Out in California.” It’s a pretty fine song, and you should listen to it if you’re not familiar.
It also includes the line “If a man keeps runnin’, he’ll run right into himself” which seems sort of directed at me and my tendencies to get way too much in my own way at fairly regular intervals.
Anyway, here’s a sand dune, some wispy clouds, and (bonus!) a little crescent moon that I didn’t see until I was editing the photo but that I will pretend that I knew about all along. So if anyone asks, I’d appreciate it if you could continue the ruse.
White Sands National Park, New Mexico
photographed 12.14.2025
it’s a wide life
Lately I’ve been thinking about aging (because I am, of course) and what that may look like. Of course how long my life will be isn’t really under my control. What I can control is how wide it is: how much I can do, how much I can experience, how much I can learn, how much enjoyment I can find, how many interesting people I can talk to. My strong belief is that the width of what I do will matter more than how many years I end up doing it. I hope to make it as wide as I can.
Or as David Byrne says, using similar (though more melodic) words:
I know it, that’s how we start, oh-oh-ohGot some wild, wild lifeTake a picture here in the daylight, oh-ohAnd it’s a wild, wild life
White Sands National Park, New Mexico
photographed 12.14.2025
bones
There will be more White Sands photos later…but I’ll start with this one.
I thought the dunes themselves would be so interesting to photograph, but (and this wasn’t really a surprise because I am familiar with my work) what I liked the best was the separate life of things in the alkali flats between the dunes. The plants take on otherworldly shapes, there are tiny tracks made by invisible creatures, and there are elaborate patterns on the surface made by the elements (wind mostly, sometimes rain). Ancient ancient dune movement is revealed and it feels as if no human has seen this – this exact thing – ever before.
For me, the experience became one of seeing the tiny landscapes that populated the one that was too huge to understand.
White Sands National Park, New Mexico
photographed 12.21.2025
information
I’ve just gotten back from a week of photography in New Mexico and El Paso.
I went primarily for a photo workshop at White Sands National Park; the night before it started, I went out to a nearby cemetery to re-learn how to use a camera that’s not my everyday one. A couple of local cemeteries seemed like good locations for my self-guided lessons.
Anyway, I sure did like the lower-case r that was hanging out with a whole line of upper-case ones.
Monte Vista Cemetery
Alamogordo, New Mexico
photographed 12.11.2025
One Day | One Image 