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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
important notice(s)
I cannot speak to the information on the sign on the left.
But I did enjoy the way the Fire Victims sign seems to have elbowed its way into the discussion.
The fire the attorneys are talking about raged across northern New Mexico from April-August 2022, burning over 340,000 acres. The Hermits Peak fire began in early April, when the the US Forest Service lost control of a prescribed burn; three days later the Calf Canyon fire started when an improperly extinguished Forest Service pile burn (from three months earlier!) rekindled. On April 22, as a result of a “major wind event” the two fires burned together and eventually became the largest wildfire in the state. So anyway, those attorneys are probably still pretty busy.
And if you were wondering what that might have looked like from a distance, here’s a photo I made on May 15, 2022, near Chimayó. The fire was so intense that it developed its own weather system, called pyrocumulonimbus. It was awful. But also magnificent, in a way.
Mora, New Mexico
photographed 11.9.2025
gate-implied fence
I can’t really decide if the presence of the gate implies a fence or if it’s the other way around. Or if it even matters.
But besides that philosophical situation, here’s a photo that captures the entirety of the town of Inez, New Mexico.
Inez, New Mexico
photographed 8.17.2025
One Day | One Image 