Blog Archives

brunch

I don’t know…but it seems like there are more stories at brunch than at any other meal….

Dallas, Texas
photographed 4.10.2022

sprouts

I am trying to make myself take photos of people. It is not anything that comes naturally to me, but I am committed to becoming a better photographer, to expanding my boundaries, and all that stuff.

This kid made it really easy – he saw my camera and asked me if I’d like to take a picture of his microgreens. I made a counter offer: that I make a photo of the microgreens (he was very proud of them) with him in it.

And this is what that looked like.

Dallas, Texas
photographed 4.9.2022

i will never understand what’s left behind

I have looked inside a lot of abandoned places, and have photographed all of them. And I do not – and likely never will – understand why some things get left behind.

Did they intend to come back and get the rest of their things? Or did they just say fuck it and walk away from failure, hoping that maybe on another day in another town, they’d get a new coffee cup? Or whatever.

Puerto de Luna, New Mexico
photographed 3.24.2018

pinwheel

It is difficult to imagine a task that’s harder than putting a pink pinwheel on a child’s grave.

St. Libory, Nebraska
photographed 8.30.2014

upon layer

Back when I thought I was going to be a poet, I submitted some poems for a critique. One of the poems was titled “Deserts Always Win” – I’d written it after a drive through the deserts around Victorville, California, where I saw lots and lots of remnants of things that hadn’t worked out – homes, businesses, dreams. And – unlike places with heavy vegetation – plants didn’t grown up over the left-overs, so the defeat was always in clear view of anyone who bothered to look. Apparently, the person who critiqued my work had not ever been to a desert; they took very strong exception to my title and to the premise of the poem.

I’m not saying that unfavorable critique led directly to my becoming a photography. I am also not saying that it didn’t play a part…

Anyway, here’s a hulking ruin in eastern New Mexico; it appears to my photographic eye that once again, the desert was victorious. (Poetic me still stands by that, too.)

Chaves County, New Mexico
photographed 5.23.2021