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
holes in things
The dunes are breathtaking. The landscapes are otherworldly. The sky’s enormous and very, very blue above the expanse of white.
But also: the tiny landscapes embedded within the vast dunes are also breathtaking. I spent quite a bit of my time lying in the sand to get low-enough vantage points to get the images I thought I wanted. I sort of had a crush on this tiny sand tunnel and made a lot of photos of it. And to add to the fun, I was shooting a camera that’s not my everyday-use one, so I was re-learning it. And the lens I was using that day wasn’t one I’m particularly familiar with. And (and!) the camera’s a manual focus. So there was a lot going on.
But I got the photo I wanted.
White Sands National Park, New Mexico
photographed 12.13.2025
beauty walks a razor’s edge
I suppose that normal people think about White Sands and think about, you know, the white sand.
But these picnic shelters always come to mind: I can remember these exact shapes from my childhood visits to the dunes and I’ve seen vintage photos of them fairly often. Their shapes remind me of the gentle slopes of the dunes, which are of course constantly shifting, but still keep their sinuous shapes.
White Sands National Park, New Mexico
photographed 12.13.2025
One Day | One Image 