Blog Archives
halo effect
I’ve come a long way from my origins as a black and white photographer…here’s an image from a magazine ad made more colorful by my paintbrushes.
image transfer monotype print, from magazine advertisement
printed 5.14.2026
magenta crown
Tom Robbins wrote some of my favorite books. I once co-wrote a poem titled “A Tom-Robbins Novel Kind of Obsession” that got its start from the book whose main character was a silver dessert spoon*. I know some people’s urine smells a particular way after they eat asparagus**. And I know a LOT about the graphic design of Camel cigarette packaging***.
One of the main things I think about, though, is how the character Switters**** holds the frequently-voiced opinion that the “tropics are just too goddam vivid.” Switters’s declaration was right there in my head when I made this photo.
And that poem? I appreciate your interest in it, but it is not safe for human consumption.
West Texas Master Gardeners – garden tour
Lubbock, Texas
photographed 6.20.2026
*Skinny Legs and All
**Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas
***Still Life with Woodpecker
****Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates
neighborhood history
Oh, this? Just a run-down laundry (that seems to have run so far down that it is out of business) in an even more run-down neighborhood.
It feels like maybe at one point the plan was to repaint the whole sign, but the project was abandoned only two letters in.
Lubbock, Texas
photographed 6.12.2026
the roof-giants
One of my favorite things I see during wanders through small towns are the civic-pride murals. I can’t recall ever seeing one that looked new – mostly they look like they were left over from the town’s centennial that’s already a quarter-century in the past. The paint is likely to be faded and/or chipped. Sometime’s the perspective is wonky. Or the scale is weird. Sometimes what was an accepted depiction of people a few decades ago seems terribly inappropriate now. There’s always something to see, though.
This time there was the the rare spotting of a whole family of giants standing on top of the farmer’s co-op gin. How frightening that must be for the workers and the horses way down below, like little ants compared the the local giants.
Slaton, Texas
photographed 5.29.2026
for it is no ordinary creature
We stopped off in Levelland the other Sunday to watch a barrel racing event. I don’t know what technical things to watch for (other than knocking down the barrels is not what the riders are supposed to do) but that doesn’t stop me from appreciating the athleticism of the horses and the riders.
But what I do know – because I attended the grand opening of this particular venue – is that a dirt consultant will devise bespoke dirt recipes for your livestock-based event. If I’d know that sooner, perhaps by career would have followed at different trajectory. Who know? (I mean, I sort of know that I would never have become a dirt consultant under any circumstances, but still, it might technically have been an option.)
Levelland, Texas
photographed 5.31.2026
