The Photographer’s I: Architecture in Nogales, Arizona

The trip was to Nogales, Sonora. For dental work. (It went fine.) I had some time available while Ann was having a lengthy procedure, and decided to explore the older downtown area of Nogales, Arizona—twin cities here, divided in the middle by the ominous, forbidding looking, steel wall. Camera in hand, off I go, not [...]

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Plain Design: A Slide Show

Call it found art. Walking along the Coos Bay, Oregon waterfront recently, under an unusually bright coastal sun, I walked past a run-down industrial building just off the main drag. A rather dingy white wall was glaring at me. What caught my eye was an exhaust pipe of some kind, jutting from the wall, a [...]

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The Photographer’s I: Images Inspired by Hector Berlioz’s Dramatic Legend “The Damnation of Faust”

What’s the relation between photography and great music (I’m here referring to “classical” music)? Well, I’m really not sure. But that hasn’t kept me from experimenting on my own. I heard the “Damnation of Faust” first with the New Mexico Symphony and Chorus. Then, as luck would have it, the Met produced it and featured [...]

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Less is More, Sometimes: A Slide Show

Our world can be overwhelmingly complicated. Despite the seeming simplicity of binary systems, this digital age is, except for the initiated, of mind-boggling obtuseness and sometimes depressing frustration. Then there is deep science. No matter how moving it is to hear great physicists talk about the “elegance” or the “simplicity” of this or that set [...]

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Twelve Views of Humbug Mountain Beach

A monothematic photographic essay in subdued tones of an Oregon winter beach before the storm. Humbug Mountain, whose rampart is just visible in some of these photos, has a kind of Fujiama presence when viewed at a distance. In fact it is of volcanic origin. The beach was on this day mild for winter with [...]

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The Photographer’s I: Driftwood

A northwest beach is a driftwood beach, and by that I don’t mean a stray twig or coconut shell washed ashore. Northwest driftwood is a defining essence  of the beachscape, as indigenous as the windblown capes. Driftwood here means immense weathered logs, washed up like toothpicks in Pacific storms, roots, trunks, limbs all sanded, and [...]

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The Photographer’s I: Sunset Country

In extreme northwest Victoria, Australia, where the outback begins, lies a dry eucalyptus land called Sunset Country. I have never seen this place, but the name itself is its own reward.  Imagine—the evocation of the mere word sunset. What comes to mind?  Of course dazzling reds and oranges, reflected in the water or across desert [...]

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The Photographer’s I: Capturing Fog and Mists

In the old days of snapshot film photography, “fog” was a bad thing. I remember as a kid being totally discouraged by some forlorn, low contrast murky prints. Either I had grossly underexposed, or maybe I had developed the film wrongly. Whatever, my prints would not be confused with Ansel Adams’.   With digital, leaving [...]

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The Photographer’s I : Mists and Miasma

Spray and mist. Not exactly promising subjects for a picture. Photography books advise you to take early morning or late afternoon shots. Strong shadows and light; definite, sharp outlines; bold perspective; strong composition with curves, verticals, diagonals and horizontals. And yet for a contrarian with a camera, these are exactly the “rules” that are fun [...]

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The Photographer’s I: A Yellowstone Portfolio

In the Ken Burns-Dayton Duncan special “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea,” Yosemite and Yellowstone get the lion’s share of attention, both for their centrality to conservation history, and because of their iconic nature, double meaning of nature intended. Of the two,Yosemite is the most photogenic, with sculptured granite walls and domes, graceful but thunderous [...]

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