Mountain Sky

Some native Coloradan friends of ours were married on top of Arapaho Basin. A beautiful noon wedding in summer, we sucked in the cool mountain air while riding the super-quad chairlift up. A bluegrass band played “Wagon Wheel” while I snapped this photo at 12,000 feet. Standing there, I struck up a conversation with “the crew”, freinds of the groom’s father who had grown up there with views like this as their backyard. We shared a bowl as they told stories, looking over to this ridge, pointing out the lighter area on the left, where it looks like a rockslide has taken part of the slope down with it. “That’s what the locals call Shit For Brains”, one of them told me. “We used to ski that all the time.”

Pittsburgh Brass

We nearly moved to this wonderful city, full of history and originality.

Quarry

This small limestone quarry not far from town seemed to me like an isolated, otherworldly planet. Not far from the main highway, yet I found myself eerily alone while exploring these grounds. At one point, swirling high above in the hot summer wind, I witnessed at least 10-15 hawks circling overhead. The only thing on the ground was water, a bunch of stone and me.

Graffitti

Snowy Firepit

This was our backyard for six years. In the spring and summer, it’s so green and lush you’d never know there were houses behind you. In the dead of winter it takes on an entirely different feeling, bringing you closer to your neighbors for a few chilly months. We would still sit out at night sometimes, cold as it was, staring into the orange, fiery glow, watching the shadows and smoke dance on the snow in the northern wind.

Summer Lift

It’s warm enough to swim down at the bottom, but up here you need a jacket to fend off the chill. The blazing sun kisses your cheeks, giving you a warming sensation inside, while the breeze reminds you of the cold to come at nightfall, telling you not to dawdle too long before the sun goes down. Moments like this are remembered forever, probably because the mountains force you to “feel” the physical world around you, the air thinner, your sense of self, smaller.

Lakewood Theatre

Landmark to East Dallas, this marks our current residence.

Castle Town

Farm Country

This landscape shot was taken behind the high school where my grandfather attended as a young man. Haddam is where he grew up, and is the smallest of small towns. It was then and it still is. Nothing but crops and sky, and ghosts of buffalo, cowboys and indians.

Uptown Mart

This is the storefront where my grandfather worked as a teenager. Soda jerk, I believe. It’s also where he met his high school sweetheart whom he married 50 years later, after my grandmother passed away.

First & Mill

After leaving my granfather’s burial in Haddam, Kansas, our family piled in the car and began to head back to Junction City, where we were staying. My uncle, driving in the car in front of us, pulled us over and told us about Rock City (a glacial field full of giant boulders that have no business being in the middle of farm country), and that maybe we should go and stretch our legs, since we were close. It’s one of those things that not many people get the chance to see, because, why would you? Loved every minute of it.

Haddam High

My grandfather attended high school here in the late 1930’s. As a prank, he and his high school sweetheart (whom he later married), once led a cow all the way up the stairs to the second floor, leaving her there over night to greet the teachers and everyone else in the morning. They realized the plan had backfired when they arrived the next day, only to find cow manure scattered throughout the school. And, getting a cow upstairs is easy, but getting her down was another story.

Mom

As a boy, my grandfather walked along this road—uphill, both ways, in the snow... to get to school. He lived the quintessential rural life on a farm, milking cows and feeding chickens, all before making the long walk to school. Hard work was the only way of life back then, and he did his best to impart a strong work ethic on my mother (pictured above, following his burial), and his grandchildren. He served twenty years and two wars in the U.S. Air Force, and another twenty in the private sector. Through it all, he somehow managed to find time to take us all fishing. God bless you, Gramps. We love you and miss you very, very much.

Stonebreakers

This shot reminds me of Gustave Courbet’s 1849 painting, The Stonebreakers. The painting itself depicts a landscape similar to this, with two laborers in the foreground, breaking stones on the side of a road with crude tools in the summer heat. I recall from my Art History studies, the way the earth rose up and up in the background towards the sky, enveloping the toiling, laboring stonebreakers and binding them to their position in life. Looking out over this giant tract of farmland, I imagined the hardship and difficulty my grandfather endured and enjoyed throughout his early life.

Spirits

Fly

Bricklayer

If ever a photo looked like a painting that belonged in the Musée d’Orsay, this is it. It specifically reminds me of Gustave Courbet’s Stonebreakers, painted in 1849 but destroyed in World War II. There’s very little sign of modernity shown here, if at all. The building materials, pail, and shovel showcase the care and craftsmanship that have gone into repairing Parisian streets for centuries. The worker’s hands and arms show strength and experience, leading me to imagine this line of work as a family trade, passed down from generations. He seems connected to his craft, proud of his work. There’s a reason we’re charmed by this city—it’s details like these that go into everything you see and even walk on.

Businessman

Aside from it’s striking similarity to Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here album cover art, I love the light and composition this photo provides. That’s the famous Sorbonne University, across the street and to the left. We passed through this way from the river, heading towards the monumental Pantheon, maybe two more streets over to the right. In a city like Paris, with so many different neighborhoods, with endless treasures around every corner, this is one of the most “normal” scenes you’ll find. Meaning, I sometimes forget that it’s not all art, cheese and wine all the time, and that Parisians need to work and make a living just like the rest of us.

Castle Door

After climbing up a very steep hill, I paused at the entrance to notice this small castle door. The sun shone directly on the wooden planks, almost inviting me in for a pint, while the archway on the right seemed so foreboding. The various textures of the walls here really helped to take me back in time to the Renaissance, imagining who might have lived there, and how they may have lived. It seems to me we’re not much different than our forefathers, not physically at least. Things change and technology advances the human race, but the differences are relative, and go unnoticed from one generation to the next. In other words, not much has changed. People still have the same basic needs, and the same basic family relationships, and in that respect I can can easily imagine myself living in another time.

Businessman

Aside from it’s striking similarity to Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here album cover art, I love the light and composition this photo provides. That’s the famous Sorbonne University, across the street and to the left. We passed through this way from the river, heading towards the monumental Pantheon, maybe two more streets over to the right. In a city like Paris, with so many different neighborhoods, with endless treasures around every corner, this is one of the most “normal” scenes you’ll find. Meaning, I sometimes forget that it’s not all art, cheese and wine all the time, and that Parisians need to work and make a living just like the rest of us.

Post Office

Free and public restrooms are not easy to come by in Europe. Walking the streets in search of relief, I wandered into this post office and stopped in my tracks when I saw this.

Haag Hipster

Love Locks

This is What We Came For

Platz Cafe

Broken Windows

King Cotton

There’s nothing quite like a west Texas sunset. The air is dry on the Llano Estacado, home to the country’s largest cotton exporters. At dusk the temperature drops like a stone. Blazing summer sun is cooled by high-plains winds, and the view goes on for days, making way for starlit skies that demand a campfire.

Blowout

Busy Randolph

Chicago is one of the most beautiful American cities. The charm exists in its’ food, architecture and people. Chicagoans are a unique breed of people too. They band together through thick and thin: Bulls, Blackhawks and Bears, up and down. Icy, frigid winter. Cool, breathtaking spring. Instant classic summers. Fall that actually coincides with the school calendar.

1119

Home sweet home.

Room for Rent

I always thought that maybe, under different circumstances, I’d live in a room like this. I actually lived a few blocks from here, but in my storied imagination I imagined being a traveler, wandering across America on some crazy adventure, stopping here by chance to rent a room for a night that would later turn out to be the best summer of my life.

Coal Power

It took me a while to realize that this building on the campus of Indiana University was actually a coal power station. I always imagined the inside as being filled with machinery for woodworking, sculture or metalworking. It just has that Bauhaus feel, with geometric shapes and mammoth proportion. Whenever I passed by it I would say to myself: “If I had gone to college here I would have taken classes in that building.” But there it is, just a coal power station. No more, no less.

Chinatown

Haywain

Perfect bales dot the landscape, signaling the transition from fall to the coming winter. You may be from the city, or live somewhere near the coast where this kind of scene doesn’t appear every day. This is for you. It’s untouched beauty. It’s pure farm, pure life knowing these bales will become food for livestock everywhere, keeping some animals warm through the winter, while fattening others for the benefit of human health.

SKS

Off Greenville II

Vegas 3754

Enough With the Plywood

Last Night