Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Saturday, November 21, 2009


Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Photographing the Implements of Torture
This morning I headed over to my dentist to have him work on my tooth; it lost its gold crown about two weeks ago, when I was conducting the first of two photography tours of the Southwest. I'm not sure what possessed me to chomp onto a proffered piece of salt water taffy. That sticky confection pulled my gold filling right off the tooth on which it had sat solidly for many years.

Meanwhile, after an injection of a painkiller, my dentist and his aides spent about 45 minutes grinding and filing the tooth and suctioning out saliva and blood, in order to place a temporary crown that will be replaced with a permanent version in a few weeks. San Juan Inn Above the San Juan River, Utah
Phil was right. I’ve been to Monument Valley several times, and I’ve made the obligatory photographs of the Totem Poles, the sand dunes, and Salt Creek. On my last trip, the week before last, I turned my attention elsewhere.
Until a couple of years ago, though, I’m not sure I would have been able to turn my camera away from the familiar scenes I knew the rest of our group was photographing. As the trip leader, I used to feel it incumbent upon myself to photograph what the others photographed. In fact, I do photograph the same things. Now, though, I’m more willing to give myself over to other subjects.
The Totem Poles, Monument Valley
It’s not so important to me now that I make photographs of a particular place, like Monument Valley, or Yellowstone, or Yosemite. It’s more important that I’m making photographs in those places, no matter what the subject
In other words, being somewhere I love, photographing in a place I love, has become more important to me than trying to photograph the place itself. It's a bit like fishing for some people, for whom catching a fish isn't paramount; it's the act of fishing they enjoy.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009


Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Friday, October 02, 2009


Tuesday, September 29, 2009



As usual, click on a photo for a larger-sized image.
Thursday, September 24, 2009

Before us, the moon reflected off the channel and lit the sea beyond. Behind us glittered the myriad lights of the city. In a little while, done with beer and high fives, with mp3 players switched on once again, we headed back to Mike's shop. I resolved two things: to buy a new bike light, and to return next Wednesday for another night ride with the same group of guys.Friday, September 04, 2009



Above: Reflection of a man painting his boat at the Marshall Shipyard along Tomales Bay.








Friday, August 21, 2009








Monday, August 17, 2009

The Ballona Creek Bike Path seems oddly named. Ballona Channel might work, or Ballona Waterway. Certainly at its headwaters near La Cienega and and Jefferson Blvds., the creek is constrained, sometimes barely in wet years, by walls of sterile concrete. What a pity the landscape stills suffers from this visual insult. Humans, though, deemed it more important to stave off periodic flooding of the Culver Studio's backlot and surroundings developments than to allow nature to takes its course. Even so, the concrete can sometimes exhibit an industrialized beauty, especially with the right props.
Westward along the creek, the harshness of the concrete facade softens a bit. Tidal waters pushing inland mix with the fresh water flowing out of the city, creating a habitat for salt-tolerant vegetation and bird life - gulls, pelicans, herons, great egrets. A pair of snowy egrets didn't mind me peering down at them. Not so long ago, the Ballona Creek wetlands paralleled the bike path.
Eventually, the bike path becomes a narrow causeway, with the creek on the south, and the main Marina del Rey Channel on the north. With a few hundred yards or so to the halfway point of my ride, I began to wonder at my aggressiveness on my bike. I was supposed to be testing the waters, not drowning in them. 

A California gull had something to say, but the meaning of its utterances was lost in translation.



.jpg)







