Lighthouse

Boston Harbor. 2009.

Flying in at dawn. I love how solid the water looks, how long the lighthouse's shadow is. I love seeing dawn from high up, as if by being in the sky, you're part of the sun's family, an equal. Like you're somehow responsible for all those below you.

Sitting (with tile)

Gorilla Cafe, Berkeley. 2008.

Winter Patterns

Big Bear, CA. 2008.

Headwaters

Warner Center, L.A. 2008.

This is where the LA River starts. Calabasas Arroyo on the left merges with the recently-joined Bell and Dayton Creeks, on the right. At this point, at least one map I've studied starts using the name Los Angeles River. The river continues east through the southern San Fernando Valley, wraps around Griffith and Elysian Parks, skirts downtown, then heads south to the port.

There are grand plans in the works for rehabilitating and de-channelizing this river. Currently, it is mostly ignored, other than for fire truck drills in its dry concrete basin. Livestock live next to the channel in some of the poorer areas. A bike path follows it from Long Beach north to Vernon, where it quits suddenly and without comment or direction.

In the picture above, there are about four inches of water flowing over that flat sheet of concrete--just enough for a duck to paddle in. This seemed like more than the usual for late May, but that's just a guess. I'm eager to see what the river becomes.

Blurry Start

Pomona, CA. 2009.

Somehow seems appropriate that this isn't in focus. It probably matches their memories of that day: in motion, soft edges, beautiful but unclear. Good energy.

This was the last photo I took that day, before I surrendered to being in the experience and not the person behind the camera. As much as I love taking pictures, I'm sometimes saddened to realize that I was busier recording an event than watching it. I don't want all my memories to be of the pictures I took.

This wedding was perfect, and I'm glad I can recall every well-thought detail.

From Above

Somewhere, North America. 2008.

Somewhere between the Rockies and my transfer in Chicago, I realized it was beautiful out and started taking pictures. I have others with more urban landscapes, but this one has the most sky. If you squint, you can just make out the curve of the earth. Or maybe it just looks that way because the corners are darker. God, I love flying.

Green Monster

Long Beach. 2007.

Taking the ferry out to Catalina. Great views of the new bridge over the port.

Blanketed in Light

Chico. 2009.

Visiting a friends' friends, who make up the musical group Ma Muse, which I've listened to a lot recently. So calmly positive. I love how bright everything is when it's been raining, and is still cloudy. Light from every direction. Trees, wrapped in blankets of light.

Oh, Seattle

Seattle Public Library. 2006.

Wires Again

Deakin Street, Berkeley. 2009.

Have I mentioned that I like wires? Their tangle and weave? The way they divide the sky into fractions and parcels and vast swaths of blue, peach, lavender, orange, seashell pink?

I do. I like the connectedness they state, the interdependency; I even, on occasion, like the buzz that falls down from their tight perches.

But I also think they're ugly and should be put underground, at least within cities. They are a remnant of loosely structured municipalities and unincorporated land, of a time that doesn't exist anymore, at least not here. We don't have room to be unorganized anymore.

Her Shoes

Boston. 2005.

July. Warm even with air conditioning. Languid air drifting through large buildings; green sprouting, straining outward; moisture in the lungs and on the skin. Sleeping with the window open, with no blankets on; a sheet, maybe. Dressing in clean, cool clothes.

I miss the varied certainties of Boston. The red brick, the modern architecture. The large, protected open spaces surrounded by sweating, crowded streets. Polluted, accessible water ways. Heat-white skies in summer.

I miss this moment, when a woman I barely knew lay still for me, while I photographed her hand, her calves. Her shoes.

Bones

The Farm, Santa Rosa, CA. 2009.

I don't have anything to say about this pile of bones, so instead, here's a poem for Raciel.

Pick up you, little girl.
There's the slats of the bed, falling down.
They need righting.
Lay you down on the dark floor
And reach under your slumbering place
To your dust-covered toys,
Your infant clothes saved for wistfulness only.
Pick up you, little girl,
And reach through that rust metal frame.
Latch on to that floating timber,
That pine support for your dreams.

Djifere

Djifere, Senegal. 2006.

A fishing village on the very tip of a fast-eroding sand bar, close to the Gambian border. The beach was littered with shells.

Sharon and I had charted our own fishing boat. First we went to the mangroves, where our guides caught about six small fish and I saw a jackal running out of the water, then we motored out to a small, shifting sandbar island. They cooked the fish and made us strong black mint tea, which we drank sweet, in small glass cups.

Ithaca

Ithaca, NY. May 2009.

Went out for my friend's graduation from Landscape Architecture school. It was cool but lovely, with rich greens all around.

This pedestrian bridge crosses over one of the famous gorges. The view from the middle was two narrow walls of hard, sheered stone, with feathery trees coating their tops.

Fallen Perfection

65th Street, Berkeley. Spring, 2009.

After a good rain, just like today. Colors are jumping and the light comes in clean and sharp.

Pure white against detailed brown. Fall comes in December, here.

Earlier, I stood on the water just south of the Bay Bridge, looking east from San Francisco. A light wind made the water heave; waves bounded to shore and then bounced back from the wall, blind wet energy. I watched a sea lion surface for air at short intervals, slowly making its way from one pier to the next. I watched cars on the bridge, driving into the city.

Snowy Fence

Boston. 2009.

I went to visit my friend Lydia in Boston last January. Turned out my cousin lived just a mile away, so I walked over for brunch, the morning after a big snow. Beautiful walk, beautiful snow. It was still and calm but only because snow collects and holds sounds. If I looked around, there was actually quite a bit of activity. But still, it seemed so quiet.

I stopped at a bakery on the way home and took pictures of their bread.

Getting Lost

Lost Coast. 2008.

Clearly I'm in love with the Lost Coast.

Bear

Camp. 2009.

Bear Dog: you are my favorite ever.

Views from the Lost Coast

The Lost Coast, Northern California. 2008.

Two pictures this time. I couldn't resist. Somehow the forest in deep fog and the wind swept, chilly beaches are all part of the same feeling. Of entering a truly lost, undisturbed world. Even talking to other people, seeing cars, buying food--nothing could alter the sensation of being an insignificant visitor to something large and solid and unconcerned. As if my entire three day trip was missed because the land blinked.

I find myself thinking about that trip a lot, now that it's fall again. Winter, I should say. The penetrating cold seeping into your flesh. The deep, beautiful gloom. The water-rich sounds. Trickle; rush; suck; drink; slide; wear; pound; fall; coat; sweep; crash. Clouds and streams and saturated dirt and the ocean, always the ocean. Like the out-of-range buzz of a t.v. in another room. You know it's there, you sense it, without knowing how. It's there, reaching out with greedy palms to scrape at the land, gluttonous for more. Eating its way toward you.

Lofts + Retail

East LA (the gentrified part, not the scary part). 2009.

Sitting outside in the sun, supposedly doing work for a group meeting. Really just shooting the shit, boasting about how much work we all have, feeling the sun on our faces, slowly getting too hot.

Ran into someone I knew from Boston. We talked for a few minutes, caught up. I love it when the world feels like a small place.

(I miss LA.)

Sasha on a Walk

Tilden Park. 2007.

Went for a walk with Sasha, Zoe and Liam. We went up the hill across Jewel Lake from the Little Farm. I hadn't been on those trails since childhood, when we took walks every weekend, as a family.

It must have been late summer; I remember looking for blackberries afterward. It was warm, we talked, everything was brown and green. I love the light on Sasha's neck, her beautiful curly hair; her earrings. It was as if nature had been designed as the perfect backdrop for her.

Red Rock Walls and an Early Bedtime

Zion. 2009.

God do I want to be back there. To wake up to cold morning air that I know will heat up around me as I hike steeply up hill. To feel so in tune with my body--yoga when I'm stiff, food when I'm hungry, early bedtimes and waking up with the dawn. I've never thought things out less. My first impulse always turned out right. I found balance, joy, fulfillment and startling clarity everywhere I went.

I knew myself best when their wasn't anyone else there to describe it to. When existence was all there was.

Looking East

Kelso Dunes, Mojave Desert. 2oo9.

I think I picked this one more because I want to be back there then because it's a great photo. For some reason I feel like the clouds are really in motion, that they're booking it across the sky, flying south for the winter. The sand dunes were just these two small mountains of sand in the middle of a plain, with clumps of hard rocky mountains scattered around to the south, the east, the north. The west slowly rolled its way oceanward with yellowed hillocks that eventually crescendoed into heavy brown cliffs, off near the top of the horizon. They looked dark even in the feathery morning sun.

At the top, a bee hovered one foot above the highest point of the dune, buzzing its confusion at my presence before zigging off. When I got to the bottom, after leaping my way down the singing dunes, I poured a cup of sand out of each boot. Then I did yoga in my underwear, in the empty desert.

I made a lover's prayer

Mojave. 2009.

A poem, inspired by Gillian Welch's "I made a lover's prayer."


the sharp, sweet ache of loneliness slides into me
it has its own tang
like blood on the tongue

fall is come to wrap me in its arms of early dusk

there isn't anyone else.
not the man that i dream of;
not that man that i hope for.
there isn't anyone else.

Educate! Agitate! Organize! ...Vernon

2007. Vernon, CA.

That's downtown LA in the background. My brother Tom was nice enough to drive me out to a site I was photographing for my one and only photo job. A college friend working as a professor's assistant in New York suggested my name when the professor needed photos of a few sites in LA for his new book.

It was fun to track down the sites and sleuth around for good angles. For the site in Vernon, I ended up climbing up a tippy stack of wooden flats so I could get a good angle. There were bees living in the crates. Even my memories of the place--a large parking lot, scattered with trucks--are in black and white. Ugly industrial buildings on lumpy pieces of land, bulging asphalt smeared over unused railroad tracks; Vernon seems like something that should have been left to rust long ago. Instead, it's part of the ever-more-heavily used port and distribution center of Los Angeles and Long Beach ports. The grit keeps layering on, and the sky gets paler with the years.

After I finished taking photos, Tom and I walked around a bit, exploring. I had some film left in my camera (still a few months before my trusty cannon rebel 2000 quit for good), so I had Tom think of a story, then tell it to me as we walked across a bridge over one of the trickle-sized "rivers" of LA. I took pictures as we walked and he talked. He's very expressive with his hands, but I liked this photo better than a close up of his gesturing. The tee shirt doesn't describe Tom so much as it sums up an inherent part of his beliefs and goals. He's a great guy, a great brother.

Chevrolet

Just outside my house. May, 2009.

This is late, for last night, when the "upload photo" button wasn't working.

Bombastic

I miss my level!

Bomba, the other half of Bombassidy, is in Ecuador studying gardens in small villages. She's amazing, and clearly looks great with a buzzed head. I can't wait until she gets back.

Bar 717 Ranch/Camp Trinity ("Camp"), 2006.

West

On the ocean, just west of the western-most tip of Africa, off the Senegalese coast. Facing North America. 2006.

Canyonlands

May, 2006: Petra, Jordan

Amazing how much this looks like Zion. It was probably 100 degrees in May. My friends and I found a cat wandering the ruins, crying. We gave her some water.

I wonder how long until all of the water in Zion is gone, and it's as dry as this desert.

The Farm; The Light

I love this picture. I took it Labor Day Weekend in 2008, near Santa Rosa. It's late afternoon. Family is spread out, some in the pool, some sitting on the porch, talking. Bare feet up on empty chairs. A beer in the left hand as the right gestures out, following a point home.

Warm dry air sliding across almost-dry skin. Too cool for a moment, a chill up the neck and down the arms, and then warmth again. Rich cheese, spilled out of its shell, forming a puddle of delicious fat on the plate. Hand me a cracker, will you? No, the round one.

Pink Flowers, Late

I watched the first two installments of John Adams last night, and never got around to posting. So here it is, late.

These long dark evenings make it hard for me to get things done. My impulse is to bundle up, snuggle down, and watch TV until my mind rots. Instead of fighting the impulse, as in years past, this time around I'm indulging it, and I find myself immeasurably happier because of it. I let dishes pile up in the sink all week, then attack them on the weekend--usually during the day. I get all my chores done on Sunday.

These flowers caught my eye on a walk sometime this past summer. On Ellsworth Street, a few blocks from where I grew up. Their delicate pink pedals, framed so carefully by the deep green leaves, called out to be recorded, remembered. Noticed.

Backlit Cosmos, Yellowed with Halogen

I got home late tonight, around 9pm. I'd gone to a movie--"I love you, New York"--and then tried out the new self-serve yogurt place afterward. It was nice to take myself out for an evening.

I took my neighbor's dog out for a short walk, as I'm dogsitting for him, and being out in the crisp night air reminded me how much I love night, and that I should push back against the impulse to stay inside once it's dark out. I love the quiet, the clean feel of the cold air sliding past my cheek and down my neck; I love feeling warm in my coat as I walk, hands in pockets. I love singing to the dark sky, to myself.

I took this picture a few months ago, back in August when even late nights weren't this cold. It's outside an elementary school near my house. Their flower garden was both overgrown and well kept--the attention paid was apparent, the care given, clear. I wonder if that's how we all want to feel: well kept and wild at the same time.

Dawn in the Mojave

Dawn woke me up.

I was sleeping in the Mojave Desert, on my way to Utah. I hadn't bothered to set up my tent, which meant that star, and then moon, and then sunlight was bright enough to wake me. I was completely alone--the nearest road was six miles away, where I could hear an occasional car sling past.

The wire towers had hummed, loudly, last night. They were still going when I fell asleep, just three hours after dark--5:30 p.m. in early November. But when the moon rose, I slowly realized that I couldn't hear a sound. The wires were quiet, and so was everything else. As I listened, a few small animal sounds skittered toward me, or away, and then were gone. The emptiness of sound was complete.

Under

This photo was my first (and so far, only) in an art show: Emeryville Art Exhibition, 2009. Seemed like a good place to start.

I took it from a train heading to Davis. We're crossing the north bay, and I'm facing west. The bridge is the bottom of the old car bridge; the new one is behind me.

I call this lighting "Jesus is coming" lighting. Whenever I see it I feel like I'm waiting for god to float slowly down from the clouds, ready to forgive us for our sins and explain that everything is all right. Then maybe we'd all do yoga together, and everything would be kosher.

Lisa suggested that I start this blog, as I liked taking pictures so much (she claims this makes me an artist, though I'm not sure I feel comfortable with the title; maybe once someone buys a piece). But in any case, I am starting to get more serious about photography, and am thinking about framing more pieces. Perhaps this blog is a good place to start.

Please, let me know what you think. I'm curious.