The Philippines
Travelogue: The Philippines
Images from Honolulu, Manila, Albay, and Camarines Norte, January and February 2018. The Philippines is a place where time seems to follow a circular path. The unceasing urge to get on to the next thing, so familiar in the United States, vanishes quickly in a place where cell phone service is sold by the text message and all-day electrical power is not something to be counted on. It's a place where there's always a lot going on, but there's always plenty of time.
On the Road in Luzon
Fleeting images of life in the Bicol region, viewed from the back seat of an overloaded van. Best viewed with the air conditioning off and a Journey greatest hits CD turned up loud.
Recent Stories
Every Day 2016
In 2016, I challenged myself to take at least one photo of some meaning every day of the year. (Let it be remembered that it was a leap year.) I accomplished the mission, and while there are certainly some uninteresting photos here, I am pleased with the results overall. Some of these images are among the strongest I have published, and it was exciting to create them in situations (driving home from work, or cooking dinner) when I normally would not have been thinking about the camera at all. I'm not sure I'll be doing another photo-a-day project any time soon, but this undertaking was definitely worth the effort.
The Last Roll
On a sunny afternoon in October 2018, I accompanied my bride-to-be to the front door of the nail salon where she and her ladies-in-waiting would begin their wedding preparations. I loaded a roll of Ilford HP5 and started walking. These photos represent my last roll of film as an unmarried man, and the world through my eyes in the 24 hours before the big moment.
Sunsets to HNL
Oahu is a large island, and there's a lot happening. Take a trip from the North Shore to the airport.
Oahu Back Alleys
Not far from the glamour of the tourist hot spots, the real Honolulu carries on its business. Like anywhere, Oahu hosts auto body shops, homeless folks pushing shopping carts, shuttered warehouses, and eyesore gotta-put-it-somewhere public works facilities. These are the places you fly over and drive past. As you take off and head home, your bellhop will come here to pick up his girlfriend after work. Your trolley driver will stop for a beer. Your waiter will punch in for his other gig. Honolulu continues.
General Projects
Hawaii Nei
Hawaii's reputation as one of the world's most beautiful places is well-deserved. A day does not pass without a rainbow.
Still, you have to make an effort to really appreciate it. As a tourist, you are overwhelmed by the place, the mountains and colors and iridescent ocean, your attention flicking from view to view. As a resident, you become desensitized to it, bored, too busy.
Hawaii demands a mindset of constant acceptance, yet constant wonder.
Olympia
Washington's Olympic Peninsula is a place of ethereal loveliness, of mists and hills, thick stands of trees, and bomb-swept clear-cut. There is a sense of a world still being made, brush strokes not yet cured and dried. You often feel a bit off-balance, a bit of an intruder. But there is still Aloha there to welcome you.
Just watch out for the werewolves.
Architecture
There is a parallel universe where I am an architect. I am fascinated by the way little details build up, by the way great buildings create environments. Photographing architecture requires thinking about a building's fields and flows, much the same as designing it. Architecture photography is homage.
Bleak
There is a certain welcome calm in desolation. Don't fret, little one. Lay back; take a breath; smile. It will all be over soon.
Echoes
Time is an ocean. Its waves wash us, its currents steer us, and its landmarks don't always match our maps. But we are not entirely at its mercy. We can make ripples. We can leave echoes. And by studying the wakes and shadows we leave behind, perhaps we can know each other better.
En Route
Getting there is often all the fun, in my experience. There may be roads and runways now, but the exploration has not ended. There are many stories to be found in the tools, terminals, and routes of our travels. Sometimes you most strongly want to be nowhere.
General Topic
Stand-alone photos that aren't part of a larger project. Sometimes you're not trying to make a bold statement about life.
History
These are photos that were significant at various points in this site's history (or mine). For the most part they just look like "pictures of things" to me now, and in some cases that's all they ever were. But they are preserved here as a display of evolution.
Impressionism
Quantum theory tells us that at the smallest levels, sharp focus and perfect knowledge are impossible. It tells us that by observing something, we change it. Information is lost; new information is spontaneously generated from nowhere. The truth is a question of interpretation.
Kama'aina
Hawaii was beautiful before anyone saw it. Since that first landfall, many of man's works have dulled, diluted, and diminished the natural vividness. But not all of them. When man has worked with Hawaii, he has often created splendor that would not have existed otherwise.
Land of Enchantment
New Mexico has a well-chosen state nickname. In most of the state, you feel a sense of quiet calm, like you are surrounded by history, inhabiting a moment of a grander plan.
Nature At Work
Most of the world's apex predators don't care about reality television. The redwood forests carefully avoid forming an opinion on European monetary policy. Ocean tides are unaffected by traffic jams. While we distract ourselves, the real world happens around us.
Solitude
Solitude is a hard thing to describe. It isn't simply being alone. It isn't being far from the crush of the normal world. It isn't a sense of control. More, it's a sense of not having control, of there being no control, of control being unnecessary. The universe does what it wants. Accept that you are part of that universe, and you will find solitude.
Strangers
We are all strangers to most of the people we see. We feel like we know something of one another, and maybe we do.
The American Interior
There's still a lot of rustic open air in the United States. There are places that feel like 1950, and 1900, and 1850. There are places that feel untouched. There are places that are still negotiating with civilization.
The City
I prefer to think of cities as events, rather than places. A city has a beginning, middle, and end. Cities are never finished. The plot is always evolving.
The Northland
While not a Minnesota native, I consider it to be "home." Minnesota doesn't go for grand spectacle, monuments of past upheaval and cataclysm. It's alive now. You can see the beauty being created all around you.
The Ocean
I was in high school the first time I saw the ocean. Now, living on an island, I can hardly not see it. The shore feels to me like the portal to an alien world. You look out at the horizon, and you imagine the thousands of miles between you and the next dry land, and you realize that most of the world looks like that. The planet as it really is bears little resemblance to the greens and browns we are used to.
The Photographer
Photography is a process. There's planning, and training, and preparation. There is a script to write, actors to recruit, and a performance to give. All the world's a studio.
You Are Here
The world is always begging to wrap its arms around you. Look around. There's something you can get lost in.