Notes To My Mother

I began traveling and photographing in 2008, beginning with a trip to South Africa. Since then I have been to a lot very special places, each with its own unique beauty and intrigue. But a few of these places are extra special for me and hold a very dear place in my memory. Some of these places are extraordinarily beautiful and enchanting, while others have a sacred quality that is simply captivating and sets them apart from the rest. One of these special sacred places is Upper Antelope Canyon. It is both extraordinarily beautiful and sacred. I had seen pictures of this canyon for years and was yearning to visit and photograph it. Finally, in 2010 we made a family trip to Page, Arizona, on the shores of Lake Powell. Antelope Canyon is very near Page and is very easy to access.  Making reservations with a guide in Page, we made straight for the canyon located about three miles out of town. A Deeply Sacred Navajo Indian Canyon Even though visiting is done along with of...

There is nothing quite like being with the night for several hours uninterrupted, alone and with no artificial light. When I was shooting stars at 11,000 feet in the White Mountains I stood looking up from sundown to around 3 am. It was exhilarating. At that altitude you see the stars with such clarity and there are so many of them! It is simply awesome. In fact, there were so many stars and they were so bright I could walk around in the dark without a flashlight. When the night got dark enough I turned on my camera and pointed it in the direction I had been gazing for the past hour or so. I set the camera to expose for about 30 seconds. In that amount of time the camera’s sensor picks up considerably more light from the stars than I can see with the naked eye. This is a picture taken looking toward the southern horizon where the center of the Milky Way can be found in the constellation Sagittarius. Look at the tremendous number of stars! These kinds of images are best c...

I am standing alone in the dark at 11,000 feet in the Patriarch Grove of Bristlecone Pines in the  White Mountains of California. One of the least light polluted places in the US. The sun has been down now for quite a while and I am thinking night is in full swing. The stars are out, getting bright and clear. The North Star is visible and all of the stars of the Big Dipper are coming into view. I turn on the camera and point it toward Polaris, the North Star. It is going to be a four minute exposure. The time passes slowly. Finally the red light goes off, and I see the captured image in the viewfinder on the back of my camera. Oh my, where did all that light come from? The stars are popping with brightness If you leave a camera on for a while it will pick up light you don’t notice with the naked eye. You may think it is dark, but the camera sees so much better than we do.  On this occasion it was absorbing all of the last remaining light as the sun s...

The beauty of a thing depends almost entirely upon what perspective you choose to view it from. I am looking at an image I took of Queen’s Bath on the island of Kauai. I think it is beautiful. Lovely colors, water spilling over the rocks into a pool - the Queen’s Bath - making lovely doily like patterns on the surface. Yet, the other day I saw a picture of the same scene from a completely different angle, taken in the middle of the day in full, harsh light. From that angle in that stark light there was nothing attractive about the Queens Bath. It was kind of disappointing, and for awhile it affected my perception of this scene: which was the “real” Queens Bath? Is this it this one or the other? I had to remind myself that I can be fooled by these things. Just because something is not so beautiful from one particular angle does not mean it isn’t beautiful from another. Same place, same person, same experience viewed just a little differently and it is transformed from no...