Retired professional photographer, journalist and freelance writer in Blue Rapids, a rural town located in northeast Kansas.
Give us your best shot, the New York Times asked. There was one caveat: the shutter had to snap at 15:00 Coordinated Universal Time (the equivalent of Greenwich Mean Time), on Sunday, May 2. In Kansas that translated to 10 a.m. We were lucky: the sun was shining. The project was the pinnacle of interactive … More One day, one shot
Who am I? I wrote those words last night before bed after seeing an e-mail from Booksurge, or whatever it’s now called. There was nothing unusual about it as the messages come on an annoyingly regular basis, once or twice a week without fail, but something about it struck a nerve that’s been throbbing ever … More An explanation, for what it’s worth
I didn’t notice it when I snapped the shutter on the former jail and sheriff’s office in Washington County—the oldest such facility of its kind in Kansas—but when I developed the image in my digital darkroom there it was, a pale mountain of a snowdrift gleaming in the shadows. Ubiquitous to the Kansas landscape for … More The dirt on late-winter rural roads
Music was the great equalizer but exacted its own unyielding toll. It could uplift and resuscitate or deconstruct with ruthless efficiency. But no matter the genre, it was the single universal relevance binding us together, at once a source of solace and suffering, and always partaken of behind closed doors. Our rooms in Grants were … More Hear that lonesome whistle (Part 2)
It was, to say the least, an underwhelming debut. My wife and I, along with dozens of others, were gathered on the graveled edge of the Union Pacific rail yard in Marysville, the old one whose tracks branched off the new bypass to wing like an arrow through the center of town. Only, alas, to … More Hear that lonesome whistle (Part 1)
Up at 5:30 after getting to bed late, wind howling, snow stopped. Made a pot of coffee, dressed in warm clothing, unscrewed the Black Rapid camera strap from the Really Right Stuff L-bracket and stuffed the Nikon D700 with 14-24 m/m lens in the Think Tank camera holster. Everything done by rote but lovingly so. … More Last days, last thoughts (Part 3)
When one door shuts, another opens. Of all the adages we’ve been force-fed since day one, it’s the likeliest to come true and the least likely to be surprising. After all, it’s not as if we give up at the first sign of defeat. We’re built of tougher stuff. Failure is for quitters. That laziness … More Last days, last thoughts (Part 2)
Desperation sets in as the final days of my Vernal Equinox Project bleed away. Four days before the grand finale I didn’t want to go anywhere much less aimlessly search for an image but then I remembered a conversation I’d had several weeks ago with a friend. The sun was low but not that low … More Last days, last thoughts (Part 1)
