Journal | A genius, so to speak, for sauntering

Knowing when and how to use stock photography is a talent in its own right. So is knowing when not to.

Travel photography tends to be about capturing the differences you find, either in the landscape or culture or food, between what you live with and what you find when go somewhere else. This makes a travel piece about your home town a challenge…

Lubbock, Texas, May 2010.

The Supreme Court ruled on the case United States v. Stevens today that I wrote about last year. They struck down the law that made depictions of animal cruelty illegal.

It turns out that a significant number of people, around ten percent of the population, are stereo blind—they lack the ability to gather depth information using the parallax difference between the eyes.

If I ever meet Murphy, I'm gonna kick him in the ’nads. These photos are an attempt to snatch something, anything really, out of the clenches of Murphy's Law.

Adams allows for the happy accident of the machine, which opens the possibility that you might be confronted one day by an excellent photograph made without human intent. Perhaps you would find a very lucky shot from a traffic or security camera

Like many difficult questions, the problem is not the evasive answer, but rather the muddled question. The question 'what is art?' asks for a definition.

Huge prints are de rigueur for the landscape photographer and photographers often overlook the value of the small print.

Why do we categorize photographs the way we do? How did we settle on classifications like still-life and landscape photos rather than dark vs. light photos, or photos of man-made vs. natural things, or photos taken vertically vs. horizontally?

This photograph of pianist Rudolph Ganz arrived in the mail last month. It belonged to my grandfather, then my parents, and now me. It has become an object of contemplation for me.

Looking at this image it occurred to me that it might be considerably more difficult to shoot today. Although the laws haven't changed significantly regarding photography in public places, the public has been asked to vigilantly report suspicious behavior

Nica's claim to fame is that of a patron. She housed, fed, and often rescued what at times seems to be the entire New York jazz scene of the 50s and 60s. Considering the artists she is associated with (Charlie Parker died in her apartment), she must have…

With the passing of Labor Day we begin our long lament for summer's retreat. Summer in Alaska can be a vexing season of cool, wet weather punctuated with the precious, rare warm day. Being such a short season here, we make every attempt to savor the nice

Rarely do photo editors have the opportunity to make explicit statements for themselves. Always in the shadows, struggling to support the ideas of others, the photo editor, like the film editor in cinema, is the unheralded voice and often the heart and so

Proust would have known another case of "reconquest" by photography, that of the lovely Lady Evelyne Buchan, nicknamed "the Pocket Venus" by London society because of her diminutive stature. Like Misia, the Pocket Venus had been abandoned by her husband…

Music school provided a great photography education; that's where I learned to practice. And you do learn to practice. Practice in itself is a skill. Yet photographers are generally not taught how to practice.

I've written previously about museums locking up public domain works. Last week an interesting case bubbled to the surface

I've been away again for several weeks in Wyoming pursuing some personal work which included among other things photographing behind the scenes at the Cody Stampede Rodeo. I'm back home for a while and will be editing photos and making blog postings here…

I've been broadcasting dead air here while I was in Texas shooting a large assignment for the National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), an agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture. These kind of jobs are the reason I am photographer—to ...

While reading the confidently self-assured comments surrounding stories like that of Klavs Bo Christensen and his images, which were recently disqualified from the Danish Press Photography Union Press Photo Awards for excessive photoshop manipulation, I have to remind myself that ...

Stephen Shore managed an incredible success in fine-art photography at a very early age famously getting his photos into the hands of Edward Steichen, who was the curator of photography at the MoMA

Although it's been years since I've loaded a roll of 35mm film into a camera, I still shoot some transparency and b&w film in large and medium formats. I like the options my 4x5 camera affords and the digital options in large format

ALL men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. —Aristotle, Metaphysics ...

Industrial Photographer Stephen Mallon seems to be getting the runaround from AIG and US Airways, who for some reason want to hide his outstanding photos of the recovery of flight 1549 in the sofa cushions. Lots of details at [the ...

I'm out of town for a little over a week, so things will be slow here (although there will be new stuff in the iPhone gallery). I leave you with an idea from Proust. One of the things photographers quickly ...

I was discussing Facebook with a friend in the marketing business who had never signed on to the service. "You're in marketing" I said, "you might want to understand how the dynamics of the social media work. Facebook, or something ...

Our friends over at Soho the Dog have handed us the distinguished and no doubt highly coveted "Premios Dardo" award. The rules seem simple even for my coffee-starved brain: pass the award on to five other sites. So here they ...

Northrop Frye, from Anatomy of Criticism: >>Poetry is a vehicle for morality, truth, and beauty, but the poet does not aim at these things, but only at inner verbal strength. The poet qua poet intends only to write a ...

There goes the weekend. I had the best intentions of making productive use of my time over the next few days and then discovered that the German Federal Archive has agreed to donate 100,000 historic images to the Wikipedia Commons ...

The French painter Claude-Joseph Vernet died on December 3, 1789 exactly one month and one day before the the second congress of the United States passed the first federal copyright act. The original act granted authors 14 years (extendable to ...

Thank you to friends and colleagues who take time from their days to visit this space. It's been a wonderful year. Best wishes and happy Thanksgiving.

I've returned to find home a little colder and darker than when I left. The winter in Alaska seems to accelerate to December 21st when the days will once again begin to get longer. This time of year, even two ...

I'll be in the lower 48 for a couple of weeks, so the posts will be few and far between. I leave you with a few ideas from Hermann Broch who, although he is better known for novels like *The ...

I've been thinking a bit about the influence of nostalgia and romanticism in landscape photography. While there is certainly an aspect of romanticism that dwells in nostalgia (our good friends over at sohothedog make some interesting points in this regard), ...

I seem to always disagree with Mark Hobson over at The Landscapist, but whatever our philosophical differences may be, and it is often difficult for me to tell if they are differences of semantics or substance, I always find myself ...

In 1705, according to legend, the 20 year-old Johann Sebastian Bach walked 250 miles to the town of Lübeck to hear the famed organist Dieterich Buxtehude. Buxtehude was well known as a composer, but he was a superstar of organ ...

This morning the New York Times published an op-ed by the well known economic pundit James Grant lamenting the world's falling opinion of the US Dollar and suggesting that the solutions which the government are proposing may be less than ...

Jerry Bowyer goes up against the Earth First heathens in the name of Teddy Roosevelt in a piece published at tcsdaily.com as well as crosswalk. I bring this up because it highlights what passes for environmental discourse among many pundits. ...

Two stories each worth considering in the context of the other: 'Off-Road Rage' Climbs as Trails Get More Crowded from The Washington Post Bid to allow guns in national parks from The Christian Science Monitor

Here is an interesting and important ruling from the U.S. District court involving wilderness and the statute R.S.2477, which state and local governments have been trying to use to allow them to build roads and ATV trails into designated wilderness ...

I am adding a handful of older still life photographs shot on 4x5 transparency film and scanned several years ago on the Kodak Pro Photo CD system. These were excellent scans for their time at a bargain price, and although ...

The title of this journal is from Thoreau’s Walking. Walking, both Thoreau’s essay and the act itself, is close my heart and I'm often frustrated by city planners and property owners who don’t make provisions for the pedestrians. I have ...