One Camera, One Lens
The X-Pro series is Fujifilm’s gift to photography. I recommend the X-Pro2 and XF 35mm f/2 lens because it’s digital perfection.
A Scale for the Things We Want
Setbacks, mishaps, and errors—life teaches us pretty quickly that we have the capacity to grow, overcome, and keep moving in ways that might actually mean something to someone else. Failure isn’t a dead end; it’s just a regular part of the terrain. When things break down or go sideways, it strips away the noise and forces you to look at the raw material of what you have left to work with. You learn what you can handle by simply standing your ground and adjusting to the facts as they are.
One Day in Sunray
A street photograph without people documents place and shows landscapes of asphalt and cement. One day I went to Sunray and strolled around.
Interstate Twenty
The heat off the asphalt is a physical thing out here, but the horizon stays wide open. I’d driven out to Monahans just to check on a building I remembered — to see if it was still standing exactly the way it lived in my head. I found it, recorded it, but the day felt too open to just turn back around.
Working Town
If people knew you were out there making pictures, you’d probably get in worse trouble, a proper way of going wrong. Odessa is a working town, and everyone needs a good way of going wrong.
Layered
A 50mm lens is more front-to-back than side-to-side and compresses things together, perfect for layering foregrounds over backgrounds — more deadpan than a 35.
Parks
Near passing cars, a walkway loops around a pond. Trees grow, and ducks eagerly anticipate snippets of bread. The park, known as Buffalo Wallow or Memorial Gardens, is an excellent place to walk in evening hours.
Clipped Corners
A ground glass will have missing corners so you can see if the lens is projecting from edge to edge. If you can see the lens, it’s giving full coverage.
Mercantile
A small wooden store has ornamentation at its facade. The building has a cornice along its roof and a crown in the middle. Why? Perhaps the metal facade elevates the building’s prestige by imitating stone.
Upper Canadian
Texas landscapes along the Canadian River are scenic and overlooked.
Downtowns
Downtowns accommodate recreational photography. It’s light, shadows, and reflections of ourselves in glass entrances. It’s seeing someone we’re responsible for and committing to being kinder and more forgiving, knowing that change requires small steps.
FM 3503
Sand haulers and company trucks roar today, yet in a lost decade, young mechanics revved muscle cars on two lanes, interrupting calm nights before red taillights. It’s been forever since I’ve considered FM 3503.
Sandhills
Monahans Sandhills State Park, Windmill, Texas & Pacific Railroad Section House
Happy
A dog barks, tin clanks, and wind whooshes across dormant branches.
New York Town
I caught the subway and went downtown. Helvetica lettering pointed the way. Passenger cars rocked, rattled, and clanked in the dark, and a platform musician sang Country Roads. People smiled on the boat to the Statue of Liberty, and Manhattan’s mountains rose above the harbor, where I later walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, picturing it as I would in a dry, dusty town.
Sunset Limited
With a ticket, backpack, and several rolls of Kodak Gold, I watched Amtrak’s Sunset Limited coast to a stop at Alpine, 2 PM, would reach Los Angeles at 9 AM, December 2005.
High Lonesome
High lonesome is a one-room bus stop near desert mountains.
9x12
Manufactured circa 1928, my Voigtländer is a back-pocket view camera that holds 9x12 cm film or glass plates (daytime film exposure: Foma 100, f/12, 1/100th).
Changing Barstow
Barstow, Texas (2010, 2021)