Category: Travel

By now you might have heard, or maybe you were party to the chaos all along as I Tweeted the hell out of my Vegas experiences. I got pretty sick while I was down there. I still don’t know what ailed me–I see Dr. Gravitas tomorrow morning–but it set me on tense-edge and I’m still [...]

Ah, this city! The city that shouldn’t be. A criminal offense of a city! My  moral inverse! And thus of course I would come here as a destination for my transformation, because it is an oasis free of meaning in a landscape so stark even Philip Glass would be intimidated. From here–12th floor of the [...]

Alaska Airlines flight 622 PDX-> LAS Me Seat 1A Various happy sounds. Now am very tired. More later?

I find the confluence of human and geographical history to be fascinating, and one of the best examples of that is pre-Columbian American cultures, and the hints the different societies left us. The Northern Paiutes of Central/Southeastern Oregon did not use stone-based architecture, and their nomadic lifestyle meant fewer long-established civic centers to leave obvious [...]

Mr. Pencil and I have reached a beautiful equilibrium of joint travel. This year’s week in the American Southwest was a perfect synthesis of this: the traits that make travel broadening for me, the wildness of David’s exploratory whims and the driving curiosity that spurs us both. Both of us love to be outside, to [...]

The Traditional Approach What: Antelope Canyon How much it costs: $31 per person to enter. Considerably more if you want to take photographs and sell them. Crowd Factor: Access only via tour group. Truckloads of tourists brought from nearby Page, Arizona. Level of Spectacular: World-renowned smooth sandstone walls with fascinating light. The Pencil Approach What: [...]

Traditional Approach How you get there: Highway 67 south from Jacob Lake, Arizona. During our trip, technically impossible because the road is closed for the winter through May 15. How much it costs: $25 per vehicle to enter the park, $18-25 per campsite per night, considerably more if lodging in a building. Crowd factor: Excessive. [...]

Briefly. I don’t generally enter contests, nor do I generally push my aesthetic or editorial agenda, but I found the Name Your Dream Assignment idea impossible to ignore. Essentially you envision your dream photographic assignment, explain it, and if you win they give you $50,000 to make it real. I have had this idea kicking [...]

The tubes are giving me a walloping so I do not have the stamina to correct all of the photographs I shot this weekend, traveling in (frigid) Central Oregon. But here is a sneak preview: p.s. This is a two-shot composite: first shot exposed for sky, second for foreground. Digital imitation of graduated neutral density [...]

Here it is, your obligatory “I’m not dead” post. Yeah, so I was traveling there for about thirteen days. I kept meaning to make a “Hi from Tahoe” or “Hi from San Francisco” or a “Hi from Arroyo Grande” post but obstacles kept heaving themselves at me from various angles. Let it suffice to say [...]