"Peaks, valleys and the like," Colorado, May 2006

Peaks, valleys and the like

It's hard not to take a good photograph in the West. But sometimes it helps to mix up the views with a vertical landscape.

"To go into solitude," Colorado, May 2006

To go into solitude

To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Nature"

Day 358 of 365

Christmas Eve afternoon

We had a bright, sunny day for our drive across Pennsylvania and we arrived in Johnstown to find about eight inches of snow on the ground. A lot of the pine trees still held snow on their boughs, which I found to be unusual a day or so after the storm. Usually the branches have been cleared off by the wind after the first day.

Upon our arrival, we found ourselves in a festive house, the music piped throughout the first floor by speakers in several rooms, Carol and Jim busy in the kitchen preparing for the party that night. We jumped in to help before getting dressed and starting the festivities a little after five. Eight hours later, we turned in, drunk and exhausted.

Day 353 of 365

Winter still life

Winter came down heavily today. Only two days after I heard we might get some snow this weekend, the flakes started falling lightly around 1 p.m. By 8 o'clock, street lights were obscured behind the white curtain and the roads melded with the curbs, the lawns, the sidewalks.

Every hour or so, Casey or I would peek at the view from a window to monitor the progress. No point in shoveling to keep ahead of it, I thought, because all that work would be erased by morning. Besides, I'm happy to give the two neighbors with snow blowers a chance to go an extra few feet to clear our sidewalks, as they've done in winters past without a request.

Winter has arrived in earnest a few days before it arrives on the calendar. The days may soon start getting longer, but spring has never seemed so far away.

Day 348 of 365

A little color in a black-and-white night

No adjustments made; that's the way it looked atop a West Village apartment building.

Day 341 of 365

Clifton's big tree

I'm a sucker for big trees and big displays and colored lights at Christmas. Our municipal complex pretty much has it all for the holidays, so I enjoy driving by it at night. For this shoot, I walked over to it and strolled around the grounds to take it all in.

"Home for the holidays," New Jersey, December 2007

Homemade wreath on the door

In our first Christmas with cats, we had to trim some of the lower branches of the tree to give it a bit of a higher clearance. The felines would lie beneath the tree and swat at the lower boughs. So to discourage the swatting and allow for more supervision when they disappeared beneath the pine, Casey cut some of the lower branches off. Instead of discarding them, she turned them into a homemade wreath.

Day 335 of 365

Christmas in NYC

This is what I love about New York. From Thanksgiving until just before Christmas, as you walk the streets during your daily meanderings, you may turn a corner and find yourself strolling through a makeshift pine forest. I've been through some with trees on both sides of the sidewalk, the pine scent in stereo in effect. It always makes me smile, particularly the setups that have the small twig-trees nailed to the crossed two-by-fours a la Charlie Brown's tree so that people in their tiny studio apartments can enjoy a little bit of Christmas on an end table.

Day 145 of 365

Late afternoon light, Bass Harbor

We visited Bass Harbor Head Light for the first time last May, but I didn't know about the short path from the parking lot through the woods to get the view of the lighthouse from the rocks that is seen in so many photos. This year, I wanted to make sure I got that view. We decided to head down to the point after checking into the hotel in Bar Harbor, but I couldn't recall how far to the east the point was, so I didn't know how the light would be until we got there. Obviously, it wasn't good. Morning is the time to be at Bass Harbor, but I did what I could shooting into the late-afternoon sun.

Next time, I'll get my ass out of bed for the sunrise.

"Yellowstone isolation," May 2006

Bryan and the bison

There is little that can heighten the feeling of isolation more than finding yourself staring out on the open vistas in the West, whether it's the rolling green hills of Yellowstone or the golden desert of Arizona -- or any expansive vista in between.

Day 19 of 365

Green beneath the snow

It's been three weeks, yet our Christmas tree remains on the curb. Not sure what the deal is with that. I figured they would've picked it up at some point in the last 21 days. But as long as the snow is on it, the wind shouldn't blow it down the street -- as it has before -- then it's not that big a deal.

"The patient pine," Wyoming, May 2006

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

How could the patient pine have known
The morning breeze would come,
Or humble flowers anticipate
The insect's noonday hum,-

from "The Inward Morning," Henry David Thoreau