JOURNAL
Striving to experience new landscapes by traveling far and near; rediscovering them when writing about them, with new eyes.
Three Ways of Looking at the Whitebird.
Three Ways of Looking at the Whitebird: after Wallace Stevens
The river is moving.
The whitebird must be flying.
One Sun Over All of Them: Kingsley Plantation in Infrared
The same infrared light that renders these historic tabby slave cabins into silver reverie once fell on the enslaved and their owners. Kingsley Plantation, Fort George Island, Florida demands our witness. Rendered with Phase One Achromatic.
These Fragments I Have Shored: St. Augustine and Vilano in Ghostlier Demarcations of Infrared.
In a Florida summer, an infrared camera turns a Fort Mose boardwalk into a winter wonderland — foliage burning snow-bright, skies drained to black — a season that does not exist, built entirely from the heat at hand. This is a black-and-white infrared photo essay from St. Augustine and Vilano Beach, made with a Phase One IQ3 100MP Achromatic back on a Cambo WRS-1600 technical camera with a B+W 830 (093) infrared filter — a system that records deep near-infrared light no living eye can hold. Low tide clears a path to the ruins of the old Vilano Bridge — I call it St. Augustine's Parthenon. A modern bridge now sweeps across the Tolomato River, and on the shore beneath it a solitary figure keeps her vigil in a three-second long exposure. Back in the oldest city in the USA, the Medici-inspired stone lions of the Bridge of Lions keep watch over the Matanzas tide, and the Castillo de San Marcos stands stoic. It has endured by yielding, outlasting the concrete that cracks. Entropy is pervasive, and the photograph is a fragment shored against it.
Fürstenzug & Alchemy
I used Cambo WRS 1600 with Hasselblad CFV100C to make multiple images to create a stitched panorama of Furstenzug in Dresden, the world’s largest porcelein art display. The Stallhof, once the medieval venue for jousting tournaments and chivalric competitions within Dresden's Royal Palace grounds, now serves as a cultural event space nestled between the Johanneum and the Long Arcade. Its exterior wall facing Schlossplatz bears the magnificent Fürstenzug, a 101-meter panoramic mural chronicling the Wettin dynasty's centuries of Saxon rule through a grand cavalcade of mounted figures. Artist Wilhelm Walther originally created this monumental tribute between 1872 and 1876 using the sgraffito technique to commemorate the Wettin family's 800-year legacy, but deterioration from Dresden's harsh weather necessitated an innovative solution. From 1904 to 1907, craftsmen painstakingly recreated the entire composition using over 24,000 Meissen porcelain tiles, immortalizing not only the 35 Saxon nobles, princes, and monarchs but also 59 accompanying figures representing scholars, artists, tradespeople, and common folk who shaped the region's history.
Regrowth | Guana River Wildlife Management Area
Hiking in Guana River Wildlife Management Area, I came across charred tree-trunks and underbrush due to the controlled burn, underwater trail, new growth, and the reflections of colorful trees in the water. I was reminded of the poem by Phillip Larkin:
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
I used a Hasselblad CFVII 50C/907X with an XCD 30/3.5 to capture these images.
Here is Okefenokee swamp, full of pathless, seamless, peerless mud.
Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge is so unique that it is on the list to become a World Heritage Site. It contains 353,981 acres of National Wilderness Area within its expansive boundaries and is home to the headwaters of both Suwannee and St Mary’s rivers and the Okefenokee Swamp.
Of sunstars and reflections in the woods
The start of my first hike on this trail felt like inhabiting the famous scene of Akira Kurosawa's movie Rashomon, where the woodcutter walks through the woods. Instead of an axe on the shoulder – like Takashi Shimura (the woodcutter) – I walked carrying a sturdy tripod angled at 45 degrees over my left shoulder.
Oh, the things you will see in 1.5 miles walk in St Augustine.
Another blessed day!
Today is my image-making day.
I am off to great places at the crack of dawn.
I am out of a warm and comfortable bed. Eager, I am off and away!
I have pre-visualized images in my head.
I have eager feet in my Teva shoes.
I can walk north or south, east or west.
On my own, I know how to walk, talk, presumably listen, look, and see.
I look at the lion, steadfast, guarding the bridge, and that's not what I will photograph today.
I turned away and walked to the tower where guards control the drawbridge out yonder.