All in all, the Florida Keys trip was fantastic—particularly as an escape from the harsh Midwestern winter. The few notable drawbacks, such as the exorbitant cost of lodging on Key West and the awful process of navigating the spaghetti-like highway system around Miami International Airport, were outshined by everything else. I recommended Dry Tortugas National…
It’s a shame how infrequently I get to visit the ocean. Living in western Iowa, we are about as landlocked as anybody in the United States. We used to visit my grandparents just about every winter in south Texas, where we’d always make our way down to South Padre Island to enjoy the pre–Spring Break…
I’ve spent a lot of time reading photography books lately. One of them, Lance Keimig’s Night Photography: Finding your way in the dark, was absolutely superb. I only wish I had read it before our last two trips—first to the Florida Keys and then to the Black Hills, both of which offer excellent opportunities for…
I’m still trying to figure out if my interest in bird photography is born out of a real appreciation for birds or mere laziness, or more likely, some combination thereof. Of all the time I spend shooting, at least half of it is spent in my own backyard, photographing birds. If you’ve been to our…
There is a really good reason you will rarely see photographs of people here. It’s because I consider myself generally lousy at portraiture. In addition, when you aim your camera at a person, the dynamic instantly becomes much more complicated; more than one interest must be served. By that, I mean that the subject, in…
On a map, the main swath of the Florida Keys resembles a long, narrow paint-splatter, as if the big brush used to daub Florida was jerked suddenly by an unsteady hand, flinging a thin strand of color from an errant wad of bristles onto the blue canvas. Tiny paint drops, viewable only by squinting, are…
