Walla Walla, WA

Each summer, when enough warmth has seeped into the bones, deep summer arrives. It’s not on a calendar, but I’m sure you know it. It encompasses everything from the dusty ground beneath your feet to the towering clouds overhead. It ushers in languor and a benevolent drowsiness. The sound of the bees and the crickets is more resonant, and conversations are subdued with longer intervals of silence. Harvest is approaching, and I long, as well, to preserve these golden hours as memories to open in the midst of winter.

Bixby Canyon, Big Sur, CA

This photo was taken on a pilgrimage to a place made famous by some of my favorite photographers, notably Wynn Bullock. Now, this scene may have been lost to the inferno of the Soberanes Fire, which has already engulfed nearly 40,000 acres on the Big Sur. As an ecologist, I embrace change, but, increasingly, change exceeds natural bounds as extreme heat and drying surpass conditions that previously shaped these environments. I remain hopeful that we can address climate change, but already there are many places I have documented that will not be restored in my lifetime. One can accept change and still feel the loss.

Oregon Coast

Every stand of trees has a lengthy tale to tell. The high-altitude krummholz speak eloquently about the harsh conditions they have endured. The doghair pines, by their very name, define a certain thick growth. And the grandeur of the great sequoias are a pure testament to time. This coastal forest speaks to the both the limitation of light and the moist growing conditions of its oceanic setting. Wherever you go, the forest has much  to tell you.

Condon, MT

Wherever found, beauty transforms our day, but never more so than when it occurs in odd settings, like an abandoned wheelbarrow. It is easy enough in these times to dread the unexpected, but I ask you to also leave open the possibility of encountering something worthy of joy. Be looking for it, and you will not be disappointed.

Joshua Tree National Park, CA

Every living thing adapts to its environment, yet, why are those adaptations so various? One plant thrives with threadlike leaves, another with thick pads covered in thorns. Aspens glow next to evergreens. Floppy kelp holds to the same sea rocks as glass-encased diatoms. It’s the no-single-right-answer theory and can be applied universally…even to humans.

Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA

Summer soltice is my birthday – a child born to light. Yet, aren’t we all? The discipline of photography is to continually observe light, an endeavor each one of us can cultivate. I was strolling in Golden Gate Park with my beloved cousins and their Bernese mountain dog, when, across the street, the elements of light came together. I dashed across the street and snapped the photo you see here. For my birthday, I gift this photograph to you and send you out to dash toward radiance.

Dry Falls – WA

 Why, you ask, photography? Moreover, why black and white darkroom photography in the digital age? I honor all mediums and their makers, but, for me, traditional film photography is both medium and metaphor. Each step leaves a seen and an unseen imprint on the final image. The negative becomes positive. The silver – the precious – is revealed. From scene to print, with camera and enlarger as interlocutors, transformation occurs. Each photo, a token of our own ability to evolve.

    Big Sur, CA

Rocks are the iPads of the deep past. Their grooves and hollows, created by  the interaction of tectonic shift, wave action, and their own inherent imperfections are not dissimilar from processes at work on each of us. As we experience change, incremental and sudden, we, too, become a record of all that has gone before.

    Yellowstone National Park

What is the fascination of the gnarled, the shattered, the barren? We all grow somewhat misshapen through time, subject to the forces that alter all of life. What remains is essence and the integrity of form.

    Oregon Coast

Welcome to “In View.” At this site I hope to offer respite in your day — a moment to step into Nature and feel its calming and centering influence. With black & white photos and a gentle commentary, I invite you to reclaim your place in the circle of Life. Words will be few. Instead, I encourage you to summons inner quietude and simply sit with the offered image and thoughts, letting them carry you where they will, like a feather tumbling with the sand.