Welcome to another edition of my Saturday photo series — “Another 52 Weeks.”

To those of you who are new or just stopping by, this series features seven random images from my journey as a photographer. These are the things I find, see, experience, and try to capture with my camera.

The entries have no particular theme, and only captions with the place, month and date the photo was taken.

Let me know which ones capture your attention/imagination. To visit the archive, go to the link below, and at the bottom of this story, you’ll also find links to recent posts you may have missed.

More "Another 52 Weeks"

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

This is the 50th “Visual Story” I’ve published since January 2025 and the 80th since this publication moved over to Substack in 2021. In honor of those milestones, this week I’m sharing some of my favorite images with links to the individual stories, along with a backstory that explains what led to the series. Next week, I’ll share more images with less narrative in the hopes you’ll revisit something you might have missed.

You can see the entire archive here. As always, thoughts and comments on the photos and the series itself are welcome.

Since childhood, I’ve always enjoyed telling stories. One of my fondest memories is lying in bed with my paternal grandmother in the middle bedroom of her East Texas home, swapping stories and seeing who could one-up the other before I fell asleep.

She always won — it was no contest — because she painted pictures with her words, always managing to put you in a particular place and convey a mood while reciting the facts.

I fell into writing in high school and discovered I enjoyed telling the stories of others more than my own. Journalism came naturally, and I fell into a reporting and editing career soon after graduating from high school. Photography and visual art was a different story.

Even though my father was an artist with a vivid imagination and the talent to capture it, I knew I would not follow in his footsteps. I can’t draw a stick figure. And photography, given my limited patience/skill for darkrooms and editing, seemed like a storytelling form that would remain forever out of my reach.

As a journalist, I saw the talent of others who could tell stories in a single or handful of images. They always seemed to know the “moment” or the “angle,” while I was still trying to focus and find the shutter.

Seventeen years ago, things changed.

After almost solely telling the stories of others, remaining as objective as anyone with a pen or keyboard could, I wanted to find a way to share my own. At this point, I was in my mid 40s, living in New York part time with our son. I started “Our Reality Show” to chronicle that experience and walked around the city with a digital kit camera. Simultaneously, while writing the blog, I also fell in love with taking photos of the things that caught my eye.

Because photography innately, if not literally, comes from a single point of view, it is a mirror into how the person behind the camera sees the world. Instead of creating something out of thin air, it is a chronicle of that vision. For me, photography was what I needed to tell stories that went beyond the he-said, she-said world that journalism had become.

The traditional publishing industry also was starting its painful decline, one that would only accelerate in the next decade and a half. In May 2013, I was laid off from my job as a magazine editor.

Tired of the grind after three decades of newspapers, magazines, and communications work, I became a freelancer at 48 years old, seeking both writing and photography jobs. I knew limiting my work to one lane or the other would be cause for burnout before I even got started, and I had already started to lose faith that the publishing industry would right itself.

On the photography side, I knew that shooting events would be, at best, cyclical. The winter months are historically dead. Spring and summer fluctuate. Fall is busy until Thanksgiving, then up and down for the remainder of the year. Magazine writing, the more familiar and therefore less exciting challenge, would be a steady way to fill in the gaps.

In my first two years as a freelancer, my business was 80 percent writing and 20 percent event/portrait photography. By 2016, that started to shift, and within three years I was splitting my time evenly between the two. Then COVID decimated my photography business for two years, forcing a scramble for writing jobs until events resumed.

The burnout I feared if I focused on one thing became real during COVID. Writing magazine feature after magazine feature, almost solely through phone interviews, became a wash-rinse-repeat cycle that pulled me farther away from the storytelling I wanted and needed to do creatively. (As I mentioned in a Visual Story on rural Oklahoma earlier this month, shrinking editorial budgets have severely curtailed freelance opportunities altogether, along with the travel that results in the best feature storytelling.)

Since I started taking those first photos in New York in 2009, I have shot well over 100,000 images. Excluding those that were taken purely for business purposes, I still have about 30,000 in my archive. Many are single photos that caught my eye at the time; just as many are around a particular place or theme.

For a long time, I struggled with how to share this archive, seeking the magic balance between too little and too much. In January 2024, I started the “52 Weeks” series, focusing on random images — mostly one-offs. But sharing seven photos each Saturday meant many others would be left behind.

I started this “Visual Story” series in a random manner as well, then realized consistently publishing it was an opportunity to share my work and tell the stories I want to tell. It’s a combination of personal narrative, history lesson, travelogue, and experiences from my journey.

Thank you to everyone who has joined me thus far. I hope you’ll return next week and keep coming back for more.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Welcome to another edition of my Saturday photo series — “Another 52 Weeks.”

To those of you who are new or just stopping by, this series features seven random images from my journey as a photographer. These are the things I find, see, experience, and try to capture with my camera.

The entries have no particular theme, and only captions with the place, month and date the photo was taken.

Let me know which ones capture your attention/imagination. To visit the archive, go to the link below, and at the bottom of this story, you’ll also find links to recent posts you may have missed.

More "Another 52 Weeks"

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

On September 12, 2000, the year of Y2K and 364 days before everything changed in America, Emmylou Harris released an album that was noteworthy because the longtime song interpreter had written or co-written 11 of the 12 tracks on it.

“Red Dirt Girl” followed 1998’s “Return of the Grievous Angel,” Harris’ loving and highly successful tribute album to Gram Parsons, her first duet partner. It came five years after the Daniel Lanois-produced “Spyboy” and featured a similar soundscape. This time, however, Harris was totally in charge of the writing.

I highly respect Harris’ earlier works, including her Hot Band albums in the 1970s and ‘80s and the pair of “Trio” albums with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt. Whether covering songs or providing backup to other musicians, she is peerless in her voice and her approach.

But for my money, “Spyboy,” along with the live album from that tour, and “Red Dirt Girl” are the go-tos in her catalogue. And my favorite song from those albums is “Boy From Tupelo.”

With Malcolm Burns and Ethan Johns doing the heavy lifting instrumentally, and Kate McCarrigle and Julie Miller providing background vocals, the haunting kiss-off song namechecks Parsons (“sweetheart of the rodeo”) and Elvis Presley, Tupelo’s most famous resident.

The song’s sweaty, swampy feel was on repeat as I drove into the town in northeastern Mississippi in the fall of 2019.

Elvis died 49 years ago Sunday in his Memphis, Tennessee, mansion, 23 years before Harris’ song was released. Ironically, Presley’s body of work — some scene changing, some life altering, much of it mixed with extended periods of dreck — also spans 23 years, from 1954’s “That’s All Right” when he was 19 to his prescription drug-addled death at 42.

Of the musicians I’ve photographed and written about, Presley is the artist I’ve devoted the most words to in my life. The reason is mostly personal; thanks to my father and grandmother, I cut my teeth on his music.

When he died, it felt like we had lost a member of the family.

From a journalist’s perspective, Elvis’ often-told story is the ultimate cautionary tale, one repeated so often that is almost feels cliche. A Southern boy with immense talent who grew up in abject poverty, Presley became bigger than he ever dreamed by age 21, never overcame obvious childhood trauma, and lived in a tragic and fatal bubble.

Harris alludes to Presley’s upbringing in the song: “There’s nothing left for me round here / Looks like it’s time to disappear / Like the buffalo / That boy from Tupelo.”

The chorus ends with “Just ask the boy from Tupelo / He’s the king and he ought to know.”

Presley moved with his parents from Tupelo to Memphis at age 13, living in federally subsidized housing throughout high school. After becoming famous, he returned to his hometown for two benefit concerts in 1956 and 1957; the last one helped the city purchase 15 acres of land that included the two-room house where he was born.

I’ve been to Graceland twice over the past dozen or so years. The first time was during an immersive tour of Memphis, where I visited Sun Studios, Stax, and the National Civil Rights Museum, among other iconic places. The second was a drive by after my stop in Tupelo. After seeing Presley’s birthplace, I didn’t need to spend the money on another Graceland tour.

Located halfway between Memphis and Birmingham, Alabama, Tupelo was a hub of cotton textile mills when the Presley family lived there. Elvis’ father, Vernon, built the 300-square-foot home where Elvis was born in 1935. The site is now the Elvis Presley Birthplace Museum, and the grounds include the family’s church where he first began to sing, a replica of the family outhouse (yes, outhouse), the family’s car, a large park, and of course, a gift shop.

After a brief tour, which included a 15-minute recreation of the Assembly of God church services Presley attended, I drove through the older sections of Tupelo taking photos. It reminded me of many small and mid-sized Southern towns that still dot the landscape, with a remade Main Street that leans in heavily to its ties to its most famous resident.

I stopped by Tupelo Hardware, where Elvis’ mother Gladys bought him his first guitar for $7.75 plus tax, and took photos of the bronze statue outside City Hall.

Everywhere you looked, it seemed, had some link to the Boy from Tupelo, who went on to bigger and brighter things more than 70 years ago.

Here are more photos from the trip:

Birthplace and Museum

Around Tupelo

Other Elvis-related posts

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Walking the dog one night last fall, I saw a person in the distance who was doing a series of tai-chi moves under a tree in a local park. It seemed a little out of context given the late hour, but I didn’t say anything and kept walking.

The next morning, out with the dog, I passed by the person again and got a closer look in the daylight. The thin, weathered woman was wearing a bandana and a T-shirt over a pair of jeans, doing the same series of moves in a trance-like state. I realized then that she was likely homeless — a growing issue in our community just outside Washington, D.C.

In the eight years we’ve lived in Old Town Alexandria, my wife and I have become to accustomed to seeing people who are unhoused on the streets. I always wonder what left these men and women in these dire circumstances, and in instances when I’ve spoken with someone who is homeless, tried to assist in some small way.

Despite a 3.3 percent decrease from 2024 to 2025, the number of unhoused people in the U.S. remains at near historic highs, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. In Alexandria, the numbers increased 14 percent from 2025 to 2026 and now affect 1.2 of every 1,000 residents.

The reasons for the increase are mirrored in other cities across the U.S.: Lack of affordable housing, inflation and rising living expenses, stagnant wages, and the expiration of federal COVID-19 relief funds.

Over the following weeks, almost daily, I saw the woman in the park or standing in a small patch of grass next to a sidewalk close to our house. She always was wearing a T-shirt, the bandana, and either denim mid-length shorts or jeans. Most of the time she was doing some variation of those yoga-like moves. Weathered and tan, she appeared to be in her late 50s or early 60s, although I can’t be certain because of the head wrap.

On the rare occasions we made eye contact, I said hello, but we never spoke. When the weather turned cold, the start of one of our most brutal winters in history, she was no longer seen in the area. I hoped she had gotten some help.

According to the 2026 Point-in-Time survey by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, older adults like the woman in our neighborhood “face unique vulnerabilities due to health or mobility limitations. They may also have more significant health concerns not typically seen in homeless services systems, such as Alzheimer’s disease or cancer.”

After several months, the woman emerged again, seemingly out of nowhere. She appeared to be living out of a car, a massive Lincoln with Florida tags that expired around the time she first appeared in Alexandria in the fall of 2025. Throughout the summer, I’ve seen her in the park, sitting on a lawn chair between the statues.

She does the tai-chi moves less frequently, seemingly content to sit with her thoughts in the summer heat. We’ve made eye contact, but still have not spoken. Earlier this year, following the city’s protocols, I called the Alexandria 311 line with my observations.

Alexandria offers a “continuum of care” approach “designed to promote community wide commitment to the goal of ending homelessness.” We have several local and national nonprofits that work with the city to provide services, including Catholic Charities, Carpenter’s Shelter, Community Lodgings and ALIVE!

A few weeks ago, the car seemed to disappear from the neighborhood. Parking enforcement ramps up during the summers when tourists are in town, and it would not surprise me if it has been towed. The woman remains.

For how long is anyone’s guess.

Below are the rest of this week’s photos:

This Week’s Visual Story

In case you missed it, Tuesday’s “Visual Story” focused on a series of small towns in rural Oklahoma that I photographed while working on a magazine story about Native American students. You can find it here:

Visual Stories, which combine photos and a short narrative centered around a place or theme, are published on Tuesdays.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Four years ago, I spent several days driving through small towns in rural Oklahoma for two magazine stories about low-income schools that were struggling to recover after the pandemic.

As all good stories seem to do, this one sparked my interest on both a personal and professional angle. For as long as I can remember, my mom has told stories of how distant family members walked the Trail of Tears during the forced relocation of Native Americans from the southeastern United States to what is now modern-day Oklahoma. Despite being from Texas, I had only been to the adjoining state a couple of times and had never traveled its roads.

On the professional side, I saw the roots of a compelling story, one that had not been told in long form. I also saw the chance to photograph small rural communities in a place I had never been.

Today, 22.5 percent of Oklahoma’s public school students identify as American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN), second only to Alaska in terms of percentage. Thirty-eight of the 39 tribes in the state are federally recognized, and Oklahoma receives the largest percentage of Title VI money in the nation.

Prior to the pandemic, American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) youth already were disproportionately affected by poverty, food insecurity, and ongoing trauma due to a lack of family stability, substance abuse, and domestic violence. The pandemic added months of isolation from their peers as well as tremendous loss.

Oklahoma had one of the highest rates of COVID deaths in the nation, and a 2021 study showed that Native Americans died at a rate 2.8 times higher than whites before vaccines became widely available.

I saw an opportunity to write on this topic when I was asked to look at how low-income rural schools struggled to provide technology access to students who had to remain at home for several months during the pandemic. The story, which included a sidebar on the mental health effects of COVID on students, was for American School Board Journal, a magazine I’ve worked for in various capacities for 25 years.

At the time, ASBJ had a small travel budget — unfortunately that’s no longer the case — that allowed me to go on site three or four times a year. On site reporting provides opportunities for much more diverse and rich content than you can get in phone interviews, and I knew getting a sense of place would be key in writing this story.

I also knew that taking photos would give me a sense of place as well.

In setting up the story, I found an ally in Jackie White, program director of Oklahoma’s American Indian Education Department. Jackie’s office works to ensure eligible students are accounted for so they — and the districts that serve them — can receive the support they need. She saw my story as a way to create awareness for her efforts.

Jackie set me up with interviews in Ada, Anadarko, and Okmulgee, three small rural communities with a majority AI/AN population. The interviews were scheduled over four days in March 2022, giving me a day to visit and take photos in other small communities between the three towns. In all, I drove about 600 miles around the state.

My first stop was Anadarko, a small, extremely low-income town 50 miles southwest of Oklahoma City. The self-titled “Indian Capital of the Nation,” the town has 37 Native American tribes, including seven that are federally recognized.

Anadarko also has a single screen movie theater with a name all too familiar to Washington’s NFL football fans. Remarkably, school officials said community members do not want to change the theater’s name.

From there, I drove southeast to Ada, the capital of the Chickasaw Nation and the largest of the three communities I visited. I also passed through the tiny Oil City on the way.

With a day before my final set of interviews, I detoured over to Shawnee, which has 31,300 residents and was the largest town I saw outside Oklahoma City. Given my love for old movie houses, I enjoyed taking photos of two downtown theaters — The Ritz, which hosts live events, and The Hornbeck, which was for sale. The castle-like Santa Fe Depot, now a museum, was another photo highlight, as were other parts of the early 20th century downtown.

Next up was Prague, which was settled by Czech immigrants in the late 19th century. For such a small community — only about 2,300 residents — Prague also has a rich history. It is the birthplace of Jim Thorpe and the site of the National Shrine of the Infant Jesus, a Papal-authorized copy of the Infant Jesus of Prague. Unfortunately, I missed the annual Kolache Festival.

My final stop was in Okmulgee, which has been the home and capital of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation since it was founded three years after the Civil War ended. About 60 percent of the district’s students are AI/AN, and most were receiving wraparound services from the Muscogee Nation, which also shut down during the early days of pandemic and did not reopen for several months.

Okmulgee also was where the fantastic series “Reservation Dogs,” the first American TV show to feature all Native American writers and directors, was filmed. If you haven’t seen the show, which won two Peabody Awards in its three seasons, I highly recommend it.

In addition to these photos, the resulting stories from the travel were well received. Published in June 2022, “Vital Connections” and the piece on student mental health received first place awards in feature writing from Association Media and Publishing. You can read the stories here.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

For the past two weeks, “Another 52 Weeks” has taken on a theme of sorts. Last Saturday’s edition featured photos only from Alexandria, Va., the town where my wife and I live. The previous Saturday, I found myself focusing on travel and the inevitable transitions that life brings.

This Saturday is a return to the random. “Another 52 Weeks” always has been a way to chronicle my journey in photography through a series of images that captured my eye. Now 135 weeks into this series, I still enjoy mining the archive from the past decade and a half of travel and opportunities to chronicle life as I see it.

I hope you enjoy this random set, which spans more than 6,700 miles from west (Joshua Tree National Park) to east (Santorini, Greece). Let me know if you have a favorite, or if something catches your eye, too.

Subscribe now

What you might have missed

This week’s “Visual Story” was a look at Theodore Roosevelt Island, one of the best kept secrets near our nation’s capital and a memorial to the 26th president.

Visual Stories, which are focused on a specific topic and feature a short narrative, are published on Tuesdays.

Leave a comment

Politics aside, Washington, D.C., was literally built on a swamp. And rising up from the swamp, in the middle of the Potomac River, is an island memorial named for the 26th president of the United States.

Theodore Roosevelt Island is an 88.5-acre island that is part of our nation’s capital, even though it is only accessible by a footbridge from Virginia. That is one reason, I think, that it’s one of the best kept secrets in our region. It’s a peaceful place I love to visit at least once or twice a year, often with my camera.

Originally acquired by George Mason III in 1717, it was owned by the Mason family for more than 100 years until a causeway stagnated the water in 1831. Despite a fire in 1806 that destroyed the east wing of the Masons’ home, the family lived on the island until 1833 when it was sold to William A. Bradley.

During the Civil War, the island was the location of Camp Greene, where the first set of Black Union soldiers were trained to fight the Confederates. Known as the 1st Regiment of United States Colored Troops, the soldiers later helped in the siege of Richmond and Petersburg, Va. At the end of the war, the island was used as a refugee camp for people who had been enslaved before it was returned to Bradley.

Despite efforts by various developers, the island became neglected over the next half century. It was sold to the Washington Gas Light Company for the construction of a power plant in 1913, then purchased by the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Association in 1931. The association turned the island over to the federal government with plans to make it a memorial to the late president, who was known as a “rugged outdoorsman” and environmentalist.

Throughout World War II, the island was used by the Office of Strategic Services to train agents. It wasn’t until 1955 that a causeway was added from the Virginia shoreline to the northern end of the island. (The current footbridge replaced the causeway in 1979.)

Today, the island is maintained as a natural park, with 2 miles of trails and a plaza dedicated to the former president. If you’re in the mood for a hike in a swampy oasis, away from the hustle and bustle of the DMV traffic, it’s worth the visit.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Hello to August, also known as the dog days of summer.

Today’s lead image for “Another 52 Weeks” is a statue of a beloved pet that I saw while walking in Old Town Alexandria on Wednesday afternoon. The statue is being auctioned later this month to raise funds for an animal shelter, and I’m sure it will prove to be catnip for someone in our dog loving community.

The find on a street I normally don’t walk came at a time I normally don’t exercise either. Afternoons are volatile in the soupy summers here, with late day storms often rolling through when the heat and humidity merge, so I usually confine my walks to the mornings.

But this past Wednesday was a different day.

July 29 is the anniversary of my father’s death. It also is the “gotcha day” for the dog, Penny, that we acquired as a puppy during the pandemic.

I’ve written about both of these subjects before, most recently in a piece posted last year on July 29. Even though the active grief has receded over my dad’s long illness that ended with his death at 66 in 2007, I still get melancholy and quiet on the anniversary itself and in the days leading up to it. Penny’s presence makes the day a “happy-sad” one. In some ways, she deserves a statue of her own.

About today’s set of photos

In five years and four months, I will be the same age my father was when he died. That realization, along with some nagging health issues and the physical journey/transformation I’ve seen my wife undertake, finally kicked my butt into gear this spring.

The walking and exercise I did during the first year of the pandemic came to a halt when my business finally picked back up. I also was dealing with lingering hip, back, and shoulder issues that were aggravated by walking almost 4,000 miles in a year.

I used my business and the injuries as excuses for a couple of years, compounded by a near-fatal case of bacterial pneumonia and sepsis at the end of 2024. Diabetes runs rampant on one side of my family, and I found myself taking medication to keep my blood sugar in line.

In 2025, I turned 60 and had one of the best years of my life. Business was good. Jill and I went on a couple of memorable trips and started making plans to go to Greece for our 30th wedding anniversary this past May.

I knew I needed to get into shape. My wife, who has always run circles around me, lost a third to half of her body weight over a two-plus year period and is in the best condition of her life. I wanted to be in shape for the trip, and more important, for the long haul, so I have become disciplined about diet and self-care for the first time in decades.

After working with a chiropractor for two years, the hip and back issues are resolved, so I’ve started walking again, often exceeding and only missing my 40 miles a week goal once since the middle of March. Three times a week, I’m also taking fitness classes, something I never thought I’d do again.

This routine has been underway for four months now, and although I’ve got a decent distance to go, I’m in the best condition — no more pills for the blood sugar — that I’ve been in some time.

How does this relate to today’s photos? In light of everything I’ve shared, I decided to forego the random format this week. Instead, here are some things I saw and captured on my walks.

I hope you enjoy them. Thank you for taking the time to read and follow my work.

What you may have missed

This week’s “Visual Story” was a look at Gruene Hall, the oldest dance hall in Texas. Visual stories, which combine a short narrative and photos around a place or theme, are published on Tuesdays. I hope you’ll take a look.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Share

Gruene Hall, located on the outskirts of the Guadalupe River in the Texas Hill Country, is a unique institution in a state that prides itself on being different from the rest of the world.

Built in 1878, the 6,000-square-foot venue in south-central Texas was designed to give tenant farmers a way to socialize on the weekends. Over time, it became a must play place for seemingly every Texas musician. George Strait got his start at Gruene Hall, playing once a month with his Ace in the Hole band in the 1970s, and the hall has a show every day of the year.

One sweltering, humid, stormy night, now almost a decade ago, I decided to try my luck at photographing a show there.

Located on the stagecoach trail between Austin and San Antonio, the town of Gruene was started by German immigrants who arrived in the 1840s, and for decades it was known as a center of commercial and farming activity.

Decimated by the Great Depression, Gruene’s population fell to 75 by 1930 and it became a ghost town. The small historic district was restored in the 1970s and 1980s and, even though it was annexed by nearby New Braunfels in 1979, Gruene remains its own community with a water tower standing over it on a bluff above the Guadalupe River.

Gruene (pronounced “Green”) Hall bills itself as the oldest dance hall still operating in Texas, a claim that is disputed by some. Its charm comes from how little it has changed over the decades. The hall has a high-pitched tent roof with a long wooden bar in front (the hand-lettered sign at the end says “Welcome Cowboys”) and a small lighted stage in the back. Old cigarette machines that no longer work — the club banned smoking at some point in the 1980s — serve as time capsules of another era.

You walk past autographed stills of past performers — a who’s who of Texas artists including Willie Nelson, the Dixie Chicks, Townes Van Zandt, Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen, and Jerry Jeff Walker. Famously, the stage is only about two feet off the ground, and the hall does not have a dressing room.

In September 2016, my wife and I headed to Austin for a long weekend before I went to Houston to see my mom. I always look for interesting shows to see when I return to my home state and was thrilled when I learned that Charlie Robison would be playing at his annual birthday concert at Gruene Hall, which was on the way.

Still wet from the storm, I paid for the ticket outside and got my hand stamped. It was about two hours until showtime and I asked the venue’s manager if I could take photos. She said, “Sure,” noting that Robison didn’t have a policy against it.

I found that strange but exciting, nonetheless. Robison had one of the leaders of the Red Dirt movement that flourished in Texas in the mid to late 1990s, shortly after I moved from the state. Mixing catchy lyrics and a deep twang with a sound that leaned more rock than country, Robison’s major label debut “Life of the Party” is a touchstone for Texas artists.

He had a couple of hits from that album — “My Hometown” is a certified Texas classic — and married Emily Strayer of The Chicks. (Natalie Maines wrote “Cowboy Take Me Away” about them.) By 2016, however, they were long divorced and Robison had remarried.

Like many talented musicians who are known regionally but remain on the fringes of stardom, Robison was still drawing good crowds in the honkytonks, fairgrounds, bars and stockyards where he played, but his recording career had become stagnant. He had produced only two studio albums and one live record since 2005.

You would never have known it that night. For more than two hours, Robison did everything he could to burn down the venerable 19th century dance hall, mixing country and rock in equal measure with down home spit and swagger. By the end, everyone — especially Robison — was soaking wet.

Sadly, this was the only time I saw him live. In 2018, Robison retired after vocal cord surgery. He was in the slow process of making a comeback when he was hospitalized in San Antonio and died in September 2023 from a heart attack and other complications. He was 59.

The concert I saw and photographed seems both like yesterday and a lifetime ago. I still listen to Robison’s music — “Live from Billy Bob’s,” recorded in another Texas institution, is a barn burner — and still wonder what could have been if he’d had more time.

Here are more pictures from the night:

When I was digging through the archive for this story, I also found two short videos I shot of Robison performing. Initially, I didn’t include them in the piece, but decided to add them after it was sent out. I hope you enjoy them.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Welcome to “Another 52 Weeks,” my Saturday photo series of random images from my journey as a photographer.

Even though I don’t do “themes,” per se, these photos have an underlying one running through them. The summer is often the busiest and most travel-filled section of the year, and over the next month I will be on the road quite a bit for business and family obligations.

Picking this week’s set was a start-stop-start project that occurred while I was away from home. When I started putting it together, I noticed the selection seemed to focus on the act of going into or out of various places, or buildings and homes that had been left behind.

It wasn’t an intentional move on my part, but I thought it was worth noting.

What do you see in this week’s set? Does a particular image catch your attention? Thanks as always for stopping by, and let me know what you think.

What You Might Have Missed

This week’s “Visual Story” looked at a photo walk through Coney Island shortly before the famous park closed for the season.

These “Visual Stories,” which combine a series of photos with a short narrative, are published on Tuesdays. You can find more here.

More 'Visual Stories"

Thank you again for taking the time to look at my work. I do appreciate it.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

During the summer of 1934, my paternal grandparents left their small East Texas home on a trip to New York City. Married for four years at the time and still without children, they both had the travel bug and tried to take out-of-state trips once or twice a year.

The reason I know this, beyond the stories I heard when I was a child, is my grandmother held on to seemingly every scrap of paper she ever touched. When my grandparents died, my aunt held on to their “archive.”

Last October, after my aunt passed away, I met my mom in Longview, Texas, to go through more than 40 large boxes, most of which were filled from top to bottom with paper. We found utility bills from the 1920s, income tax returns from the 1930s, thousands of Christmas cards and letters spanning decades, and other ephemera.

To use a music term, it was the ultimate crate dig.

I found a few needles in the haystack — postcards that my grandparents collected, a couple of which dated back to their teenage years post-World War I; a souvenir booklet from the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago: and a Radio City Music Hall program and other New York papers from their trip to the city the next year.

What I didn’t see was anything from their visit to Coney Island, even though that proved to be one of the most memorable parts of their trip, not for a good reason.

Located in the southwestern section of Brooklyn, on the southern shore of Long Island, Coney Island was at one time a seaside resort with a series of amusement parks. Home to Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs, among other attractions, the area still has two separately owned amusement parks connected by a long boardwalk.

Each park has a famous ride that has landmark status. The Wonder Wheel, which opened in 1920, is a steel Ferris wheel that is more than 150 feet tall and holds 144 riders. Located at Deno’s Wonder Wheel Amusement Park, it has been a New York City landmark since 1989.

In Luna Park is the Coney Island Cyclone, one of the oldest wooden rollercoasters still operating in the U.S. Opened in 1927 and still owned by the City of New York, the ride includes an 85-foot drop and has been a model for similar rollercoasters across the nation.

On the trip to Coney Island, my then 29-year-old grandmother boarded the famous Cyclone. During the drop, she snapped her neck, apparently tearing some tendons that caused permanent damage.

But in her quiet way, she lived with the pain and never talked much about it, except to say she would never get on a rollercoaster again.

During spring break in April 2011, when Ben was living in New York and performing in “Billy Elliot,” the kids, Jill, and I took the subway to Coney Island to check it out. It was a crowded, cloudy, muggy day that ended with a severe thunderstorm that left us soaked.

On the ride home, we boarded the wrong subway and found ourselves lost in Brooklyn, where we had dinner in a random restaurant before another storm soaked us again. It was, needless to say, a memorable day.

I’m not a huge amusement park person, so I didn’t return for a number of years. Then, on a beautiful but chilly and windy mid-October trip to the city, I went on a photo walk with some friends around the island, which by this time was mostly deserted.

The amusement parks are seasonal. Closed from November through March, they are open on weekends during April and May and then daily from Memorial Day to Labor Day. In September and October, the parks are typically back to weekends only before closing late in the month.

On this day, only one ride — the relatively new Thunderbolt rollercoaster — was running. The boardwalk, beach, and food spots were still open, but the rest was shut down. With no crowds, it made for a fun shoot.

Did you enjoy this post? If so, click on the heart button and give it a like or leave a comment. And come back for more “Visual Stories” on Tuesdays.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Welcome to another edition of my Saturday photo series — “Another 52 Weeks.”

To those of you who are new or just stopping by, this series features seven random images from my journey as a photographer. The entries have no particular theme, and only captions with the place, month and date the photo was taken.

Let me know which ones — if any — capture your attention/imagination. To see more photos from the “Another 52 Weeks” archive, go to the link below.

More "Another 52 Weeks"

Subscribe now

What You May Have Missed

This week’s “Visual Story” looks at a visit to the Wright Brothers National Memorial on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

Published on Tuesday mornings, these photo stories focus on a specific place or theme with a short narrative. The previous week’s story, for example, chronicled a heavy thunderstorm that moved through the Central Virginia mountains on the Fourth of July.

Leave a comment

I’m not, generally speaking, a beach person.

Perhaps that comes from a childhood on the Texas Gulf Coast, where I grew up only a mile or so from the Gulf of Mexico, amid the threat of summer tropical storms and hurricanes. Perhaps it comes from the petrochemical plants that surrounded my hometown and muddied the waters, turning the sand a shade of dark gray and brown.

Covering “Tackle Time,” the annual summer purging of the ocean, during my first job didn’t help. Near the entrance to the Texas City Dike, the largest manmade pier in the U.S., deep sea fishermen would display their catches in a contest to see who could get the largest shark, stingray or sea creature. Holding my nose while taking photos of these catches on a steamy July day was a necessary community newspaper job I didn’t ask for and didn’t want.

More Visual Stories

After moving to North Carolina in the mid 1990s, I grew to have an appreciation for the Outer Banks, the summer destination for families on the East Coast. Every two to three years, Jill and I scraped together our pennies, rented a house, and took the kids to Duck, N.C., for several days.

Generally speaking, we would stick close to the beach, occasionally venturing out for tours. The kids enjoyed Jockey’s Ridge State Park in Nags Head, which has the largest sand dune in the eastern United States, and climbing the lighthouse in Currituck to the north. Being a history buff, I always encouraged them to go to the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills.

We went to the memorial once with my mom soon after my dad died in 2007. The kids posed in front of a statue of the plane that represented the first successful powered flight in history. Ben goofed around, posing with his camera next to a statue of John T. Daniels, who took the famous photograph of the first flight.

And that was pretty much it. After a few minutes, they wanted to head on to the dunes. A number of years later, Jill and I went back to the Outer Banks as a couple, and I decided to tour the memorial on my own.

Based in Dayton, Ohio, brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright built and sold bicycles in the late 19th century while pursuing their dream of human flight. In 1900, they started testing unpowered gliders on the remote Outer Banks, using information from the U.S. Weather Bureau about the area’s steady winds.

On December 17, 1903, the brothers made four short flights ranging from 120 to 852 feet from level ground in the Wright Flyer. They had set up two wooden sheds for their experiments, one of which served as their living quarters. The second became the world’s first airplane hangar.

Over the years, the brothers fought claims from others — including the U.S. Army and the Smithsonian Institution — about being “First in Flight.” It wasn’t until after Orville Wright died in 1948 — Wilbur passed away in 1912 — that an agreement was reached by his estate to permanently display the Wright Flyer in the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Musem.

The dispute did not stop the construction of the huge granite memorial on top of a 90-foot former sand dune where the brothers had conducted many of their glider tests. Now known as Kill Devil Hill — the town itself is Kill Devil Hills — the dune was stabilized for the creation of the 60-foot granite monument that was dedicated in 1932.

The doors of the monument are in the art deco style of the era, similar to those found at the FBI building in Washington, D.C. The door panels include references to other aviation philosophers and innovators, including German inventor Otto Lilienthal, French philosopher Cyrano de Bergerac, the Greek mythological figure Icarus, and the inventions of a French locksmith named Besnier.

My wife and I have a running joke about “travel karma.” The theory is pretty simple: When you have a successful trip with little to no traffic, know that at some point when you least expect it, you’re going to get screwed.

We made great time driving to North Carolina on this visit to the Outer Banks, only to be plagued by cloudy, overcast skies and high winds for much of the time we were there. I was determined to see the memorial this time and left out on my own one early morning.

Mother Nature and the travel karma goddess were not on my side. The clouds were a persistent gray throughout the visit, providing limited contrast to the memorial site. The visitor’s center, itself a National Historic Landmark for being the first of its kind in a modernization effort, was not terribly photogenic.

I braved the unsettling elements and went up to the memorial itself. It is an amazing structure, worthy of the Wright Brothers’ achievement. But given the weather, I knew the photos themselves would be almost colorless, which they are.

So I decided to put them in black and white. What do you think?

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Thirteen years ago this week, I published this photo to social media and formally launched my photography and freelance writing business.

The photo was taken five weeks earlier in Central Park during a Memorial Day trip to New York City. Clicking the shutter that on that bright, humid day, I did not know I would be unemployed in a week.

Even then, I recognized the photo itself was not the best I had taken. The highlights were blown out by the midday sun. The street musician playing his saxophone was completely in silhouette. The lack of color in the original image dictated that it needed to be published in black and white.

At the time, the photo was a metaphor for how I felt about my present and my future prospects.

More of "Another 52 Weeks"

After 30 years in journalism and communications, moving from job to job and seeing professional growth with each position, being laid off in May 2013 left me feeling adrift. I had been unemployed for only nine days in those previous three decades, a period in which I often worked two jobs, and needed a professional breather. It was my moment to stand in the shade and be out of the sun.

I knew I had to do something, but prospects in an ever-changing publishing world were limited even then. Having worked for the same company for 12 years, I had seen a once vigorous operation slowly succumb to financial and organizational erosion, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to face that prospect again. Turns out, given the state of traditional publishing these days, that likely was a smart move.

In my 2013 post that accompanied the photo, I wrote: “Being on your own has its downsides. You rarely know what the next day will bring. Stability is elusive. You can work 24-7 without batting an eye. You have to rely on the faith of others (especially family and close friends) and word of mouth. And you have to hope that your work is not just good, but good enough, so clients will pass along your name.”

That remains true 13 years later, even as so much has changed personally and professionally. Our children — then ages 1 to 20 — are grown and have spouses/partners. We have grandchildren. My wife, who has worked with her association for almost 25 years, is leading a conference for more than 5,000 people in New Orleans this weekend as she completes her fifth year as executive director.

As a storyteller, one who uses images and words to tell his tales, the ups and downs of owning a freelance business have not been easy, but creatively it has been a lifeline. I know, without question, I could not do this if it weren’t for my wife, Jill, and my families (biological and otherwise).

I know the financial stability that Jill’s job has provided, combined with decades of hard work, good fortune, and sound planning on our parts, has allowed me to continue in this work. And I am eternally grateful that I’ve been able to meet new and often fascinating people while having the types of experiences I dreamed about while sitting at a desk all those years.

Thank you, as always, for following me along on this journey. And now, here are the rest of the photos for the week.

Subscribe now

Stories You May Have Missed

This week’s Visual Story is the chronicle of a large thunderstorm that rolled through Central Virginia on the Fourth of July, proving that Mother Nature could hold a fireworks show of her own.

Leave a comment

Welcome to this week’s Visual Story. This series, published on Tuesdays, focuses on a specific place or theme with a short narrative. Most of the “Visual Stories” are too long to be carried in most email browsers. If that’s the case, view it on a web browser or on the Substack app.

On the Fourth of July, in the midst of a weeklong heat wave that threatened, postponed and cancelled Independence Day celebrations across the U.S., Mother Nature decided to have a fireworks show of her own.

My wife and I escaped to the mountains of Central Virginia, an annual tradition that allows us to see family, avoid the crowds that descend on the Washington, D.C., area, and miss the scorching temperatures that infiltrate the nation’s capital and surrounding areas. While I initially thought about staying to photograph the 250th anniversary fireworks show, the partisan nature of the celebration made the decision to leave an easy one.

Typically, the mountains bring temperatures that are 10 to 15 degrees cooler than home, but last weekend’s extreme heat dome spared no one.

By the weekend, more than 40 million people in the U.S. were under heat alerts. On the Saturday, at least 18 cities recorded record high temperatures, including Washington, D.C., which broke a record set in 1919 when it reached 102 degrees at Reagan National Airport. The heat index was 10 to 15 degrees higher than that, making us even happier to be away from home.

In Wintergreen, a mountain resort about 40 miles from Charlottesville and three hours southwest of Alexandria, it only reached 88 degrees. But the humidity — a rarity there except during a heat wave — became almost unbearable. By midafternoon, flashes of lightning forced Fourth of July activities to shut down until the projected storms passed.

We returned to our condo to get ready for dinner with the rest of Jill’s family. About 5:10, the storms that would eventually pummel Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York City and points beyond started to roll in, and I brought out my camera.

In 2021, we bought the place in Wintergreen — a tiny, 700-square-foot one-bedroom condo — for two reasons. We wanted a place to get away, and we love the view of the valley below. I took this photo when I went down the previous week to get our place ready for the family event.

When the weather turns bad, you get to see that too, and I’ve managed to get fascinating — at least to me — landscapes of the changing skies. Given the historic nature of the weekend and the storms that were expected to pass overhead, I could not resist trying to see if I could replicate or exceed my earlier efforts.

I didn’t take much at first, but by 5:50 p.m., it was time for the main event — a series of black clouds with lightning strikes moving overhead and into the valley. Over the next 15 minutes, I shot these photos as the skies changed rapidly and storms headed toward Charlottesville and up into the D.C. area.

According to the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center, more than 500 damaging wind gusts were reported across the central and eastern United States. In Charlottesville and Albemarle County, winds reached near 75 mph, knocking down numerous trees. Heavy lightning also impacted the region, leaving more than 10,000 customers without power well into the evening.

By 7:30 p.m., the storm had passed through Wintergreen and the area was mostly dry. Activities resumed and fireworks went on as scheduled. By sunset, the valley looked like this.

In Washington, D.C., the severe weather resulted in an evacuation of the National Mall on Saturday evening. After the storms and speeches, the fireworks did not start until shortly before midnight.

By that point, we had been asleep for some time. The fireworks show in Wintergreen was a bit of a dud, and for the first time in memory, I took no photos. I much prefer the ones I got of Mother Nature’s handiwork instead.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Welcome to the first Sunday edition of “Another 52 Weeks,” my series featuring seven random images from my photography journey.

This week’s edition was bumped from its regular Saturday slot due to a Fourth of July essay I published yesterday. If you haven’t had the chance to take a look at it, click on the link below.

Like many of you, we have been out of town for the holiday weekend. It’s been a busy juggle of work and family for more than a month now, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I hope you enjoy this week’s photos. Let me know which (if any) capture your attention. We’ll be back onto our regular scheduled programming next week.

Subscribe now

Another Post You May Have Missed

Last week’s Visual Story looked at the Eastern State Penitentiary, a “preserved ruin” just outside downtown Philadelphia. Check it out here:

Thank you again for supporting my work.

Leave a comment

Instead of the usual Another 52 Weeks that normally occupies this Saturday space, I decided to write a personal essay about our nation’s 250th birthday. The next edition of “Another 52 Weeks” will be posted tomorrow, and then we will resume our regular Saturday schedule.

My father taught junior high art, then middle school Texas and American history for more than 30 years in the town where I grew up. But he never abandoned his artistic roots, even when he switched subjects after a 5½ year absence due to a debilitating illness in the 1970s.

You could see this in the elaborate bulletin boards he had throughout his classroom, the result of a long summer of work that inevitably included my mom — also a teacher — sweating her butt off with a laminating machine that was generously overworked. A whiff of something resembling hot thin plastic grafting onto paper products immediately flashes me back to those times.

Dad also had a first week in-class assignment for his students, one that guaranteed them an easy A if they followed instructions. He had the kids — seventh grade for Texas history, eighth for American — redesign our state and nation’s flags. He prefaced the assignment by saying he didn’t care if the students were artistic; he just wanted to see if they could follow instructions and redo the flags using the exact same elements — 50 stars and alternating colored strips for the U.S. flag; a large star and blocks of red, white, and blue for my home state.

I asked him once why he had the students do this assignment, and he said the reason was simple. How they approached the task — the ones who took it seriously, the teacher pleasers, the ones who knew nothing about the story behind the flags, and those who were ambivalent at best — provided a snapshot that would help inform his approach in the classroom.

“It’s not about patriotism,” he said. “But you can get some insight into that, too.”

As our nation marks its 250th birthday, I’m confident my dad would be disappointed in my plans for the weekend. We live just outside Washington, D.C., and instead of going into the city, I am several hours away. Sadly, we’re not going far enough to escape the scorching, smothering heat, something I can’t help but think is Mother Nature’s karmic reckoning for the nation and world we currently live in.

Evolution. Revolution.

Fifty years ago, during the summer between my fifth and sixth grade year, America celebrated its bicentennial. My father was still out of work, his illness preventing him from returning to teaching for at least another year. Our nation had been battered by Vietnam, serial killers haunting the West Coast, bankruptcy threatening New York City, and the graft and insecurities that produced Watergate, leading to the near impeachment and eventual resignation of Richard Nixon.

The progressive counterculture of the 1960s had been replaced by the “me generation.” Nostalgia for my parents’ generation came in the form of movies like “American Graffiti,” Broadway musicals like “Grease” (itself a hit film in 1978), and popular sitcoms like “Happy Days” and its spinoff “Laverne and Shirley.” The 1970s also represented the first wave or rock and roll oldies acts, with 1950s superstars like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis performing to crowds who looked like my dad.

My father spent a lot of time thinking about his teen years, the days when he was healthy, when the Cold War threat was real but still abstract, and endless reports of daily unrest weren’t all over the nightly news. Given the unknowns of his illness, all of that unrest also represented both a real and existential threat to our family’s then-wobbly financial security.

Mom and dad came from working class, fiscally conservative families. My parents were the second in both families to graduate from college, following their older siblings. Then 23 and 22, they married in March 1964, a rushed affair prompted by my grandfather’s desire for his only son to avoid the draft. I came along 9 months and 20 days after their wedding, followed by my sister 6½ years later.

In the late 1960s, my dad was fascinated by science fiction movies that looked at the end of the world. In just over a decade, he saw Charlton Heston go from playing Moses and Ben Hur to an action hero in a series of films — “Planet of the Apes,” “The Omega Man,” “Soylent Green” among them — with a pessimistic view of life and humankind. On one hand, my father saw the movies as entertainment; on the other, I think they also buttressed his lack of absolute trust in all things government, a view shared by many of his generation.

That said, dad was very enthusiastic about the 200th birthday of our country. To him, the bicentennial represented an opportunity for our nation to put aside its differences and celebrate better days. In the toughest times in U.S. history, he told me more than once, we managed to come together as a country. Even if you disagreed with someone on the other side, you still had manners. Even if you weren’t sure about someone else’s motives, you still believed in our democracy.

That, to him, was an example of real patriotism.

Endlessly curious and not afraid to ask questions, I wanted to understand how our nation had reached certain conclusions, the “why” behind decisions. More often than not, the grind of dad’s illness, the questions I asked that made them uncomfortable given their upbringing and worldview, and the sheer exhaustion that comes with having an endlessly curious kid led my parents to tell me to look things up on my own.

Looking back … and now

In a box in my grandmother’s cedar chest in our front bedroom, I have a bicentennial button the size of a softball that my father bought for me. Through endless moves since I left home, I’ve never been able to part with it.

But I don’t remember many details of what happened on July 4, 1976, in Texas City, Texas. I’m pretty sure that we went down to Bay Street on an inevitably humid evening to watch the fireworks that were shot into the Gulf of Mexico. I do remember that my father, a car nut, would not let me sit on the hood of whatever used Cadillac he owned at the time out of fear that my chubby ass (my words, not his) would dent it.

My political and (to a large extent) social views diverged from my parents 40 years ago, when I started moving left of center during the AIDS crisis and did not look back. Over time, the gulf between us that formed then has not been narrowed but, to their eternal credit, they were/are respectful of my point of view. Despite a few jabs here and there, we did not become caught up in the partisan debates that have split too many families and ended too many friendships.

But I can’t help but wonder what would have happened had my father not died almost 20 years ago, when things weren’t so separate and strident. My mom, still alive and feisty at almost 85, does not engage with me about political and social matters.

Even though the U.S. is dealing with severe challenges that somewhat mirror those we faced in 1976, I can’t help but think that our current circumstances are worse. We live in a partisan country led by an autocrat — and I’m being nice in my description — who is more concerned about ego strokes and graft that feather his family’s nest and fortune. (I’m reasonably certain he’s made an appointment with Satan to discuss the naming rights for his eternal place of residence.)

I’m also certain my dad would wonder how I could miss a once-in-a-lifetime event, a chance to celebrate a milestone birthday for our country that has given me so much. I hope he — and others who don’t necessarily share my political/social views — would understand in a respectful manner.

Almost 19 years after his death, I’m reasonably confident that my dad still would be respectful.

Sadly, I can’t say the same for others who disagree.

Subscribe now

Here’s another Fourth of July essay:

Leave a comment

Welcome to this week’s Visual Story. This series, published on Tuesdays, focuses on a specific place or theme with a short narrative. Most of the “Visual Stories” are too long to be carried in most email browsers. If that’s the case, view it on a web browser or on the Substack app.

Even though we’ve lived only 120 miles or so from Philadelphia for the past 25 years, I can count on both hands the number of times I’ve spent extended time in the city.

That’s my mistake, and I admit my bias against the city’s large, loud, and proudly obnoxious sports fanbase has something to do with it. I know Philadelphia has a great arts and theater scene along with the cheesesteaks and link to the earliest days of our nation’s history.

You would think that last part would be enough to tip the scales, but thus far it hasn’t. Even though the Amtrak goes through Philadelphia’s 30th Street station on the way to New York, we turn onto the New Jersey Turnpike and skip the city when we drive by car. So, other than on a couple of business trips, a tour of the Liberty Bell when our kids were small, and overnight jaunts to see our son in two touring musicals ( “Newsies” premiered there), I haven’t shown the city much brotherly love.

But on a damp, cloudy April morning, I drove to Philadelphia’s historic Fairmount neighborhood to finally visit a bucket list site for me: The world’s first true penitentiary.

The gloomy weather suited the Eastern State Penitentiary, a prison opened in 1829 and closed more than 140 years later. Designed by British architect John Haviland, the prison has the look of a neo-Gothic wagon wheel, with seven corridors of 8- by 12-foot cells connected by a central hub.

It originally was designed to house 250 convicts in isolation, a practice that ended in 1913 due to overcrowding problems. At its peak in the mid 1920s, the prison had 1,700 inmates; mobster Al Capone and bank robber Willie Sutton were its most famous prisoners.

When it was completed, the penitentiary was the largest and most expensive public structure in the nation, bigger and more costly than the U.S. Capitol. Its design has been copied by more than 300 prisons around the world; each cell is lit only by skylights or windows.

Open year-round to the public for self-guided as well as guided tours, the city-owned property is described as a “preserved ruin,” with only stabilization and necessary repairs. It holds many special events throughout the year, including a popular haunted house each October.

I’ve long known this would be a fun photography outing and made a vow to go after seeing images taken by Gary Rubin, a local friend. The place is cinematic; among the movies filmed there were Terry Gilliam’s “Twelve Monkeys,” which turned the location into a mental hospital.

I also knew it would be creepy. The penitentiary has been used as a location for numerous reality shows focusing on the paranormal — no longer permitted, according to the Eastern State website.

Fortunately, I picked a good time to do the shoot. Going on a late spring weekday morning when school was still in session meant I didn’t have to deal with large tour groups. I also opted for the self-guided tour to have more flexibility, although it would be worthwhile to go back for the narrated version to get more details.

Digging into my pictures for this story, I noticed two things. First was the number of verticals I shot because of the narrow corridors; usually I’m 80-20 in favor of horizontal, but this time it was more like 50-50. And with only a handful of exceptions, all of the images work just as well — if not better — in black and white. I’ve tried to give you a nice mix here.

I hope you like them. And if you ever go to Philadelphia, be sure to check it out for yourself.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

I spent this Father’s Day in the same theater I’ve worked in on the same weekend for more than a decade, photographing dancers from the studio that helped my children get to where they are today.

As longtime readers know, I’ve been a show photographer for Metropolitan School of the Arts since 2013. Our family has been involved for 10 years longer than that.

The annual spring show is, in many respects, the most challenging photography job I have all year. MSA is a large studio, with more than 700 students, and the shows now feature an original narrative that is woven into the individual class dances for six performances held over four days.

Each show features more than 70 numbers, of which 20 or so are class dances each night. The shows are double cast, so you have three shows each to catch the ensemble. The shows typically run three hours.

GeneraIly, I also try to go to the ensemble dress rehearsals, which are held on the Tuesday and Wednesday before the shows begin on Thursday night. The dress rehearsals allow me to walk around and get different angles without disrupting the audience.

You can only imagine how many photos I take to get the 1,000 or so that are finally distributed — go to this link to check out some of my work. The culling and organizing takes almost as much time, if not more, as the shooting.

By the weekend, when I feel like I’ve covered both ensembles (more than) sufficiently, I like to experiment a bit, shooting from the balcony or above the stage three flights up. Sometimes the experiments work better than others, but they also break up the monotony of seeing the same numbers show after show.

The first photo in today’s “Another 52 Weeks” is one of those experiments. It was taken at the end of a tap number (“Me and My Shadow”) as the lead dancer walked toward a bright spotlight just as the rest of the lights were going to black. The photo seems to break all of the Photo 101 rules — don’t shoot directly into the light being the most prominent. The only color you see is the pink of the spotlight reflection and a hint of the dancer’s red hair. It gives me an eerie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” visiting the alien ship feeling.

It’s not a perfect photo by any means. It’s rare, in fact, that you get a perfect shot when shooting one of these shows. But it’s one that sends you to any one of a number of different places in your imagination. Isn’t that what art is supposed to do?

Let me know what you think of the photo and/or any others in this post. One more thing: Can you believe this edition of “Another 52 Weeks” marks the halfway point of another year?

What You May Have Missed

This week’s Visual Story looks at Swannanoa Mansion in Central Virginia.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment