Last weekend, I had the opportunity to see some swordsmanship. A friend is part of the Chicago Swordplay Guild, which bills itself as a “modern school of traditional European martial arts”, and was in a friendly tournament open to the public. I thought it would be a fun thing to watch, but also an opportunity … Continue reading Such Swash. Very Buckle. Wow!
Back in April of 2020 I purchased round trip tickets to Ecuador for October of that year. We were two weeks into the shutdown and airfare prices had tanked as travel had all but stopped. Naively, I thought that surely this pandemic will be long over by autumn. Of course, that was not to be, … Continue reading Quito, Abridged
Since the previous post was about spring, it’s only natural that summer would be next. As before, these are photos of a church seen across an urban prairie as well as some old tennis courts. But with the changing of the seasons comes a much different look. I like the tennis courts enough that I … Continue reading Summer
The World War One museum in Kansas City sits atop a low hill just south of downtown. It offers an unsurpassed vista of the city’s modest but stately skyline. I was in town last summer and, at the end of a long, hot day, got to enjoy the sunset and the cool breezes at this … Continue reading Kansas City Twilight
I found out only recently that there a few nuclear power plants around the country which were abandoned mid-construction. And you can go to some of them! Strictly speaking, you’re not allowed to go to them, but we are really splitting hairs. So it was that a clear winter’s morning found us traipsing through some … Continue reading Atomic Tourism
Kiev was founded over fifteen hundred years ago, and though it’s grown into a sprawling city of almost three million, many layers of its history are visible around the center of the city. Golden-domed churches are some of the oldest buildings in Kiev, each about a millenium old. Kiev’s Russian imperial past can be seen … Continue reading A Thousand Years Within Walking Distance
On a day when we had other destinations, we were distracted by dramatic fog rolling in from the lake. Good thing, too, because this was the only good shot I got that day. Continue reading Morning Fog Over the Chicago River
You don’t really go to Iceland for the urbex scene. However, once there, there are a couple spectacular abandonments you’d be hard pressed to find elsewhere. The country’s first steel ship was beached and left as landmark at the tip of a fjord. It gets regular coats of paint, so it isn’t the rusted-out hulk … Continue reading A Glorious Wreck
A panorama of waste in an abandoned high school Continue reading Bookscape
T A B U L A R A S A photography 