One of Montana’s nicknames is “the treasure state”, a nod to its wealth of natural resources and gemstones. On this recent road trip, I got to understand just how apt this nickname was. Mining is a huge part of the state’s history and culture, and is still a major industry today. This is visible everywhere, … Continue reading The Mines of Montana
Located in downtown Butte, Montana, St. James hospital had been closed since 1962, and abandoned for decades. When we arrived in town on our recent road trip, we thought we’d have a go at shooting the building. When we rolled up we quickly saw that, though it was rough condition, the place was well sealed … Continue reading St. James Infirmary
Sometimes, in the rougher stretches of life, the exact right thing to do can be setting yourself an arbitrary, foolish, and daunting task. Times for me were not good in the weeks leading up to the recent road trip out west. When one of my friends insisted we should make the Badlands a stop on … Continue reading The Badlands
I returned a week ago from a grueling, but extremely productive, road trip out West. The hospital featured in this post was actually the last major destination we would see before setting off eastward on the long return trip home, but it was the circumstances of how our visit came to be that made me … Continue reading Great Western Tuberculosis Hospital
My first post on Santa Fe was on the first couple days we spent in town. Thematically, I didn’t see a neat way to divide up the remaining photos, so here is everything else, chronologically. The big event during our week there was the blizzard that hit Tuesday afternoon and paralyzed much of the city, … Continue reading Santa Fe, Part Two: Shit Gets Real
I spent a week around Santa Fe last month. Though often thought of as a hot, desert state, much of New Mexico lies at high elevations, and the southern reaches of the Rockies reach into the area around Taos. The winters can be cold, but are more pleasant than the midwestern winters I’m used to. … Continue reading Santa Fe, Part One: the Jemez Mountains
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!
The idea behind the old Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times” is that those times are not usually interesting for good reasons. So, obviously, Covid and the upheaval it caused have made times interesting, but I’ve also been dealing with interesting times at my day job, work which is stressful even in normal … Continue reading Downstate of Mind
As much as I enjoyed photographing the birds in the last post, I fell in love with their home, the cloud forest. This is a type of forest found in tropical and subtropical mountain ranges, at altitudes high enough to plunge the entire landscape into the clouds. This keeps the forest very humid and creates … Continue reading Ecuador the Beautiful
What initially attracted me to Ecuador was the historic center of Quito and the photo opportunities it might offer. I soon learned that the country is a birdwatcher’s paradise, said to be home to more species per acre than any other country in the world. Mindo, a small town a couple hours northwest of Quito, … Continue reading The Birds of Mindo
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