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We couldn’t help but notice the variety of customized covid ‘closed’ signs posted on the businesses around town. While it may not be anything terribly profound, special or exciting, it was something that ended up being more interesting and telling with each passing doorway and, well, seemed like a good excuse to both get out of the house for a walk as well as occupy several hours. Ultimately, the result ended up being:

Signs of the Times - a collection of images of the personalized ‘closed for covid’ signs posted on the businesses around town.

From the sweet to the frank, the creative to the dry, and the mundane to the marvelous, each sign has a personality of its own, much like the folks behind them.

Click below to read more and see all the signs…

It was mid-March and I flew into Sacramento. I was scheduled to work and visit my girlfriend in Nevada City, California, just outside Tahoe. The plan was to be there until March 18th, get some work done, have some fun, and then fly back to Portland, but, well, as we all know now, things started to get weird around then.

Really weird…

It was a recent late afternoon when Portland finally saw a short respite in the seemingly endless rain and the glorious sun drenched our part of the Earth for a few lovely moments, reminding us why we endure all that water falling from the sky for so many weeks of the year. Spring had barely just begun to sprung and this afternoon proved to be pure magic in the forest near my home.

When I first arrived…

This is going to be a short one. In fact, I won’t even go past these few intro sentences, as there’s not much introduction that a sunset at Joshua Tree National Park really needs. I just happened to be in Southern California at my folks house getting a few personal matters in order, and my girlfriend decided to come down and help, so on Valentine’s Day weekend, we figured we’d take a little break and head out to Palm Springs for a few days, one of which we spent at Joshua Tree…

Ok, so this wasn’t planned. And by this, I don’t just mean these images or even this trip to Smith Rock State Park in Oregon, but when life hands you ice and snow, you make, eh…slushies?!

I know I’m a little late on this one, being as how these images were taken over Thanksgiving of 2019, but, well, my procrastinatin’ booty figured I couldn’t post this before my Peru trip posts, because, well, it’s sorta connected. What Peru posts am I talking about? Precisely!!! They’re coming…I promise…I promise…DAMNIT I PROMISE!! But as a kick in the gotcha to motivate me to finish those buggers, since there’s been a few adventures since that don’t warrant as many words as the Peruvian saga, figured I may as well share a few of those images before they’re no longer relevant!

Anyhow,…

So I've started to build quite a pleasant relationship with Mike & Julie Safley, the founders of Oakwood Gardens, after first being assigned to photograph one of their cottages for Airbnb more than year ago. I've written about it before, so I won't get too deep into it here, but for the full alpaca-fueled story, check out this post.

In any case, one of the things they've been hiring me for has been to photograph the spectacular garden that lives on their property - 7 acres of ever-changing landscapes, scenes, plants, and animals that demonstrate the beauty, fragility and resilience of our natural planet.

When I got the call early December that they wanted their garden photographed in the winter, my initial reaction was 'huh!??'

I don’t have much to say here…perhaps because there isn’t much to say. This one is purely show and tell. This series of images was from a recent morning here in Portland, Oregon. I woke up, saw the fog, grabbed my camera, and ran up the street to Hoyt Arboretum in my pajamas. What was meant to be a quick picture or two ended up being 3 hours of wandering through the forest fog.

And these were the results…

“Have the train go back one more car-length.”
“See that S-Curve over there? Wait for me to get around that lake and then get it to start around that bend and behind those trees.”
“Oh, and give me smoke. Lots of smoke. With color.”
“Aaaaaand why not - blow the whistles.”

It’s not everyday you get to direct a historic Union Pacific steam engine (or two) to do what you want it to do up and down a stretch of authentic narrow-gauge rail in Gold Rush country, but, well, this wasn’t an every day…

It’s that season again!

Summer is over, and the Chambers of Commerce and destination marketing organizations of America are no longer questioning their life choices after dealing with the annual throngs of sun-searching tourists escaping their own monotony by crazily descending upon various regions to patronize their businesses and attractions. They’ve had a slight chance to recuperate, shore up their 2020 budgets, and complete their efforts to capture media assets to help promote their respective locales to next year’s crop of escapees.

And this is where I come in.

So this is pretty darn rad! The non-profit I work with, Ecology in Classrooms & Outdoors (ECO), just had our 3rd annual Garden Party and it was our most successful yet, "with donors stepping up to create 23 new scholarships for hands-on ecology lessons, after school programs, field trips, and outdoor summer camp!"

We also…