Posts tagged “photography

Stuck

Posted on 23 December 2021

This is about where I didn’t go as much as where I did go. Landscapes shifted drastically over space but comprehension remained steady. I knew how to interact. I understood everything. I threw myself into a vast land, I hauled myself into higher altitudes, I walked between rocks that reached up to the sky and, still, there was always a sense of familiarity. A part of me reaches for the total unknown. I want to be submerged in that which I do not recognize or understand. I want to be overwhelmed, bombarded with novelty. I miss different languages, different cultures, different buildings streets rules stores food almost everything. As much as we, humans, fuck each other and much else over, I suppose sometimes I…

The Enchantments in a Day

Posted on 26 November 2018

The Enchantments. The name holds an aura of glittering mystery and the hurdles to access them add to the impression. I’d heard whispers of them, always conflating their beauty and the luck of the permit draw. But on Labor Day weekend, my friend and I smashed away the perception of unattainability. To camp in the Enchantments you need a permit, and to get a permit, you either have to get lucky in the permit lottery or try your hand very early morning at the ranger station. The Enchantments, a series of lakes in the Central Cascades, are a fragile alpine wilderness and it’s quite fair to limit the number of people pitching tents up there. This also meant that I didn’t think I could…

I was there.

Posted on 27 May 2018

It’s easy to forget. I decided to look through a batch of photos in my collection from almost six years ago. Many hadn’t even been edited. The beauty of where I’d been jars me. It echoes better in my mind now that I scroll through these images again. I am not sure if I’ll ever be in as stunning of a place as southwestern Bolivia again. Everywhere you look is a shock to the soul. The vast and varied altiplano with its scattered settlements is so far removed from my daily life. But, I was there. I was there. I was there.

Burning Light

Posted on 15 April 2018

I stepped out of our car and the heat dripped off me. I squinted my eyes against the sun. We had arrived in Puerto Escondido. Everything seemed to shimmer. I’m not a beach person. I prefer cold beaches to hot ones. I’m not even a water person. Even so, we drove through and then descended the hills of Oaxaca state from the regional capital to the coast to introduce ourselves to another part of Mexico. Discomfort is worth the knowledge and experience. Puerto Escondido was the most touristy place we’d visited, and I can see why. We walked down the stairs to Playa Carrizalillo as the sun was setting. The bay, the clear blue water, the sand; I had to admit this was a…

A Tree and Water

Posted on 6 March 2018

We parked near the town plaza of Santa María del Tule and approached the square. The greenery of an enormous tree towered ahead of us, utterly overshadowing the church beside it. This tree, El Árbol del Tule, is the world’s widest tree and is, at the very least, over 1,000 years old – and some believe it is much older than that. What no one needs to believe, though, because it’s obvious, is that this tree is majestic. After paying the few pesos’ entry into the square, we circled the trunk. It was impossible to capture the its size in our camera frames. So we walked under the outstretched branches and just did our best. El Árbol del Tule, given its age, has seen…