I was up well before October sunrise to photograph Roslyn, a tiny historic mining town north of Cle Elum that once doubled as Alaska in television productions. I captured the town waking up, then headed north to Lake Cle Elum, where I photographed the dark blue water and surrounding mountains from above in the deep blue-gray morning light. I thought I had everything I came for. But driving back through Roslyn toward our cabin, I noticed enormous piles of brilliant yellow autumn leaves covering the picnic tables in a small park just north of downtown.
One cool fall Friday after the U-District art walk Michelle and watched the Seattle skyline at the Mountaineering Club on the Graduate Hotel rooftop. After a few experiments, I decided to shoot a crisp raw image and remove the focus in the studio. Yosemite 2014 was accidental and I wanted to experiment with a city scene both recognizable and unknowable.
Another image from the abandoned 76 gas station in Woodinville, Washington. Just as 20th Century America saw the world through television screens, today we increasingly view our world through cell phones.
Just down the hill from my home, across Highway 522 in Woodinville. The former 76 gas station has been abandoned for many years despite being poised at the entrance to downtown. The midcentury angles contrast sharply with the graffiti.
In August 2022, we spent several days staying in Sequim, Washington on the Olympic Peninsula while visiting Olympic National Park. Sequim is one of the sunniest spots on the Pacific Northwest - outside the “rain shadow” of the mountains and known for it’s lavender fields and ocean views. This station sits just east of downtown. And since my father worked for Texaco for almost twenty years, it was an obvious subject.
In August 2020, I was driving cross country solo. Midafternoon, I pulled off to find gas - and found this station instead. It reminded me of Edward Hopper’s famous “Gas” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Also, my father worked for Texaco for almost twenty years.
Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, northeast of Wichita, Kansas, is the largest remaining stand of what the great prairies of the Midwest were before farms, cities, and towns. The Lower Fox Creek School opened in 1884, closed in 1930, and—restored—was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
Leaving an art walk in the Belltown neighborhood of Seattle, I was struck by the momentary emptiness of Pike Place, angular neon jutting in different lines and angles.
Aquebogue, New York, close to where I grew up, home to the Modern Snack Bar since 1950. I shot its iconic mid-century sign standing in the middle of Main Road, dressed in black—possibly not the best attire given the speeding October traffic.
Summer’s end. This was shot through my windshield during a fierce Atlantic downpour on the ferry dock at Orient Point, New York heading back to Massachusetts on Labor Day.
