Getting Sky High in Humboldt
Aerial photography of Humboldt County coastline and interior foothills from a Cessna 172 Skyhawk, a four-seat, single-engine, high-wing fixed-wing aircraft, the most successful mass produced light aircraft in history, which barely goes over 105 miles per hour, likely less when stuffed like a tin can. Photos © Manny Santiago & Alex McKenzie
Redwood Creek Beach State Park
Redwood Creek Beach State Park is where the Redwood Creek, one of three major rivers and watersheds that runs through Redwood National Park, ends. It enters the Pacific Ocean just north of the southern boundary of Redwood National Park, near Orick. The Redwood Creek Estuary is located along the coast near the Kuchel Visitor Center. [...]
Tip one back for Janet Begley R.I.P.
People die every day. Every year we lose millions. Most will pass on unknown. Some, like Indy 500 winner Dan Wheldon, who died at 33, in a car crash in this year’s race, go too soon. Others, like the CBS radio man Norman Corwin, who lasted to 101, take more than the average share. Who [...]
Dames and Drinks the Best of 2011
It ain’t over till the sexy lady sips her Manhattan, Holy Headbuzz Batman! was it a good year for dames I’ll never see again and drinks I will remember for the rest of my life. The list of new bars on the map is a long one: New Orleans’ Checkpoint Charlies. San Antonio’s Esquire Tavern. [...]
Mushroom Hunting in Humboldt
Patrick’s Point State Park in Humboldt County is a premier spot for surfing along the north coast of California, and is well known for being a great place for spotting all varieties of wild mushrooms. And though they may look pretty, they can be deadly. Thanks to Roger’s Mushrooms for providing a visual guide to [...]
Homeless in Tokyo
“I sit on a man’s back choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all means possible….except by getting off his back.” ―Leo Tolstoy Click above to view full gallery of images.
Street Photography Examined
“What happens when you interrogate yourself? What happens when you begin to call into question the tacit assumptions and unarticulated presuppositions and begin then to become a different kind of person?” –Dr. Cornell West I have long tried to get at the underlying philosophy of Street Photography. What is it exactly that makes a normal [...]
At Summer’s End
The moon is up the sun is down and as dawn slowly slides around perhaps the dark so hard to see is nothing but light yet to be
The American Dream Series Part One
Beer for dinner? Again? It’s the American Dream you say? Well, ok, if you say so, but can we have some lime? We need to go get it? Can we have a beer first? We’re at a bar? Why yes, we are…Ok, good…
Try God?
The owner of the BMW staying at the Super 8 wants to get across the secret of his or her success: Try God. Now is that an order or a request…? And directed at whom exactly?
High Sierra Music Festival 2011
The 21st High Sierra Music Festival held annually in Quincy, a lost little town in the early reaches of the Plumas National Forest, just south of Lassen National Forest in the beginning of the Cascade Range that runs all the way north to Mt. Garibaldi in British Columbia, becomes a Shangri-La of music, food, beer [...]
Hitchhiking Japan and the Sardine Cuisine of the Kii Peninsula
Hitchhiking along the backcountry roads of Wakayama (there are no other kind) one gets to know the sense of extreme rural isolation early on. Once out of what would be mere neighborhoods in Tokyo, which pass for major metropolises a few hours southwest, there isn’t much except for the road. Tired and hot, wondering why [...]
Flora and Fauna of the American Northwest
It is spring and the usual photos of Japanese people of all ages and incomes gathered as one nation undivided in drunken revelry beneath cherry blossoms across the archipelago are nowhere to be seen. I’m feeling a bit of anxiety at the missing pink and white pixels flashing across my laptop’s screensaver slideshow. The only [...]
Trans-Atlantic Container Ship Travel
Day Three: Having never been out to open sea before, at some point I expected to emerge from my cabin to panoramic blue skies filled with armadas of puffy cumulus clouds combining with the bracing aroma of salt coming from the slight lapping of the otherwise glassy Atlantic waters to descend upon our small party [...]
This thing, whatever it is
I am not in Japan, but for the past few days since the earthquake, tidal wave and nuclear reactor leaks, I have been getting the same question asked via email, neighbors, people in line at the grocery store, even my grandma: Why all the suffering? Though this question tends to always hang in the air [...]
Land of the Living / Dead
The common belief is that it’s easy to criticize, that it’s easy to hate, but the truth is that it is not effortless to be negative: it takes work. It may in fact be even more tiring than being positive, though the scientific data on that is still inconclusive. At the biological level, there is [...]
Shine a Light
When distance is the only tangible thing you’ve got between you, and all that matters is the ephemeral light, communication is key. Here are a smattering of the people met in Japan who- more than the place itself make it memorable, who make me want to go against all my instincts and look back, behind [...]
Things To Do To Amuse Yourself Until You Die
I woke up in the middle of the night thinking it was raining and the clothes I had hanging outside to dry were getting wet. I sat up in bed and, listening to the stillness, I heard the definite pitter-patter of raindrops on the window, the trees, the pavement below. Yet when I went up [...]
Desire or something like it
You want something. But you don’t know what it is. So you wait. In the meantime you watch and listen and try to feel something and sense that somehow you are not dreaming all this up: It is a completely beautiful thing to sit in a place and have people bring you drinks while being [...]
Black Hole of Love
It’s interesting to note that the scientific phenomenon of a Black Hole is an area of space where the gravitational field is so powerful that nothing can escape after having fallen past the event horizon (boundary past which events can’t ever be observed – that which represents the maximum extent of the particle horizon – [...]
Daibutsu 大仏
The Great Buddha at Kōtoku-in (高徳院), a 13.35 meter high, 93 ton bronze statue of Amida Buddha cast in 1252, represents a high point of Jōdo shū Buddhism during the Kamakura period. The mudrā seen here is the Dhyana (上品上生), normally practiced during Zazen (坐禅) meditation. Besides ushering in Jōdo shū in the 12th century, [...]
