Black and White Photo Gallery
I'm a fan of black and white photography. I grew up with it, learned how to process Tri-X film and work with prints in the college darkroom, mastered my first 35mm camera in Vietnam, then worked for years with newspaper photographers in a half dozen newspapers long before publishers wanted to experiment with (and pay for) color in their publications. Some of what I've included in this gallery stems from those early days in newspapers, and some is more recent - black and white images digitally converted from color just because I believe sometimes that just made it better.
Canyon De Chelly
White House Ruins, Canyon de Chelly
Canyon de Chelly is a deceptively beautiful, somewhat mysterious spot near Chinle, in far northeast Arizona.
The canyon is home to hundreds of well-preserved Anasazi ruins. It is also inhabited by a number of present-day Navajo, whose families have lived there for generations, cultivating crops on the canyon floor and raising sheep and goats.
In 1863, during the campaign of Kit Carson to round up the Navajo and send them to the barren reservation at Bosque Redondo in New Mexico (the Long March), holdouts considered the canyon their last retreat. Carson, reluctant to enter the unscouted depths of the canyon, observed it for days from above before sending soldiers in. About 300 Navajos taking refuge atop a rock formation called Fort Rock endured a lengthy siege and were never captured.
While you can photograph the White House Ruins from an overlook amid Navajos selling arts and crafts, you must hike down a winding trail to the canyon floor to experience it fully.
At the stream below the ruins, watch for the Navajo woman herding her goats.
Once there, take your time. Sit in the grass under the shade of ancient trees, eat lunch from your backpack, and listen to the sounds echoed from the 1,000-foot sandstone walls.
This shot was taken in March 2005.
Canyon De Chelly
Lady Carol
Wreck of the Lady Carol
The Lady Carol was a shrimp boat that went aground and sank just off the Freeport Harbor jetties.
I shot this photo in 1978, during my second year as managing editor of The Brazosport Facts, a small daily newspaper on the Texas Gulf Coast.
I can't remember exactly how we found out about the shipwreck, but someone called in a tip that a shrimp boat had gone down overnight and the wreck could still be seen from the beach. I told my photographer to run down and shoot it.
For some reason, he started making excuses and giving me reasons not to go. "You won't see much. It will be too far out. Take too long to get down there."
I was surprised by his reaction and told him to sit his lazy ass down, and I would shoot it myself.
Glad I did. I enjoyed the drive through Freeport, the short wait at the swing bridge as a barge moved down the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, and the final trek through the soft sand out onto Bryan Beach.
The morning was beautiful, with the sun yet to peek out above the rain clouds building up offshore. The sea was peaceful, quieter than I had ever experienced. Even the shorebirds were slow to wake up, paying me little mind as I drove down to the water's edge.
It was an easy shot, using Tri-X film and my favorite 135mm lens on the Pentax Spotmatic camera I carried as a correspondent in Vietnam. I ran the photo on Page One,
In a few days, the Lady Carol was no more, broken apart by the surf and disappearing beneath the waves.
Lady Carol
Arizona Aspens
This grove of aspens jumped out in front of my camera in 2007 during a trip to Arizona. We had spent a week in Tucson, then stopped for a few days in Sedona before heading north through Flagstaff toward the Grand Canyon. It was a great trip, one of our best getaways.
Northwest of Flagstaff, we drove into the snow. It was a sunny day, but cold. Being Texans, who don't see much snow, we had to stop and play a bit.
We had just left a park near snow-covered Mount Humphreys when I spotted the grove of aspens just off the road. Pulling as far off the road as I could, I hurried to get a shot before the sun faded, or another car needed my half of the road.
I took the photo with my Nikon Coolpix 5700, which gave me a lot of great photos in my first foray into digital. However, that camera doesn't allow for a lot of manual adjustment, so I felt lucky to get the exposure right. The sun was low in the sky, which softened the reflection off the snow, giving me just the right contrast.
I liked the shot as I took it—the way the shadows played on the snow and the clean look of the aspens against the darkness deeper in the woods. It's one of my favorites.
But we had reservations on the South Rim, so we kept moving.
Arizona Aspens
Cow Skulls
Cow Skulls at the Gage Hotel
The Gage Hotel is a landmark in Marathon, Texas, the northern entry to Big Bend National Park.
We like to visit the hotel and its restaurant, but we have never stayed there.
Someday we will.
We love the Big Bend, but we always stay at the lodge in the Basin. So when we get that close to the northern entry, it's hard to stop. We just want to keep going.
This was taken on our first visit to Texas only national park, sometime in the late nineties. We were returning from a newspaper convention in El Paso and added a few days to our trip.
Since then, I have used the skulls as a photo subject on a number of trips with different digital cameras, but for some reason, I like this original shot the best—a shot taken on film with my Nikon FA.
Maybe it's the light or the angle, or just that the owner of the Gage keeps adding skulls, and they're getting crowded.
Cow Skulls
Prison Rodeo Bronc Rider
Brazoria County, along the Texas Gulf Coast, was home to almost as many prisons as chemical plants.
In the early 80s, it seemed all roads led past one of the sprawling detention centers... and in lush South Texas, inmates worked the sprawling fields around the prisons under the watchful eye of a guard on horseback - usually with a big Stetson and a bigger shotgun.
During that same time period, the historic Texas State Prison Rodeo officially faded away into history.
I was fortunate to have attended and photographed one of the last ones, the 50th Anniversary Rodeo in 1981. Four years later, for good or for bad, the historic inmate performances shut down.
Some blamed changing attitudes about treatment of inmates. Others said it had more to do with the deteriorating condition of the arena. I always heard the inmates loved to work with the animals, enjoyed the competition, and were disappointed when it ended. But that may have been spin.
Anyway, on that day, under the Texas sun, freely roaming with my camera among the inmates inside the rodeo grounds, I had a wonderful time. I think the inmates did too.
This shot, of a bronc rider preparing for his ride is my favorite.
Prison Rodeo Bronc Rider
Acoma Oven
Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico is intriguing.
Down below on the desert floor, at Sky City Cultural Center, I gladly paid the fee to take photos. After all, we were invited guests. The little village atop the mesa is the center of the Acoma culture, a sacred place to its people.
The Acoma artisans are good at what they do, making a style of pottery highly prized by collectors. We purchased a few treasures and wished we had bought more.
But I also treasure the photos I shot—some looking out on the vast spaces beyond the homes on the high cliffs and others looking inward, down the rough walkways and alleys between the adobe brick homes that have sheltered generations of families. This shot in the center of the village features one of the familiar mud ovens used for baking bread.
If you go, take the tour, buy directly from the artists, and be respectful in how you wield your camera.
Acoma Oven
Barges on the Intercoastal
The Intercoastal Waterway cuts through a web of rivers, marshes, and other waterways as it meanders from far South Texas along the Gulf Coast.
This shot of the vast wet southern end of Brazoria County was taken from the open door of a Huey helicopter, a National Guard transport for Texas Congressman Bob Gammage, who was inspecting coastal facilities.
The two barges, moving side-by-side down the channel and approaching an intersection with the San Bernard River before it enters the Gulf of Mexico, give the photo a sense of vast scale.
This was taken with the Pentax Spotmatic 35mm camera I carried in Vietnam.
Barges on the Intercoastal
Mesa Verde
Mesa Verde
The Blue Bridge
The Blue Bridge Over the Ohio
The bridge that spanned the Ohio at Owensboro, Kentucky, was a mystery to many on the Kentucky side of the river.
It served a purpose, connecting the farms and small towns of southern Indiana to the third-largest commercial center in Kentucky.
But it amazed us how many longtime residents of that western Kentucky town never once drove across. Surely, curiosity about a neighboring state was worth a few minutes and a dollar's worth of gas.
We lived in Kentucky for more than three years in a house on a hill looking across the Ohio into Indiana.
The urge to explore was much too strong, and we often traversed that bridge and many other roads leading out of town.
The Blue Bridge
Cloud Shadows
Cloud Shadows Through the Window
I love the Big Bend.
It's probably the least-visited, most unappreciated of the national parks, and that makes it just about perfect.
Hot, dry, and prickly, you won't like it if you hate the desert. Almost every living creature bites or stings, and the plants protect themselves with spikes and thorns.
You must approach the desert with respect and caution, but if you can enjoy the raw, rugged beauty, it can be a wonderous place.
This shot through "the window" of the Chisos Mountain basin looks out on a vast expanse of the Chihuahuan Desert.
The shadows that raced north across the desert that November day in 2009 emphasized the many ranges of mountains stretching far into Mexico.
Cloud Shadows
Buzzard Roost
They greeted us with wings spread wide on a drizzly, overcast day in 2007.
We had driven to Van Zandt County early that morning to visit the Duwali monument, trying to capture a bit of the mystery of that place where the Texas Cherokee had battled and lost their war with the Texas militia.
As we headed back to the main highway, the sun began to break through the clouds, and we saw the buzzards amid the power lines.
There being nowhere to pull off and no traffic out there in the woods, I stopped in the middle of the road to grab a shot.
As if on cue, they raised their wings to soak up the warmth from the morning sun.
This is the shot I snapped.
Buzzard Roost
Kentucky Barn
I don't remember how many inches of snow fell in that Kentucky winter storm of 1993.
It was an amazing amount that buried our car and kept us bottled up in our hilltop home for several days before a county road crew cleared Masonville-Habit Road.
You don't get a lot of opportunities to shoot great winter photos in Texas. The snow just never sticks around very long.
But along the Ohio River in Kentucky, where we lived in exile for those three-plus years, the snow became part of the winter landscape, and I made the most of it.
This barn in rural Davies County, Kentucky, was the result of one of those winter photo safaris.
Kentucky Barn
Shelter From the Storm
By the time Hurricane Allen swept into the Gulf of Mexico in 1980, it was a scary storm, a Category 5, one of the strongest storms in recorded history. It had devastated Haiti, killing several hundred, and now it was in the Gulf.
I was managing editor of the Brazosport Facts, a daily newspaper serving Clute, Lake Jackson, and Freeport, Texas, and we had long since pulled out of the hurricane coverage plan. Most of our readers had already fled inland, and our storm team volunteers camped in the newsroom, working, watching, and waiting.
But in 1980, hurricane forecasting was still a game of chance. Some residents lingered ... until we ran on our front page a satellite photo showing the vast mass of Hurricane Allen filling the Gulf from Florida to Texas, from Louisiana to Mexico. That sent everyone scrambling. The shrimp fleet was already jammed into Freeport Harbor, hoping the new guillotine gate would keep the sea at bay. Temperatures were balmy, skies were blue, but a monster lurked in the towering clouds to the east.
We spent a few anxious days but dodged disaster as the storm stayed just offshore, weakening as it moved down the coast, making landfall near the Texas-Mexico border.