Tag: poetry

Stuckey’s Skeleton: Monuments to Velocity and Obsolescence

The photo of an abandoned Stuckey’s along I-76 in Colorado captures the decline of mid-century roadside travel due to economic shifts and infrastructure changes. With documentary clarity, it emphasizes architectural decay and cultural history, inviting viewers to reflect on both nostalgia and contemporary relevance while preserving a forgotten era of American mobility.

Abandoned roadside building with a former gas canopy and boarded storefront, covered in graffiti and surrounded by cracked pavement and weeds under a blue sky.
The abandoned remains of a former Stuckey’s at the Sedgwick exit along I-76 in northeastern Colorado.

In this documentation of a former Stuckey’s roadside station along Interstate 76 near Sedgwick, Colorado, the photographer captures a distinctly American form of ruin—one born not of catastrophe but of bypass, economic shift, and the relentless evolution of travel infrastructure. The image, positioned within Chapter 6 of his Top 100 Journey, reflects a thematic concern with both literal and metaphorical roads ahead, while simultaneously acknowledging what has been left behind.

The composition employs a wide-angle perspective that emphasizes the structure’s geometric severity against an expansive Colorado sky. The canopy’s angular red-and-white striping draws the eye leftward, while the weathered building facade—bearing faded lettering and graffiti-marked columns—anchors the right side of the frame. Between these elements lies cracked asphalt overtaken by scrub grass, a visual testimony to years of abandonment. The photographer positions himself at a slight distance, allowing the full scope of dereliction to register without sensationalizing the decay.

What distinguishes this work from mere urban exploration photography is its restraint. Rather than fetishizing abandonment or deploying dramatic processing techniques, the photographer presents the scene with documentary clarity. The natural light—diffused through wispy clouds—provides even illumination that reveals texture in the deteriorating surfaces without casting the scene into melodrama. A discarded pink couch in the lower right corner serves as an unexpected punctuation mark, a surreal domestic intrusion into commercial space that hints at the site’s reappropriation by transient visitors.

The Stuckey’s chain represents a specific era of American mobility—mid-century road travel when interstate commerce moved at human speeds and roadside stops functioned as destinations rather than mere interruptions. The photographer’s selection of this subject speaks to an interest in cultural archaeology, in preserving evidence of infrastructures that once defined travel experience but now exist as skeletal reminders of obsolete commercial models.

Within the context of Chapter 6’s “ongoing exploration,” this photograph demonstrates an expansion of the photographer’s subject matter beyond controlled studio environments and collaborative performances. Here, he engages with the built environment as found object, approaching landscape and architecture with the same compositional rigor previously applied to portraiture and experimental lighting. The decision to include this image alongside more technically innovative work suggests an artistic practice concerned with breadth as much as depth—a willingness to move between modes of image-making as the subject demands.

The personal dimension—referenced in the accompanying text through memories of hot dogs and pecan log rolls—remains deliberately absent from the photograph itself. This restraint allows the image to function on multiple levels: as architectural document, as cultural commentary, as landscape study. The photographer trusts the visual evidence to carry meaning without editorial intervention, letting viewers project their own relationships to such spaces.

As part of the Top 100 selection, this photograph confirms that the journey ahead need not always involve technical innovation or conceptual complexity. Sometimes it requires simply bearing witness to what time and economics have rendered irrelevant, preserving in two dimensions what three-dimensional space will not sustain much longer. The road ahead, this image suggests, is also paved with remnants of roads already traveled.

Suspension and Illusion: A Study in Controlled Ephemera

Model Everyn Darling is featured in a significant studio portrait taken during a photography workshop in Denver. This image, characterized by its minimalist setting and controlled lighting, explores themes of aspiration and vulnerability through the metaphor of a translucent balloon. The photographer’s evolving style emphasizes collaborative creativity and visual poetry over mere technical perfection.

Studio portrait of a woman in a black dress holding a translucent balloon against a plain backdrop.
Model Everyn Darling poses with a translucent balloon during a studio photography workshop in Denver, Colorado.

This studio portrait represents a significant departure within the photographer’s evolving practice, marking his exploration of collaborative, workshop-based creation and the controlled artifice of studio environments. Captured during a Creative Experimental Photography Meetup at RAW Studios in Denver, the image demonstrates how structured creative exercises can yield work of surprising conceptual depth when approached with technical precision and compositional awareness.

The photograph centers on model Everyn Darling, positioned within a minimalist studio setting characterized by graduated neutral tones that transition from cool blue-grey to warm cream. This chromatic subtlety provides visual breathing room while maintaining atmospheric presence—a backdrop that supports rather than competes. The subject, dressed in a simple black dress with white collar detail, appears barefoot in a pose of upward contemplation, one arm extended to hold a translucent balloon trailing delicate white ribbons or fabric.

What elevates this image beyond documentation of a workshop exercise is the photographer’s attention to the psychology of gesture and the poetry of the ostensibly simple prop. The balloon—that most ephemeral and-associated of objects—becomes a vehicle for exploring themes of lightness, release, and the tenuous connection between desire and drift. The model’s gaze follows the balloon upward, creating a diagonal compositional line that draws the eye through the frame while suggesting aspiration, longing, or perhaps the acceptance of letting go.

The technical execution reveals disciplined studio craft. Working with his Nikon Z5 and the versatile 24-120mm f/4 lens, the photographer has managed studio lighting with restraint, avoiding the harsh drama often favored in workshop settings. The illumination appears softly directional, modeling the subject’s features and dress while maintaining detail in the translucent balloon. Shadow work on the studio floor provides subtle grounding without becoming graphic or distracting. The slightly elevated perspective and negative space allocation give the subject room to breathe within the frame—a compositional generosity that reinforces the image’s contemplative mood.

Within the context of Chapter 6—”The Road Ahead: Recent Work & Ongoing Exploration”—this photograph signals important developments in his practice. The workshop origin indicates openness to collaborative creative structures and willingness to work within parameters set by others. Yet the result bears his aesthetic signature: careful attention to subtle tonal gradations, preference for psychological ambiguity over narrative certainty, and interest in objects as metaphorical carriers rather than mere props.

The image also represents exploration of human subjects with greater intimacy than much of his earlier landscape and architectural work. The model’s upturned face, though not confronting the camera directly, introduces vulnerability and interiority often absent from environmental documentation. This shift suggests expanding comfort with portraiture and the complex dynamics of photographer-subject collaboration.

The balloon’s deliberate artificiality—clearly held rather than actually floating—adds productive tension. The photograph acknowledges its own construction while inviting viewers to suspend disbelief, mirroring how all photography negotiates between document and fiction. In selecting this image as his best from the series, the photographer reveals evolving criteria for success: not technical perfection alone, but the achievement of visual poetry through careful orchestration of simple elements within controlled conditions.

Reclamation and Ruin: A Study in Agricultural Melancholy

The photograph of an abandoned farmhouse near Fort Collins, Colorado, embodies themes of impermanence and decay. The image balances architectural elements with natural landscapes, showcasing technical sophistication through HDR processing. By highlighting details of deterioration amidst recent human traces, it transforms rural abandonment into a poignant meditation on time and memory.

Weathered wooden farmhouse with boarded windows and peeling paint standing in tall grass near Fort Collins, Colorado.
An abandoned wooden farmhouse sits in open prairie near Fort Collins, Colorado.

In this haunting documentation of rural abandonment, the photographer captures a weathered farmhouse on the outskirts of Fort Collins, Colorado—a structure caught in the liminal space between human history and nature’s patient reclamation. The image, selected for Chapter 6 of his Top 100 Journey, exemplifies the ongoing evolution in his practice toward subjects that speak to impermanence, transition, and the quiet dignity of forgotten places.

The compositional strategy reveals a mature understanding of architectural photography merged with landscape sensibility. The two-story structure commands the frame while remaining subordinate to the expansive Colorado sky, which fills nearly half the image with dramatic cloud formations. This deliberate balance prevents the photograph from becoming merely documentary, instead elevating it into meditation on time and decay. The golden hour lighting—captured with precision timing—rakes across the weathered clapboard siding, accentuating every crack, peel, and shadow in the wood grain. This textural emphasis transforms deterioration into visual poetry.

His decision to employ HDR processing demonstrates technical sophistication in service of artistic vision rather than mere spectacle. The extended dynamic range allows simultaneous preservation of detail in the sun-bleached siding and the darker recesses of boarded windows and doorways. The processing maintains naturalistic color while enhancing the amber warmth of dying light against cool blue-grey clouds, creating chromatic tension that mirrors the thematic conflict between persistence and decay.

The overgrown prairie grass in the foreground serves multiple functions within the composition. Practically, it provides textural contrast to the geometric severity of the architecture; symbolically, it represents nature’s inexorable advance. The discarded white fabric or tarp in the lower right corner introduces a note of recent human presence, suggesting that abandonment is an ongoing process rather than a completed historical fact. This detail prevents the image from slipping into nostalgic romanticism.

What distinguishes this work within the context of Chapter 6—titled “The Road Ahead: Recent Work & Ongoing Exploration”—is its synthesis of earlier themes with evolving concerns. The photographer has long demonstrated interest in human traces within landscape, but here the investigation deepens. Rather than simply documenting what remains, he engages with the process of vanishing itself. The boarded windows become blind eyes; the peeling paint functions as aging skin; the sagging roofline suggests exhaustion. The structure possesses almost anthropomorphic vulnerability.

The photograph’s origins as a response to the 52frames weekly challenge reveals another dimension of his practice—the ability to transform assignment-based work into personally meaningful investigation. Many photographers struggle to maintain artistic integrity within the constraints of themed prompts, yet he has consistently used such frameworks as catalysts rather than limitations.

The telephone number still visible on the building’s facade—a commercial ghost—adds poignant specificity. It grounds the abstracted themes of abandonment and time in particular lives, particular businesses, particular failures or departures. This detail resists the tendency toward generic commentary on “the death of rural America” and instead insists on the singular reality of this particular farmhouse, this particular field, this particular evening light.

In positioning this image within his ongoing journey, the photographer signals continued commitment to finding profound resonance in overlooked subjects. The road ahead, it seems, leads deliberately toward what others pass by—not from contrarian impulse, but from genuine recognition that beauty and meaning persist even in, perhaps especially in, the discarded and decaying.

Ancient Greek Coin, Head of Alexander II Zebina

A macro photograph of a 123 BC Greek coin by Alexander II Zebina captures its historical significance and texture. The artist avoids over-sharpening, choosing selective focus to highlight the coin’s surface. This work raises questions about ownership, memory, and our connection to time, ultimately transforming the coin into a philosophical exploration of history.

Close-up of a worn ancient Greek coin showing a raised portrait, resting on coarse black granular material.
A macro photograph of an ancient Greek coin with a portrait relief placed on a dark textured surface.

In this macro study from Chapter 6 of his Top 100 Journey, the photographer confronts an artifact that predates the medium of photography by over two millennia. The coin—a bronze piece from 123 BC bearing the portrait of Alexander II Zebina—becomes both subject and collaborator, its weathered surface telling stories that extend far beyond the frame. This single exposure, created for the 52 Frames challenge, demonstrates a mature understanding of how light and composition can resurrect history from oxidized metal.

The technical execution reveals deliberate restraint. Rather than employ focus stacking to render every millimeter sharp, he opts for a single capture that honors the coin’s irregular topography through selective focus. The shallow depth of field becomes a curatorial choice: not everything from antiquity needs to be preserved with clinical precision. Some details fade into soft ambiguity, much as memory itself blurs across centuries. The side lighting—achieved through what appears to be a carefully positioned single source—rakes across the relief, transforming corrosion patterns into a luminous bronze landscape. Highlights catch on the highest points of wear, creating a constellation of golden moments against near-black valleys of shadow.

The substrate selection proves equally thoughtful. Black granular material, possibly sand or volcanic rock, provides textural contrast while introducing delicate bokeh spheres that float in the background like suspended time. This environmental choice feels archaeological, suggesting the coin might have just emerged from excavation rather than from a flea market display case. The photographer resists any impulse toward nostalgic sepia or artificial aging effects; instead, he allows the genuine patina—two thousand years in the making—to provide all the historical gravitas the image requires.

What distinguishes this work within Chapter 6’s framework of ongoing exploration is its meditation on ownership and stewardship. The accompanying note reveals this coin represents “the oldest man-made thing I have ever owned,” yet the photograph itself seems to question that possessive relationship. Can anyone truly own such an object, or are we merely temporary custodians in an impossibly long chain of hands? The macro perspective literalizes this contemplation, bringing the viewer so close that individual crystals of corrosion become visible, each one a marker of time the photographer will never witness.

The portrait of Alexander II Zebina—barely discernible beneath centuries of oxidation—emerges as a ghost in metal, features obscured yet undeniably present. This parallel between photographic and numismatic portraiture feels intentional. Both mediums attempt to freeze time, to preserve likeness against entropy’s relentless work. The photograph succeeds where the coin has partially failed, capturing not just the object but the precise quality of light falling upon it on a specific day in 2025, creating a new historical layer atop the ancient one.

Within the photographer’s evolving practice, this image represents a turn toward material intimacy and temporal reflection. The macro lens becomes a tool for philosophical inquiry rather than mere magnification. By isolating this small artifact against darkness and bringing such focused attention to its corrupted beauty, he creates space for viewers to contemplate their own relationship with history, permanence, and the objects that outlive their makers by millennia.

First Baptist Light Trails

The photographer captures long exposure light trails in front of Tampa’s First Baptist Church, merging urban movement with Neoclassical architecture. This duality creates an image of modernity and tradition, showcasing the church’s historical significance against dynamic traffic patterns. The piece illustrates Tampa’s evolving identity, emphasizing beauty in its urban landscapes through innovative techniques.

Long exposure nighttime photograph of the historic First Baptist Church in Tampa, Florida, with vehicle light trails in the foreground.
Long exposure light trails in front of the historic First Baptist Church in downtown Tampa.

In this nocturnal study of Tampa’s historic First Baptist Church, the photographer transforms urban infrastructure into kinetic painting, employing a twenty-second exposure to capture the ceaseless motion of vehicular traffic as ribbons of light that both frame and animate the Neoclassical architecture. The resulting image operates simultaneously as documentary record and abstract composition, a duality that characterizes his most successful explorations of Florida’s urban environments.

The church itself commands the frame with dignified authority. Its illuminated dome, rendered in theatrical green uplighting, draws the eye upward through classical columns toward the cupola’s glowing clock faces. This architectural landmark, likely dating to the early twentieth century, represents Tampa’s ambitions during its period of rapid growth—a permanence and civic gravitas that contrasts sharply with the ephemeral streaks of red and white light that sweep through the foreground. The photographer has chosen an exposure duration that allows traffic to complete its passage through the intersection, creating continuous trails rather than fragmented segments, a decision that required both technical precision and patience in timing.

The technical execution reveals careful calibration of competing priorities. The f/20 aperture serves multiple functions: it extends the exposure time necessary to capture substantial light trails while creating pronounced starbursts from the streetlamps and building lights that punctuate the scene. This diffraction effect, often considered a technical liability, becomes here an expressive tool that enhances the image’s sense of urban energy and nocturnal luminosity. The ISO 160 setting represents a pragmatic compromise, maintaining clean shadow detail without the noise that would emerge at higher sensitivities during a twenty-second exposure.

What distinguishes this work within the Florida Landscapes & Cityscapes chapter is its engagement with the state’s urban identity—a counterpoint to the natural environments that dominate popular conceptions of Florida photography. Tampa, often overshadowed by Miami’s architectural flash or Orlando’s manufactured spectacle, possesses a layered history visible in buildings like this repurposed church structure, now apparently serving commercial functions while retaining its ecclesiastical form. The photographer documents this transformation without nostalgia or critique, allowing the juxtaposition of classical architecture and contemporary traffic patterns to speak to ongoing urban evolution.

The composition demonstrates sophisticated spatial organization. The church occupies the middle ground with centered dignity, while the light trails sweep diagonally from lower right to left, creating dynamic movement that prevents the symmetrical architecture from becoming static. Flanking buildings and street trees provide contextual depth, establishing the church within its urban fabric rather than isolating it as a monument. The streetlamp at left edge, its starburst perfectly rendered, serves as a visual anchor that balances the compositional weight of the church’s mass.

Within his broader photographic journey, this image represents an expansion of the long-exposure vocabulary established in his Bay Pier work. Where that earlier piece explored natural elements transformed by time, here he applies similar temporal techniques to the urban realm, revealing how extended duration can render the chaos of city traffic as elegant abstraction. The photograph succeeds in making visible the patterns underlying apparent disorder, suggesting that beauty in Florida’s built environments requires not different locations but altered ways of seeing—a perspective shift measured in seconds rather than miles.

Long Exposure Bay Pier

This long-exposure photograph from Fort De Soto Park captures the interplay between water and human infrastructure beneath the Bay Pier at sunset. The technical precision transforms the scene into a study of temporality, where smooth water contrasts with weathered concrete, exploring beauty in overlooked spaces. The image balances tranquility and depth, prompting contemplation.

Long exposure sunset photograph taken beneath the Bay Pier at Fort De Soto Park, showing symmetrical concrete pilings and smooth reflective water.
Long exposure sunset view beneath the Bay Pier at Fort De Soto Park.

The photographer’s technical mastery and compositional restraint converge in this striking long-exposure study from Fort De Soto Park. Captured beneath the Bay Pier at sunset, the image demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of how extended exposure transforms the ephemeral into the architectural, rendering water as smooth as polished stone and reducing the atmospheric gradient to its essential chromatic progression.

The 124-second exposure at f/16 achieves precisely what such technical specifications promise: a complete metamorphosis of the transient into the permanent. The water’s surface becomes a mirror of silk, its glassy uniformity disrupted only by the weathered pier columns that puncture the frame with rhythmic precision. These pylons, darkened by time and barnacled at their waterline, create a vanishing perspective that draws the eye inexorably toward the distant horizon where structure meets light. The photographer has positioned himself not merely under the pier but within its geometric logic, allowing the concrete deck above to function as both literal and compositional ceiling, establishing boundaries that paradoxically expand the viewer’s sense of spatial depth.

What distinguishes this work within the Florida Landscapes & Cityscapes chapter is its meditation on infrastructure as organic form. The pier’s weathered concrete surfaces—mottled with rust stains and biological growth—speak to the peninsula’s relentless humidity and salt air. Rather than presenting Florida’s more commonly depicted pristine beaches or crystalline waters, he has chosen to explore the liminal space where human construction gradually surrenders to natural forces. The corroded texture of the support beams and deck creates a counterpoint to the water’s supernatural smoothness, establishing a dialogue between industrial decay and elemental transformation.

The color palette rewards careful attention. The sky transitions from pale lavender at the zenith through bands of peach and amber toward the horizon, while the water adopts cooler tones of green and slate. This chromatic division creates temperature contrast that enhances the image’s sense of tranquility without veering into sentimentality. A yellow structure visible in the middle distance—likely a utility building or navigation marker—provides a necessary accent of saturated color, preventing the composition from becoming too subdued.

The technical execution reflects deliberate choices rather than automatic settings. The 31mm focal length on a full-frame sensor provides sufficient width to encompass the pier’s structural rhythm while maintaining proper perspective correction, avoiding the distortion that might occur at the wide end of his 18-35mm lens. The ISO 100 setting ensures maximum detail in the shadows where barnacles cling to concrete, while the extended shutter speed required neutral density filtration to prevent overexposure during the lingering twilight.

Within the photographer’s larger journey, this image represents a maturation of vision—a willingness to find beauty not in Florida’s celebrated natural wonders but in the overlooked spaces where infrastructure and environment intersect. The pier becomes a study in temporality: concrete designed to last decades, water that renews itself constantly, and light that exists only for minutes. By freezing this convergence through long exposure, he creates a document that feels both immediate and timeless, a quality that defines his most successful landscape work. The photograph succeeds because it refuses spectacle in favor of contemplation, inviting sustained viewing rather than demanding instant admiration.

Tampa Panoramic at Night: A Study in Urban Luminescence

The panoramic long exposure photograph of downtown Tampa captures its urban beauty at night from the University of Tampa. This 2014 composition emphasizes artificial light’s role in depicting the cityscape, blending architectural detail and varied illumination. It challenges perceptions of Florida, asserting urban environments as significant alongside natural landscapes, showcasing the photographer’s technical skill and versatility.

Panoramic long exposure composite of downtown Tampa, Florida, photographed at night from across the Hillsborough River, showing illuminated skyscrapers, waterfront reflections, and dramatic clouds.
Panoramic long exposure view of downtown Tampa at night, captured from the UT campus across the Hillsborough River.

In this commanding 2014 panoramic composite, the photographer captures downtown Tampa’s nocturnal identity with technical precision and compositional sophistication. Selected for Chapter 2 of his Top 100 Journey—Florida Landscapes & Cityscapes—the image represents a pivotal moment in his exploration of urban environments, where the built landscape becomes a canvas for light, reflection, and architectural rhythm.

The photograph was executed from the University of Tampa campus, positioned across the Hillsborough River to establish both physical and aesthetic distance from the subject. This vantage point proves strategic: the river functions not merely as foreground but as an active participant in the composition, its surface transforming into a liquid mirror that doubles the visual impact of the skyline. The long exposure technique smooths the water into a reflective plane, allowing the city’s illumination to paint streaks of gold, pink, and violet across the lower third of the frame.

What distinguishes this work within the chapter’s broader narrative is its treatment of artificial light as a defining characteristic of place. While Florida’s natural landscapes—its coastlines, wetlands, and subtropical flora—typically dominate photographic representations of the state, this image asserts the validity of the urban experience as equally worthy of documentation. The photographer approaches Tampa’s skyline not as an intrusion upon nature but as a distinct ecosystem of glass, steel, and light, possessing its own aesthetic logic and visual poetry.

The panoramic format extends the horizontal axis, emphasizing the sprawl and variety of Tampa’s architectural character. Twin residential towers anchor the composition’s center, their construction-phase lighting creating vertical counterpoints to the horizontal sweep of the skyline. To the right, a cylindrical high-rise glows amber, its illuminated facade creating a beacon within the frame. The building adorned with pink-magenta accent lighting introduces chromatic variation, preventing the warm-toned dominance from becoming monotonous. This diversity of illumination—commercial, residential, decorative—reveals the stratified nature of urban nightscapes, where different lighting purposes create unintentional visual harmony.

The technical execution merits attention. Creating a panoramic composite requires not only multiple exposures stitched seamlessly but also consistent exposure values across frames and careful management of the long exposure duration. The photographer balances ambient light with the stronger point sources of building illumination, preventing blown highlights while retaining detail in darker architectural elements. The clouded sky, rendered in motion-blurred copper tones, provides textural contrast to the sharp geometry below.

Within the context of the Top 100 Journey, this image demonstrates the photographer’s versatility in approaching Florida’s varied visual territories. While subsequent work in this chapter may explore the state’s natural drama—storm systems over the Gulf, the crystalline waters of its springs, the atmospheric density of its wetlands—this urban portrait establishes his comfort with diverse subject matter and technical approaches. The photograph argues for Tampa’s inclusion in the visual narrative of Florida, asserting that the state’s identity encompasses both wilderness and metropolitan sophistication.

The image remains a testament to the possibilities inherent in patient observation and technical mastery, transforming a familiar skyline into a study of light, color, and urban form.