During this period of pandemic lockdown, and as the weather has begun to warm, I’ve started smoking meat again on my backyard Weber grill. Being a good Texan, I’ve loved eating smoked meat ever since I was a little kid. One of my grandfathers was a tremendous home chef who enjoyed smoking everything from fish to game, while my other grandfather was a master of pit barbecue, delivering up extraordinary chickens that I still haven’t been able to recreate. When I lived in Austin (and later San Antonio), I fell hard for the central Texas barbecue belt – eating at places like Smitty’s and Kreuz Market whenever I had the time to pop down to Lockhart. So yesterday, as I was smoking meat in my own backyard, I remembered this photo from a visit to Kreuz in 2014.

When Gwen and I visited Carmel-by-the-Sea in 2018, I took advantage of California’s geography and beaches to take photos of the sunset. The last time I posted a photo from this trip, it was from right before the sun had set below the horizon. This photo is from well after sunset – about 35 minutes later than the earlier photo. This was well into “blue hour” territory, and one could argue the light was closer to dark than blue. But from the very last drop of light in the sky, I was able to compose and shoot this piece of driftwood on the beach.

Here’s another photo I took back in 2011, this time of the boardwalk from the parking lot to the beach at the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge. There’s not much story to this photo – I wanted to take photos, I drove to Plum Island, I wandered a bit until I found this setting at the Wildlife Refuge, and I took the photo. That said, there’s a lot more I can say now that I’m looking back on this photo, 9 years later.

Spring in Vermont can be magical, and we were fortunate it put on a wonderful show for our trip over Memorial Day, 2019. The flowers were blooming, the grass was a lush green, and everything just felt so alive. And while it rained (a lot), I was especially fortunate to get out for some photography between the rainstorms to find this scene near Waitsfield.

I took this picture over 10 years ago when my wife and I made a trip to Iceland just after the recession had started. Tickets to Iceland were very affordable, so we packed our bags and went on an adventure around the island. It was a spectacular trip, and one I’d love to revisit someday in the future.