East of Interstate 5, on a 2-lane blacktop that zig-zags its way around irrigation canals and past orchards of bare trees, lies the tiny town of Alpaugh. In the center of town, at the crossroads of Avenue 54 and Road 38, sits the Alpaugh Grocery. It rears up suddenly out of nowhere, looming over its neighbors. It’s a jarring sight after miles of driving down empty roads with nothing but power lines and dirt on either side. I’ve long been drawn to photograph buildings like the Alpaugh Grocery, to preserve these reflections of our past before they fade from memory. Collectively, these photographs form a mosaic that reveals the impermanence of our times, and ourselves.

The trees are starting to bloom, a sure sign that spring is nigh. As I watched the wind ruffle a carpet of pastel pinks and whites against a bright blue sky, a ripple sent my mind wandering back to this time last year. I was at the Kawazu Sakura Festival, held each year in February to mark the earliest appearance of cherry blossoms in Japan. We were among the few Westerners amid the crush of visitors, but people are people everywhere, and but for the differences in language we could have been anywhere.

It was my first day in Tokyo and I had a little time to kill before dinner, where I would meet the group I would be traveling with for the next 10 days. I pulled out my Lonely Planet pocket guide and skimmed the entries for places near where I was staying. One place stood out – the Okuno Building, a pre-war apartment building that promised “a retro time capsule … with Escher-like staircases, an antique elevator shaft, and an ever-changing selection of [art galleries].” Perfect. A short power walk through the rain later, I found myself standing in its empty lobby.

When I head out on a road trip, the beginning of my journey is always unsettling. As the first miles roll by, my mind bounces between my “normal” life and my artistic one. And so it was last March, when a flash of interest caught the corner of my eye. A ramshackle building or two on the left, just off the interstate. Wandering among these ruins with my eyes open and imagination engaged, I left my real life behind. I was finally present in the moment, recharged and ready for my journey.

It’s been a minute. Last time you found me in your inbox I had just returned from our long strange trip Down Under. That was 13 months ago. I had a hard drive full of images and a mind full of ideas to share. But I never found the time. Turns out, revenge travel is tiring. I had never heard the phrase before, but it perfectly encapsulates what I was doing, without knowing it. The pandemic scuttled most of our travel plans in 2020. There was a slow return to travel in 2021 and 2022, but last year was the year the floodgates opened. And I, three years into “retirement,” was right there with the rest of you, making up for lost time. Revenge travel. Yep, that about sums it up.

We’re just back from nearly a month Down Under. Friendly people, beautiful scenery, good food. Australia is about as un-foreign as a foreign country can get for an American tourist. We had a great time, but this was not a trip designed for photography. Just me and Denise traipsing about places we’d never seen before. But I was pleased that I found time here and there to create some images, rather than just taking pictures of what we were seeing as we moved past. On a trip like this, I’ve learned to take spontaneous moments to photograph when they arise, and be content to leave other opportunities behind.

Let’s talk about photo workshops. On-location, travel workshops have always appealed to me, particularly when thinking about traveling to an unfamiliar place on my own. But I have always had a love-hate relationship with them. I love going out with other photographers, sharing in the discovery of a new place and enjoying the camaraderie of each other’s company, and maybe picking up a few new tips along the way. But I hate being told where to stand, what to photograph, or how to do it. Photography, like other art forms, is mostly a solitary pursuit and I’m more interested in photographing what speaks to me than in re-creating someone else’s vision of how to interpret a place.

I love a deadline. January 1 has some extra weight to it. A bit of gravitas. A reminder that we are all marking time, and that time is not an infinite resource … much as we may try to fool ourselves into thinking it is. So when the annual marker rolled around this year I took that as a kick in the pants to start cleaning up all the clutter around here. I was tempted to just throw everything out (again!) and start over, but I’ve been down that rabbit hole before and I know it just ends up back at the same place. So instead I satisfied myself by rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, and bringing a few more out from storage.

This week I forced myself to put down the camera and pick up the mouse. We had made a few recent trips down the California coast, visiting San Luis Obispo, Paso Robles and surrounding areas. Oak-studded grasslands, rounded sandstone mountains, and a rugged coastline create a unique sense of place. Between Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara life moves a bit slower. It has a bit of old California to it. That is what I was striving to capture as we made our way back down there.