Catching up...  view slide show Over holiday break I took some photographs along HW 50 in rural Missouri and around the neighborhood.  The photograph of the barn and the cranes captures what it feels like to me to live in this neighborhood.  Old relics and new construction share the same space. As part of the new construction, a lot of homes are being torn down.  The last photos are pictures of the homes during deconstruction.

At long last... photographs from Washington D.C.  The nation's capital poses a photographic challenge -- how do I take pictures that are not the pictures I have always seen? I gave in to the temptation of getting just the right shot of Lincoln's memorial at night.  I also documented being in some amazing places.  Standing where Dr. King gave his "I Have a Dream Speach," visiting the Lincoln Memorial interior and seeing the 19-foot statue got me choked up.  But I really choked up at the Vietnam Memorial.  It was difficult to walk by the names sloping further and further below the ground level. The other highlight was taking in several buildings of the Smithsonian and the National Mall.

I will have lots of  collections of photographs from my recent trip to New Mexico.  For starters, here are some black and white photos from the drive down.  We took  lots of two-lane highways and  had a fair amount of opportunities to pull over for pictures.

This is a collection of photographs taken over Memorial Day weekend.  I titled it Decoration because that seems to be an undercurrent throughout the varied sites I visited with my camera.  When I say decoration I do not mean in a Better Homes and Gardens sense.  I mean more in a sense of commemoration through detail and remembrance.

(the first image is an on-going project of documenting the strange whimsy of the Lawrence Welk Show)

Site one is a garden in the northeast part of town. This part of town fascinates because so many worlds and culturescollide in a relatively small area.  This is a rain garden and it iseclectic and charming.

Site two is a cemetery off Wilson Road.  Last week I passed by and was struck by how full it is and by the range of ages of graves.  The juxtaposition of cemeteries and railways is chilling.  And yet the small gestures undo the straight line path of the train.  Some one cares and visits.  This is the tidiest cemetery I've visited.

Site three is an antique military vehicle display of privately owned vehicles and collections of military gear from the civil war (just pup tents there) through Vietnam.  What intrigued me were the worlds set up by the collectors.  The incredible detail that they went to communicate a sliver of history.  In some cases, down to the pencils and Cracker Jacks boxes. 

Site four is Liberty Memorial.