Sitting at a tea room in Nara, Japan while teaching on Semester at Sea (Fall 1997). I just about fell off my pillow when this juxtuposition wandered by. Cover the right half of the image with your hand and you have a serene yet deliberate landscape created to impress the concept of peace upon the viewer.

Then move your hand and you can almost hear the whine of the two-cycle motor, just like your neighbor when you're trying to sleep-in on a Sunday.

But when you think about it... what better way to clean the leaves off your zen garden... What else are you gonna use? A rake?

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 String, pot-scrubbers, and green onions... add a dash of side-light... and Voila!

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Sometimes you are blessed by the gods of rim-light. And this in the days of slide film no less. Fujichrome gave you no latitude and no way of knowing if you "Got the Shot" until you were 7 days and hundreds of miles away in Hong Kong at a photo-lab hoping your film would turn out OK.

I pulled of two or three decent photos in this little market including a side-lit close up shot of the table of green onions and Brillo pads in the sun at the left of frame. But my favorite photo was this back-lit view of a typical day in a Shanghai market, just enough shadow detail to set the scene, a fashionable woman walks center frame, wearing a white top, and a perfect halo of rim-light.

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Escalators as art.

The Louvre.

Paris, France.

March 2010.

As a photographer, there are times when something in the world calls out to you... "Take My Picture." Usually it's little kids when they see me with a camera. But sometimes it's things like this. I have no good explanation. It was calling to me, from the store shelf... "Take me home, take my picture!" 5 packages later I had the perfect cheese (no bubbles) and the perfect cracker (proper salt distribution, no cracks).

I don't know why.