Tag Archives: arizona

February 24, 2017 – Tucson Rodeo

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Jabe Anderson III, of Dillon, MT, earning a 6.1 second time during Thursday’s steer wrestling event.

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Yesterday I found myself in familiar territory: the Tucson Rodeo. The Fiesta de los Vaqueros.

It’s bittersweet, now. It always will be, from this day until my last. I’ve spent my entire life pretty disinterested in sports and competition. The eye-liner and dreadlocks and high school were a pretty strong hint. I never had the time or the patience or the interest to learn the rules; football still confuses me, and baseball still bores me.

Several years ago, however, when I was unemployed and struggling to find work and fill the empty hours, an old college friend asked if I’d like to go to the Tucson Rodeo. He was a press photographer and said he’d fudge the facts a bit, call me his assistant, and get me a press pass. He was good like that, knowing that I was a motivated photographer with little that was going my way, few excuses to pick up my camera.

I hadn’t been to a rodeo since I was in elementary school, a field trip to the Kansas City Royal. I said ‘yes’ to my buddy, of course, even though I didn’t really feel any spark or drive to go. I knew I didn’t have any excuse not to go out and take pictures. And would you believe it? The fish out of water – the industrial rock androgynous artist – had a really great time behind the bucking chutes, smelling the livestock, watching the men and women riding beautiful, giant, muscled horses. It got into me, and it has never left.

For several years, my friend William and I, regardless of what was going on in our lives, found each other at the Tucson Rodeo Grounds. We photographed beside one another, and we huddled over our computers at the end of the day, flasks of whiskey or shared pitchers of beer at Danny’s Lounge, combing through all the images and critiquing one-another’s work.

Sports photography is radically different than any other kind of photography I was ever familiar with. Everything happens so incredibly quickly. You have to be focused. You have to try and anticipate what’s going to happen next. And you never walk away feeling like you did the best job; you always feel like you could have done it better. That’s good for a photographer. It’s good for an artist. It’s good to be in situations that challenge you.

My friend shot himself a couple of years ago. My best friend. He left his friends, his family, and his wife behind. This is my second rodeo without him. I almost don’t feel like going out and doing it anymore, except for this strange sense that I’m reconnecting with him every time I put on my cowboy boots and feel the crunch of dirt beneath my feet in the arena. All of the other people in the press trailer knew him, too, so we tell stories and reinforce our memories of him, our love for him.

It’s more than just cowboys and horses for me now.

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February 23, 2017 – Vintage Neon

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Before the Interstate Highway System was developed, state routes and roadside motels dotted the southwestern landscape. Privately owned businesses lined these thoroughfares with unique signage offering a variety of services for the long-distance traveler. Greasy-spoon cafés and auto-service stations shared the strip. With the introduction of the Interstate System, travel was faster and more convenient, but the quality of character was supplanted by larger chains and a decidedly more corporate appeal.

Denny’s and Auto-Zone replaced these local businesses, few of which survive today.

More than half a century ago now, this particular sign – a red and white vintage neon for Leo’s Auto Supply – was purchased and moved to the intersection of Glenn & Stone in Tucson, Arizona, by the proprieter of Don’s Hot Rod Shop. One of the owners, Leo Toia, had it relocated.

Along the Old Benson Highway, many of the small old roadside Motels survive, and Tucson boasts a host of vintage neon signs along the now-infamous Miracle Mile. Many of the old businesses have been lost, but there is a rich history here in Tucson, and this Leo’s Auto Supply sign is one of the survivors.

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February 13, 2017 – Alvernon Plaza

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When I was in college, almost ten years ago now, I used to go on what I would call “urban hikes.” I would put my headphones on, tethered to my Discman (yeah, before iPhones and iPods) in my backpack. I would listen to music and walk for miles around town, looking for interesting things to photograph. I would look for cracked paint, old signs, compelling shadows, and every category of garbage tossed into back alleys.

I went urban hiking today, to the tune of about ten miles, just walking around midtown with music in my ears. It was a great diversion. I had forgotten how calming and meditative this practice had once been for me, and I think I’ll be doing this more often, now that I’ve moved back to Tucson and life is starting to make sense again.

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February 12, 2017 – Sunset From Sabino Canyon

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I went on a much-needed hike yesterday with the most amazing woman in my life; I probably wouldn’t have made it out of the house if it wasn’t for her kind motivation. It has been several months since I’ve had either the opportunity or (more importantly) the drive to strap my boots on, get out there, and scramble up the mountains. The weather was perfect – just warm enough after several “cold” desert weeks – and the trails were filled with people.

We didn’t hit the trials until the early afternoon and, just as luck would have it, dark clouds, thick atmosphere, and thunder greeted us near the summit of the Seven Falls hiking trail. The four-or-so miles into the canyon were flowing with water so deep that we quickly abandoned the notion of keeping our feet (or our pants) dry.

Walking back down to the car, as the sun was setting, our boots heavy with water and squishing with each step, we watched the electrical storm southwest over the horizon.

Just about any other woman I have ever known or dated would have made it through this hike without complaint. But the time we got home, we were a little sniffly, with itchy shriveled feet and aching muscles. But earlier, at the first sight of overflowing water on the trail, she was the one who insisted we keep going. And when we got home, she told me she was so happy that we had gone out.

That’s my kind of woman. The kind of woman that gives you a great deal to look forward to, and who appreciates the good things that are happening in the present, even when there are setbacks.

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February 01, 2017 – The Flood

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Welcome to February. It’s the month when we’re all over it – the holidays, the cold, the relentless winter. This is the last long stretch until the earth starts to really wake up and remind us that it was worth the wait. It’s a long month, but we find a way to survive it, year after year, because that’s what we do. We endure it, and we wait for the green grass and the warm sun and the spring (and summer) rains.

We have this curious tendency to always make comparisons. To always focus on how things are imperfect. To always look to the future, when things are finally – finally! – going to be better.

For about two weeks after its arrival, we love spring. We rejoice in the weather and the light and the lengthening days. But then the heat of summer looms over on the horizon – and the oak mites and mosquito bites – and we immediately start to fixate on the colors of autumn and the warm friendly gatherings around the backyard fire as the earth begins to cool again, the smell of burning leaves, the cool breeze drifting in from the cracked window that makes it possible once again to clutch your partner close in bed without waking up bathed in sweat in the middle of the night because it’s so damn hot. We obsess over our elaborate Halloween decorations, our friends and family gathered around the Thanksgiving table, the wine and conversation as we gather around the fireplace.

Some like it cold. Some like it hot. Most of us find some silly reason to hate what we have, and yearn for what’s coming next. That’s the big mistake.

Rubbing my cold feet together, sitting in front of the computer tonight, I came across this picture – a flooded street in the warehouse district on South Euclid Avenue in Tucson, Arizona. Deprived of water and rainfall for most of the year, the monsoon rains that descend upon the Mojave Desert in July are a welcome reprieve from the oppressive summer heat. But the streets flood and the mosquitoes proliferate. The joy is short-lived and the complaints begin, almost instantly. And I just don’t get it. It happens every year, so it isn’t as if some kind of mysterious plague has blown into town that we couldn’t have expected.

A biblical flood in the desert? It’s more of a miracle than it is a curse, even if your commute is inconvenienced.

Life in the desert is a life of extremes. Freezing weather during the winter nights and oppressive heat during the summer. I feel like this is the perfect environment to develop a genuine appreciation for how fragile life is, how frail our ecosystem. When I’m freezing cold, or when I can’t seem to cool down (and want to dump ice water over myself), I try to concentrate on the engine of change, and the stubborn human spirit that stares the changing seasons down like a twitching-trigger-finger cowboy in an old western duel.

We endure. And there is so much more worth loving than there is worth complaining about here.
Without mincing words, all I can say is this: I fucking love living in the Tucson desert.

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January 27, 2017 – Borderlands

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The San Rafael Valley is a well-kept secret in the borderlands of Cochise County, Arizona. Micro-climates make this a surprisingly fertile territory for wine grapes, and several wineries are dotted throughout the area, surrounded by BLM territory and a collection of independently operated ranches. There are the odd ‘desert rats’ that live on these lands, too – individuals who prefer to live a more solitary life, away from the noise and bustle of the city.

This largely unmanicured region can seem threatening. The rules of the west are fully on display. If you trespass on the wrong property, you will most-assuredly come face-to-face with an angry rancher and a shotgun. Landowners are wary of outsiders; many are hardened against trespassers as a result of drug-muling and human trafficking. But for the casual traveler, if you play by the rules, the only sign of human life you will ever encounter are Border Patrol trucks and the occasional unmanned drone flying overhead.

I feel at home out here, looking down the deep valley, where the wind gliding through the dry grass is the dominant sound. Where the sky opens up and reminds one how small they really are.

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January 21, 2017 – Blades of Grass

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I always love it when a completely candid photograph manages to look thoroughly manicured and staged. It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes the light is just good, the subject is in just the right place, and the resulting photograph winds up with wonderful color and texture.

This, obviously, is a piece that’s intended to be appreciated on its purely aesthetic merits. There’s no lesson or philosophy here, other than a very broad appreciation of nature and color. I had gotten up in the morning to start the day off with a hike up in the hills and noticed that the desert was quickly coming back to life. It was springtime and we had received some decent rain, and the dry, straw-colored desert landscape was turning green.

I hope you enjoy!

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January 20, 2017 – Monsoon In Arizona

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Sometimes you just get lucky.

While living in Bisbee, Arizona, up on the hilltop on High Road (an appropriate name for a road in a town known for it’s debauchery and drinking and weed smoking), I sat on the wrap-around deck and looked across the canyon toward ‘B Hill.’ I was home sick with strep throat, and a monsoon storm rolled through town, dumping rain and lighting on our scenic little corner of the cosmos. I set up my tripod and started snapping at the rainbow, thinking it might be a fun image for our liberal little town.

Bisbee is know for it’s raucous gay pride weekend, it’s open and accepting politics, it’s unique character. The first microbrewery in the entire state of Arizona was opened in Bisbee, and Bisbee was the first municipality in the state to legalize gay marriage – a symbolic victory, of course, as these marriages were only considered valid within the city limits at that time.

A rainbow over Bisbee seemed like it’d be a fun picture, naturally.

But then I captured this, and I was awe-struck. I’ve never been a storm chaser or a lightning photographer, but the composition was so astonishing and accidental, I absolutely had to share it. I hope you enjoy.

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January 14, 2017 – The Hilltop Cross

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Today I stumbled across an old photo, taken during the first few months I had lived in Bisbee, Arizona. It’s a mile-high historic town where one of the largest copper mining operations in the world existed. On a, 80 story hilltop overlooking the canyons the comprise most of the town is a makeshift shrine, evidently constructed by a single individual, who hauled mortar and supplies up the trail to the top of the hill, one small load at a time.

The folks that live in town have added to the shrine their own little flourishes. Candles, prayer flags, and sculptures have slowly accumulated, and the cross at the top of the hill kind of belongs to the whole community now. Even in the tumult of my last few months in Bisbee, with a flagging relationship and commensurate flagging reputation among some hostile locals, I always found peace hiking up into the hills to look at the view and be alone with my thoughts.

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January 11, 2017 – Clouds

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I moved back to the desert for a reason. This is one of many.

There’s a quality to the light, to the landscape and skies, that amazed me when I first moved here sixteen years ago. I love the monsoon rains, the mountains, the clouds. They say that nature does all of the hard work, and all you have to do is be there to capture it. There’s some truth to that. But it’s so easy to take our experiences for granted. When we see the same landscape, the same sky, the same friends, the same lover – when we see it every day, we appreciate it less.

Being an artist is recognizing this tendency, and never taking anything for granted.

This is all temporary, and it’s all incredibly amazing. I love being here, and I am in love with life.

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