Keyhole & Spyglass Photography Page

My Photography

“You could hold your camera up to the world … but what madness would you capture, what beauty, what joy, what fury?”

– critic Jill Lepore in The New Yorker on 1964: Eyes of the Storm by Paul McCartney

My Keyhole & Spyglass Universe

Here are my attempts at capturing the breathtaking beauty of the smallest and largest of natural gifts in our amazing world:

Photography Gallery

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My Photography Journey

“Everywhere I turn all the beauty just keeps shaking me“

– World Falls by Indigo Girls

Gettysburg National Military Park outside Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, at sunset on November 11, 2011, Veterans Day

In early November of 2011, I used some of the frequent flyer miles that I accumulated from my television engineering career and flew to New York City to pick up a particular V12 sports car I had always loved, one of which I had just won on eBay. Heading out in my new hotrod, driving from Queens to my home on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, I decided to do something patriotic seeing that it was Veterans Day.

After letting a coin toss decide whether I went to explore D.C. or the Gettysburg National Military Park, I pointed my new growling black beauty towards Pennsylvania for a journey I will never forget – the stars just seemed to align perfectly on that special 11/11/11 – as I began an exploration of daring and chivalry and loss and beauty and right and wrong in this world, through my expedition on that huge battlefield, through the lens of my little camera, that affects me deeply to this day.

After spending the first morning at the Park’s interesting headquarters, I got a room at a hotel in downtown Gettysburg, directly across the street from where Abraham Lincoln stayed in 1863 when he delivered his famous address, as I had already realized that I could not soak up such a monumental battlefield in one day and I wanted to absorb it all, so, after checking in, I checked out on a two-day tour of the entire Park in absolutely stunning, photography-perfect weather, trying to retrace the July 1-3, 1863 battle in my own respectful and thoughtful walk-and-drive-about.

I knew a lot about the battle of Gettysburg from books I’d read prior to visiting the battlefield and, during my exploration, I wanted to comprehend the motivations and feel the conflict standing right where the generals and general combatants stood, trying to figure out the why’s, the how’s, the oh-no’s, the how-could-you’s, wanting to understand the decisive decisions and explosive emotions on either side, as it's incredibly moving to me visiting Civil War military parks looking at the logistics and death and destruction and chivalry and heroics on display, even inspiring several poems, me being the always-curious Civil War history enthusiast.

And while exploring the vast Gettysburg Park, I had this sudden urge to take creative photos, instead of the normally static, touristy shots. So, I started lying down on the ground, shooting through fences, and under cannons, and doing other weird stuff to try to get cool looking pictures that were interesting to my awakening artistic eye.

And something completely unexpected and deeply profound happened to me during my two day tour of Gettysburg National Military Park: I felt closer to my baby brother, Jean, than at any time since his suicide on March 9th of 2009. As he was quite the intense Civil War history buff, even participating in reenactments with full dress. And it was my little brother that sparked my own interests and passions to try to understand America’s most deadly military encounter, our (un) Civil War.

And in that moment of peace with and connection to him, I made a promise to my precious and dearly missed little brother that I would continue to explore this incredible world so that he would continue to see the magnificence of existence through my eyes ... and there began my spiritual photography journey, examining life through all keyholes and spyglasses.

“An Apache scout told me once, when you love somebody, you trade souls with them. They get a piece of yours and you get a piece of theirs. But, when your love dies, a little piece of you dies with them. That’s why it hurts so bad. But that little piece of him is still inside you. And he can use your eyes to see the world.”

– Sam Elliott as Shea Brennan in 1883

2012 Rocky Mountain Camping Trip

"In a walking-tour you are absolutely detached. You stop where you like and go on when you like. As long as it lasts you need consider no one and consult no one but yourself."

– Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis

My Ute Canyon campsite in the Colorado National Monument, down around 650' from the rim entrance at 5,700' elevation, outside Grand Junction, on June 8, 2012

In the summer of 2012, I checked off an important, spiritual bucket-list item by driving back to the Rocky Mountains and doing some backcountry and national parks hiking and camping – like I used to do when I was younger and much healthier – but, this time with the crown jewel of camping gear: a great Canon DSLR camera kit.

With my dearly-missed brother as my co-pilot – and doing it like I used to by only using paper maps! – I spent 63 days driving my badass V12 monster through the Rockies, jammin' out on my heavenly McIntosh Labs stereo to the soundtrack of my life, stopping to camp and hike and to take inspiring photos whenever and wherever I liked, going for as long as I could, while doing some creative writing and introspective reading to try to comfort some formidable aches inside and out.

And, although I affectionately refer to this expedition as my Grizzlies Beware: Mid-Life Crisis Tour!, at 47-years old and already disabled, I was still able to make it the trip of a lifetime. As I drove without stopping from Gulfport, Mississippi to New Mexico for my first of 47-straight nights in a tiny tent, where I then turned north to snake my way up through the Rockies to the Canadian border in northwest Montana, then back down to Phoenix, Arizona, where I headed back east towards my never-ending sunrises at home on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, where my summer trip ends … before driving back to Wyoming for first-snow photos, then back down to Austin for a much-needed, long hibernation, driving over 9,000 miles through the Rockies just that year.

If you would like to see some of my artistic photographs from the trip, many are presented in my photo gallery, above, like the center image on my Keyhole & Spyglass home page, where I captured the Sun setting between Grand and Middle Tetons in Wyoming as I shot from Shadow Mountain west across famous Jackson Hole.

If you'd like to know the story of my physical and spiritual adventures on that life-altering trip, presented as a photojournalist story, and learn about the campsites and places that I visited, along with the beauty and struggle and strength that I discovered during my 9,000-mile, drive-and-walkabout through the Rocky Mountains in 2012, click the button below for a long and winding tale.

Creature Features, Vol. 1

“And now for something completely different ...”

– Monty Python’s Flying Circus

Vamputterfly!

If you would like to see more of my nature photography combined with my silly and sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek humor, presented as little animal-world vignettes, please click the button below.

My Photography Tools

Setting my old camera in its raingear and waiting for possible storm photos at Bowman Lake in Glacier National Park, Montana, on July 1, 2012

When I first started my photography journey in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, all I had was a "pocket camera," a Canon ELPH SD500, 7-megapixel camera with only a 3x optical zoom. Wanting to do more than the ELPH would allow, in March of 2012 I bought a Canon EOS 60D, an 18-megapixel DSLR with two lenses, and I took thousands and thousands of photos with it, having many wonderful, truly spiritual experiences behind the lens.

Unfortunately though, due to my disability/financial situation, I had to sell the 60D in April of 2014 and I went without a good camera for years. But, in February of 2022, I was finally able to get another marvelous Canon DSLR, the 32-megapixel EOS 90D, and a full camera travel kit and I'm off to the races taking pictures again, to my heart's content. Here is a list of the equipment that I'm currently using:

- Canon EOS 90D DSLR, 32-megapixel camera with 1.6x crop-factor, ASP-C sensor
- Canon EFS 10-18mm wide angle / macro lens with stabilizer
- Canon EFS 18-135mm macro / medium telephoto lens with stabilizer
- Canon EFS 55-250mm macro / long telephoto lens with stabilizer
- Canon Speedlite 580EX II shoe mount flash
- K & F UV, circular polarized and star filters
- Polaroid macro 1x/2x/4x/10x filters
- Manfroto 3-axis head, lightweight tripod
- All the extra gadgets like remote shutter, rain cover, cleaning supplies and extra batteries, memory cards, etc., stuffed into a Canon, padded backpack that makes my entire camera kit easy to travel