Here’s about one-fourth of those huge wheels that raise and lower those even huger bridge lifts, from the 2013 trip down the industrial Calumet River sponsored by a local historical group. Most of the photos we’ve seen before of these have been from a distance, or otherwise hard to grasp, but this shows off the size and the mass really well.
July 21, 2013. Nikon D7100 (DX sensor), 70–300mm Nikon zoom lens at 70mm (35mm equivalent: 105mm), f/4.5, 1/8,000, ISO 1,100.
As midnight approaches, the less dedicated have already gone home, but the folks who remain know that’s when conversation can get more interesting. I’m a big fan of third places in general and bars in particular, and can even get into a speakeasy here and there. Whether I just want to get out of the house and have a decent meal with a book, meet up with a friend or three, or hear a great band, I’ll pick a bar based on its vibe, bartender, and selection of drinks.
December 13, 2019. Samsung S10+ cell phone, 4.3mm focal length (35mm equivalent: 26mm), f/1.5, 1/40, ISO 640.
Not long after I got my first DSLR, I was still mostly interested in bugs and flowers. That’s still true, and I don’t really often go looking for birds, but when I stumble across one, I’ll enjoy the moment and try to get some good shots. But in those early days, I hardly ever even looked up.
So after an afternoon of taking shots of bugs and flowers, I was returning to the park’s field house to freshen up before going home, and was rather baffled by the group of half a dozen people or so looking up. I didn’t even look up to see what they were looking at, but asked one of them. “You should take a picture of the hawk,” she said. This was what I got, and now I look up.
October 10, 2010. Cropped from a larger image. Nikon D90 (DX sensor), 70–300mm Nikon zoom lens at 300mm (35mm equivalent: 450mm), f/5.6, 1/640, ISO 640.
Another macro shot of another flower too full to be contained within the frame of the photo — in this case, wild bergamot. It had been a hot summer and the petals had already started to wilt, but it was still a lively flower with a nice background.
July 23, 2017. Nikon D7100 (DX sensor), 105mm Nikon macro lens (35mm equivalent: 155mm), f/16, 1/1,500, ISO 1,100.
This was a photo that I saw when I was photographing, when the monarch turned just so, giving the wings all that amazing texture in the mild sunlight, and hoped it would be that good on my screen when I got home. The backlit milkweed plant flowers really came out nicely, too. If it’s a boring day at the nature park and a monarch butterfly is close enough, I’ll follow it around for a bit in the hopes of getting something better than the hundreds of mundane butterfly photos I’ve already taken, and this is one of those.
July 25, 2020. Nikon D7100 (DX sensor), Tamron 100–400mm lens at 360mm (35mm equivalent: 540mm), f/13, 1/125, ISO 400.
Just as Spring was giving way to Summer, I saw this quite full display of stamens and anthers on a climbing rose at the nature preserve. With my macro lens, I was able to find a really nice composition in which the frontmost anthers — the little pollen-filled footballs on the top ends of the stamens — were in razor-sharp focus, with the pink petals and the green leaves providing swirls of contrast in back. I do very little editing of my photos, only to adjust the exposure to bring what the sensor captured in line with what I saw in person, but straight out of the camera, this shot made me very happy.
June 19, 2021. Nikon D7100 (DX sensor), 105mm Nikon macro lens (35mm equivalent: 155mm), f/9.5, 1/2,000, ISO 280.
Not long after I got my first DSLR, I read an article in a photography magazine about defocused photography, and decided to give it a whirl on one of my next outings. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t, which is one of the nice things about having room on a memory card for lots of shots that aren’t very good. But this was a keeper that ended up on a canvas print that still hangs on one of my walls.
April 22, 2010. Nikon D90 (DX sensor), 105mm Nikon macro lens (35mm equivalent: 155mm), f/5, 1/1,000, ISO 200.
Herons have a grotesque call. The best comparison I’ve been able to come up with is that they sound like old corrugated metal trash cans banging together when trash collectors would throw them around. If I hear it, I know where to look for them, but it’s OK when they stay quiet.
In the nature park, I once ran into another photographer and chatted for a bit, and she was surprised and a bit doubtful when I said that herons would sometimes be quite high in the branches. I wished I had a copy of this photo to show her.
February 22, 2020. Nikon D7100 (DX sensor), Tamron 100–400mm lens at 400mm (35mm equivalent: 600mm), f/6.3, 1/2,000, ISO 1,100.
A good friend and I had been along the Mississippi River walk for a fireworks display. Our bus was approaching in a chaotic scene of traffic blockages and we had to run to catch it, but I saw this composition and, well, I appreciate that she coaxed the bus driver to wait an extra moment for me.
July 26, 2025. OnePlus 12 cell phone, 13.3mm focal length (35mm equivalent: 70mm), f/2.6, 1/20, ISO 2,500.
At the height of Summer, these common mulleins start to look pretty weedy, with little of interest, but catch one early in its life with just a couple of flowers starting to emerge, its leaves all nice and velvety, and some good light giving it an interesting shape, and you can make it look like a flower you don’t mind seeing.
June 17, 2012. Nikon D90 (DX sensor), 70–300mm Nikon zoom lens at 195mm (35mm equivalent: 290mm), f/16, 1/180, ISO 200.
Here’s another photo taken with the Lensbaby special-effect lens, this time in the first days of Fall, as one of my beloved milkweed pods had finally cracked open but not yet spread its seed. Again, the lens was hard to use and didn’t really bring me results that meant much to me most of the time, but this was another of the shots that did work, bringing just a bit of abstraction to a well-exposed photo.
September 25, 2010. Nikon D90 (DX sensor), 50mm Lensbaby lens, f/8, 1/1,250, ISO 800.
I mean, it isn’t like I found a black hole on my way home from a bar, but it’s a pretty cool effect.
May 10, 2018. Samsung Galaxy S8+ cell phone, focal length 4.25mm (35mm equivalent: 26mm), f/1.7, 1/12, ISO 250.
There are goodbyes that are “See you soon,” goodbyes that are “See you next time,” and goodbyes that are “It’s been great,” and sometimes you know. I visited Threadgill’s many times over many trips to Austin between 1989 and 2019, and when I went for some great chicken-fried steak and music in the Summer of 2019, I had a vibe that I should take a good number of pictures of it. It closed permanently in 2020 during Covid, leaving me many good memories of great meals, fine music, and the night one of my favorite songwriters walked past, put his hand on my shoulder, and said, “Good to see you, Bob.” I’ve got another story or two about the place, but you’ll have to let me bore you in person to hear them.
July 19, 2019. Samsung S10+ cell phone, 1.8mm focal length (35mm equivalent: 13mm), f/2.2, 1/25, ISO 2,500.
For a little while, I had fun experimenting with the Lensbaby line of special-effect optics, mostly a mock tilt-shift system where you could move the lens around while it was plugged into the camera so that you could play with depth of field. It was hard to expose correctly with these lenses, and I didn’t really miss them when they were lost during a move, but there were a few photos that came out really well, and this photo of tracks in the snow covering a frozen pond was one of my favorites.
January 26, 2013. Nikon D90 (DX sensor), 50mm Lensbaby lens, f/8, 1/350, ISO 400.
This is a shot from one of the boat tours along the industrial Calumet River, but rather than a feature along the banks, it’s the chain and pulley that raise and lower the anchor. It was the first photo I took that trip because it just looked pretty cool and put me in the frame of mind of capturing more metal and more heavy machinery.
July 15, 2012. Nikon D90 (DX sensor), 70–300mm Nikon zoom lens at 70mm (35mm equivalent: 105mm), f/16, 1/250, ISO 500.