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Last Light #3
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Arizona
2023

Divided Highway Ahead
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Arizona
2023

Organ Pipe Still Life
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Arizona
2023

No faces or gruesome body parts here (that I see anyway), just a pleasant arrangement of organ pipe cactus arms and their shadows.

Gruesome Desert Death
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Arizona
2023

No faces in this desert artifact–because it’s a desiccated headless torso.

Bug Eyed Saguaro
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Arizona
2023

Once you start seeing faces in things, it’s kind of hard to stop. I didn’t even need a nose or mouth to see a strange face in this cactus.

Weathered Face
Bonito Springs, Arizona
2023

This started out to just be a photo of barbed wire on a weathered fence post. Then I saw this face looking out at me. The post “man” seemed somewhat shocked to see me. I should have asked him if he knew any Ents. (I’m assuming I have the correct gender here–the post was too startled to state his preferred pronouns.)

Victory of the Seven Sisters
Bozeman, Montana
2023

In an email exchange with my friend Teresa a short while back I mentioned how impressed I was with the sculpture Winged Victory of Samothrace when I first saw it in the Louvre back in 2013.  After I sent her a photo of it that I had taken at the time, she commented she was surprised it hasn’t appeared in any of my composite images. Given how taken I was by the sculpture it surprised me as well. So I decided to remedy that situation and this is the result. Thanks for being my muse on this Teresa!

The impetus for this setting for Winged Victor came from a book by N. Scott Momaday I happened to be reading when I decided to work on this. In it he was recounting the story his Kiowa grandmother told him about the creation of Devil’s Tower. All the symbolism of that story and the background I had read about the Winged Victory of Samothrace all got mixed in together in my head along with my impressions on seeing the sculpture for the first time and this was the result. It doesn’t faithfully depict the Kiowa story nor the meaning of the sculpture. It is a synthesis of all those ideas into a new story in my head.

Windblown
Bonito Springs, Arizona
2023

The wind has blown the head off of the windmill and filled the runway with tumbleweeds. I don’t think any cattle have been run through the pens at Bonito Springs in a long time.

Quiet Desperation
Why, Arizona
2023

It’s not easily seen in this photo, but this coyote’s right rear leg is hanging uselessly above the ground. To feed itself it was hobbling back and forth from the restaurant to the gas station where we were, begging for food. Whether this behavior was an adaption forced by the injury or if it was that behavior that lead to the injury in the first place, I do not know. Either way, it was sad. (And yes, I did throw some food out the window for it.)

Store No More
Sells, Arizona
2023

I’m not sure what about this scene made it seem photo-worthy enough to turn the car around to go back and get the shot. Perhaps it was the plethora of vertical lines anchored by the two saguaro cacti. Or perhaps it was the fact that an abandoned store still has a parking lot that is amazingly well kept up, kept up to the point of someone even raking the gravel smooth.