Out early picking up bagels at a local Einsteins. I love Florida mornings, with the sunlight streaming from the eastern horizon. The colors are big and saturated, and the streaming sun has a wonderful, almost angelic flare to it when it hits at the right angle. The shopping areas are mostly empty and quiet. They’ll eventually fill up as the Sunday store opening hour of noon approaches, and they’ll stay full for the rest of the day, well into the evening. But for now, in the early morning, it’s a quiet, reflective, and soothing time to be out.

Writing a narrative is both challenging and satisfying. I’m ramping up my narrative writing to document those little aspects of my life, a personal historical record of living right here, right now. I feel we’ve hit what the Valley wags like to call a major inflection point. I feel if I don’t document it now, it’ll slip away and be forgotten, certainly by me. We as a nation and a society are changing, and I’m fearful of the direction we’re headed.

Another reason for the narration around my photos: I read on some blog (Phoblographer? Petapixel?) that narration was a Bad Thing. That photographers were doing this now because they were immersed in the Narrative Way while in art school. I call BS on that. I’m writing narration around my photos because that’s what I grew up with reading Look, Life, Time, and National Geographic (all of this in the 1960s and 1970s). Newspapers did this as well and still do. So when I write prose around my photos I harken back to the practice of the entire twentieth century of magazine publishing.

Everything taken with my iPhone, post processed in Snapseed, and pushed up to SmugMug. The idea to do this was sparked by Andy of ATMTX and his digital sketchbook.