No Plan, Just Light: Four Stories from the Road

Sharing a few of my favorite shots.

VLA near Soccoro, New Mexico. All photographs by the author.

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Cold, Silence, and Steel: A Morning at the VLA

It was barely above freezing when I rolled off the highway onto that long, empty road slicing through the New Mexico desert. My hands were stiff inside the gloves, and the wind had already cut through every layer I’d trusted to keep me warm.

The sky was a slab of cobalt.

No clouds in the sky, no wind, no movement at all.

Just that brutally honest blue you get out in the deserts at dawn.

I wasn’t looking for the Very Large Array. I knew it was in the area, sure, but I was chasing solitude, not science (fiction?).

Still, there it was—dozens and dozens of giant radio telescopes lined up like soldiers waiting for orders from the stars.

Quiet.
Immense.
Perfect.

I killed the engine and dropped the kickstand. The silence hit hard.

Nothing but the low tick of cooling chrome and a faint hum left in my ears from the Cobras. I pulled off a glove, cradled the camera, and framed the shot.

Wide. Let the sky eat the top half of the frame. Let the dishes march almost like an afterthought.

Click.

That was it.

One frame.

I knew it before I even checked the back of the camera.

Sometimes a photograph doesn't shout. It waits. And that morning, somewhere between the cold and the Pie Town, I was finally quiet enough to hear it.

Morro Bay, California

Drifting into the Day

Morro Bay was still asleep when I pulled into the marina.

The fog hadn’t quite made up its mind yet—parting in thin ribbons, holding tight in others. It was early enough that the usual rhythm of the town hadn’t started.

No foot traffic.
No engines.

Just the faint creak of dock lines and the soft lap of water against hulls.

Three sailboats floated in the stillness, half-revealed, like they were dreaming themselves into being.

The horizon had vanished—no line between sea and sky, just an endless field of pale light. I raised the camera, already knowing what I wanted: not a picture of the boats, but a photograph about the fog, the water, and the morning.

The quiet.
The cold.
The in-between.

It was not a photo for sharpness or drama.

It was about restraint. A whisper, not a shout.

And in that moment, with my hands just starting to warm from the coffee I hadn’t finished, I pressed the shutter.

Taos, New Mexico

The Color That Stopped Me Cold

I wasn’t supposed to be in Taos.

I had just wrapped a long ride through Wyoming—ten days of wind, grit, and open road—and was aiming straight for home.

But somewhere near the Colorado border, I veered off. Decided to cut through the Rockies, let the road tell me what came next. That’s how I ended up in the old city of Taos, New Mexico, walking streets that felt older than memory.

The adobe was soft and worn, baked by time.

But it was the blue that stopped me cold. Those doors and windows, painted in a shade so bold it didn’t just stand out... it belonged.

Against the earth tones, the blue wasn’t a whimsical decoration. It was punctuation.

I stood there for a long time before making the frame. Didn’t rush. Didn’t overthink. Just waited until the silence settled and the color felt as loud as it needed to be.

Then I went to find tacos.

Lake Henshaw, California

The Wind, the Light, and the Chill of Morning

Mount Palomar wasn’t exactly welcoming that morning.

The wind was slicing through everything that morning.

Gloves, layers, nerves.

Brutal cold.

No real shelter, except for the car door, which I used as a windbreak just to keep the camera from shaking. And me, it kept me from shaking too.

I’d come for the view, not the punishment, but that’s how it goes sometimes. You don’t get to tame the light without a little fight.

And then the clouds broke. Just a bit.

They pulled back just enough, and the morning light tore through in beams.

Clear, golden, precise.

It spilled over Lake Henshaw like something out of a story older than any of us.

Biblical?

Maybe. It sure felt that way in the moment. I framed the valley, locked in on the texture. The brush, the subtle shifts in green, the stretch of land that knew how to wear that exquisite light well.

I knew I got something, but I had to wait until my hands thawed out to see it as I sat in the car, heater blasting.

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I just wanted to share a few of my favorite images with you today. I hope you enjoyed them.

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