A quick trip to Tucson and back

 I’m back from Tucson, AZ. On Saturday Aug. 22, Adrienne and I flew out to Tucson to help our daughter move from there to Asheville NC.  For me, the most disconcerting thing about flying to Tucson is arriving almost before we departed, since AZ does not use Daylight Savings Time, so that puts them at a 3 hour time difference from NC.  But more than that, is arriving in such a different environment – it was 106 degrees.  Another thing about flying there, is that Delta has a screen on the seat backs, and I could watch in real time, our airspeed and altitude, and see the flight path, and look out the window and know pretty much where we were.  Having traversed most of the country many times by car, it’s a little unsettling know that what took us 4 days to accomplish on the road, was done by our 737 at 550 mph at 34,000 feet – in 3 hours.  Looking down in some places was like being over Mars.  In other spots, the varied topography was a visual feast.  The window seat is my preferred place on a plane, and I just don’t understand why so many people are content to sit inside a darkened metallic tube hurtling across the continent, when there are interesting sights to be had.  

As we approached Tucson, we passed over the aircraft boneyard, which is pretty darn cool.  My window had haze in it, so my photos were not great.  Here’s my photo followed by the one from Google Maps.  I shot with my Panasonic GF-1 with the 7 Artisans 18mm f/6.3 pancake lens.

my photo

from Google Maps, the idiots that allowed "Lake America" 

Exiting the terminal into the desert heat was… memorable.  The high for the day was about 106.  Compound that with the heat radiating from the asphalt, and it was like the proverbial oven.  I’ve been to the SW many times before, but it was never as hot as this.  I don’t know how people expect to do anything outside in the daylight.  Jorie picked us up at the terminal, and we were off to find some lunch and then the hotel.  Our stay was in the Comfort Inn and Suites on Tanque Verde road.  A sort of retro place that was built in 1982 in a Mexican hacienda style architecture with courtyards and mature trees, fountains, and high beamed ceilings, elegant tile-work and exterior wood railings and steps.  It was originally known as the Tanque Verde Inn.  Our room was quite pleasant.

The courtyard at Tanque Verde

We didn’t have a lot of time to do much – as the next day would be for loading the U-Haul.  However, I managed to get outside early – just about sunrise – to go for a brisk morning walk before things heated up.  One morning I brought the Panasonic GF-1 along; the other, my Spotmatic F.  Certainly in the “golden hour” for photography, too.   Here are a few images from the GF-1 with the 14mm lens.

On Sunday evening, we were able to drive over to Saguaro National Park East at sunset, and watch the lightning displays  and monsoon clouds to the west.  It was a great place to be as the dark enveloped us.  Jorie, ever the local naturalist, pointed out a number of tarantulas and other spiders, and we saw a kangaraoo rat, a grasshopper mouse, and a desert cottontail.  It’s just a peaceful place to be in the evening, surrounded by the Saguaro sentinels with those clouds in the distance.  It was a serene way to say goodbye to Tucson, as we were leaving for NC Monday morning.

Monday, we started out of Tucson to I-10.  Taking Speedway Blvd. to I-10 seemed to take forever, as that road traverses the width of the valley.  As we went north towards Phoenix, I could see some very interesting extinct volcano cores thrusting into the sky. Phoenix, the largest city we would encounter on our trip, just keeps sprawling.  I have to wonder how the future will look for a place that was never supposed to have that many inhabitants as climate change and human activities deplete the water supply. We got into I-17 to go N to Flagstaff and started to gain elevation.  As we climbed in elevation, we lost the Saguaros, and eventually conifers became the dominant trees.  Flagstaff reminds me a lot of Colorado, and of course, it should – the same climate and biomes at that elevation.  The last time I was in Flagstaff was in 1980.  It was late May, and there was plenty of snow on the peaks around the city.  

We headed E on I-40, and we would stay on I-40 all the way home.  Our route took us past many places that lie along sections of old Route 66, and some of the famous landmarks that were once quirky reminders of what was there have been ruined by taggers and vandals.  This year marked the 100th anniversary of Route 66.  Places that have been well-maintained as tourist attractions are still there, and other places that have surrendered to decay look worse each year.  I think the best time to have traveled 66 would have been about 1970-1980, before I-40 rerouted all the traffic.   

Our first night on the road was in Grants, NM.  Grants used to be known as “the Carrot Capital” of the US, then it became the Uranium Capital.  I hear it gets glowing reviews.    One of my friends calls it an armpit of NM.  I’m sure there are worse places.  I did hit the Blake’s Lotaburger, after also visiting in 2025.  Their NM burger with Hatch chilies was great.

On the road Tuesday morning, with our goal of ending up in Weatherford, OK for the night.  Driving through Albuquerque was not fun.  A 5-car accident on 40 delayed us for a while. We stopped in Tucumcari, NM for lunch and I highly recommend Dell’s Restaurant.  Everything we ordered was really good.  Tucumcari is more than Route 66, although that’ss what they are known for.  Some of the places have been well-kept.  I stayed at the Roadrunner Inn in 2021, and loved it.  Other places along 66 have declined or closed,  but you should drive the side streets to get a better picture of Tucumcari.  I finally shopped at the Tee Pee Curios to get a new Route 66 key fob, a mug, and some postcards.  

On the way to Tucumcari, we passed the ghost town of Cuervo.  From I-40, it looked pretty much the same as when I stopped there and photographed it in 2021.  

Texas… what can I say about this crazy state that hasn’t been said before?  We did stop at the Buc-ees in Amarillo, and it was nearly empty compared to ones I’ve been to in other states.  That certainly made it more tolerable.  Filled up with gas, too, which at that point, was the cheapest so far at $3.62/gal, about a dollar cheaper than Tucson.  

We arrived in Weatherford, OK at sunset.  Our hotel was nice, and the next morning the TV was on while we were eating breakfast.  The talking heads were discussing the death of Dolly Parton, and a woman getting coffee in the breakfast area announced to us that she could not stand Dolly’s voice.  I thought to myself, “there goes an unpleasant person.” 

 I wanted to see the Major Tom statue – a 30 ft tall astronaut.  I thought it was the Stafford Air and Space Museum, but it was actually in the middle of town.  From what I could see, the Air and Space Museum looks like a great place to visit.  As we drove around, it was obvious that the city has really embraced the legacy of Thomas P. Stafford, an astronaut that was on Gemini, Apollo, and the Apollo-Soyuz mission.  There are lots of cool little signs and murals for this “space city.”  A local photographer could really have fun documenting them.  Major Tom was fun to see, and as he stands along Route 66, he dwarfs all the “muffler men” that you might encounter.  

It was a very long day on the road, and we ended up in Brinkley, Arkansas for the night.  At some point, we passed by Eric, OK which I stopped at in 2021.  It’s where the 100th Meridian passes through, which is the point in the US where the East turns into the West and desertification starts.  As one goes eastward in OK, the grasslands disappear and you start seeing more and more green.  Once you get to Arkansas, it’s a lush green landscape.  Brinkley lies in a big agricultural area, and our Days Inn was adequate.  We went local cuisine that night, and I came back to the motel with a big aluminum pan with deep-fried catfish, hush puppies and onion rings, which we all devoured, grease be damned.

Our last day on the road was also a long one, as we drove 583 miles to Weaverville, NC. Apart from gas and bathroom breaks, there were no meaningful stops along the way.  Crossing the Mississippi is always a bit exciting. Traffic in Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville was horrible.  I think Knoxville was actually the worst, with starts and stops for no apparent reason.    When we got to the Pigeon River Gorge on I-40, it was one lane each way due to the rebuilding from Helene. I can’t imagine that they will be done in another year.  It seems impossible.    We arrived home at 6:45, for nearly 12 hours on the road.  It was great to be home again.

The U-Haul site near Tucson

Driving the 15 ft. U-Haul truck across the country gave me the benefit of sitting up high with a good view. My back never bothered me during all those long hours on the road.   I think one of the benefits of a cross-country trip, whether it’s I-40, or any other highway is that you actually SEE the country – how vast it really is, and the gradual differences as you travel.  I love the New Mexico sky, as well as the varied topography of that state. Arizona is even more varied, and more dramatic.  The Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts have their own particular charm, and face it… those states can be a harsh place to live.  There’s the vastness of west, and so many interesting little places to explore.   I much prefer the hum of the tires on the road to the roar of the jet. I look forward to my next visit to the wonderful skies and vistas of the West.

The Panasonic GF-1 was a good choice. I had the 18mm f/6.7 7 Artisans pancake lens and the 14mm Panasonic lens for it, which worked well for the purpose of the trip.  I shot two rolls with the RETO Ultrawide and Slim, and 2 rolls with the Spotmatic F.  I will develop those films in a week or so.

Wherever you drive, be safe.

Working on projects

Ann Arbor, MI. 2001. Kodak HIE film. I so loved that film.

The longer you are creative in any endeavor, the more wisdom (maybe) you accumulate. In photography, you not only gain experience, but you also accumulate a body of work, which is more than just stacks of negatives and prints (or hard drives full of files).  Your interests may change over the years - what was once a driving force for your type of photography may have petered out, and maybe you veered into a different direction altogether.  Or maybe, if you are like me, you have had many interests, and there is no single subject of your photography, but many.  For example, I’ve had a thing for photographing post offices, especially those in small towns, or places with odd names. But that does not make me a chronicler of post offices.  However, I have a lot of photographs of them.  In my travels, I often photograph every-day mundane things like those ice boxes outside of gas stations, or one of the few remaining pay phones, or oddball signs, or whatever catches my eye.  On their own, each photograph may not amount to much.  However, after a few decades, these accumulations start to have some weight to them.  As Garry Winogrand said, “everything is photographable.”  And to that, I agree.  I’ve photographed a lot over the past 25+ years, and some of those photographs are better than others.  Some have been exhibited. Some have appeared in publications, and quite a few have been in my photozines.  I have had some exhibitions that were based on a preconceived project - that is, I photographed purposefully for a particular goal.  A few of my zines were also produced in that fashion - a means to an end. The zine on Kudzu was exactly that.  It’s not that I had a trove of Kudzu photographs to choose from and thought “I ought to put these together for a zine.”  In that case, I had a clear goal, and in the space of a few months, made the photographs for it.  I also invited other photographers I knew to participate, so it wasn’t an open-ended project.

However, sometimes there are enough examples of a subject that I can put them together as a project.  I have found that I have often photographed certain types of scenes when traveling, one of them being picnic tables and shelters at highway rest areas.  In the back of my mind there’s always the “maybe I’ll have enough for a project someday.”  Now, on their own as individual images, they might appear as mundane.  But put 30 of them together, and I have a coherent project.  Add in some history of them, some observations, and voila! a book.  That’s how I work.  

Some post offices - from my album on Flickr

Photography is different from writing, different from painting, different from sculpture, different from all the arts, in that an image can capture a fleeting moment.  That image can be incorporated into a larger, coherent body of work if you have taken enough images to coalesce into something.  So many things change over time, yet that singular image is proof that at some point in time, at some place, that thing, that place, that person, that belief  existed.  I guess my point is that you never know how important an image might be at the moment that you make it. As someone that photographs a lot of things, I know that some of the places that I photographed  a few years ago no longer exist.  Some of the places have irrevocably changed.  People that I photographed years ago are no longer with the living, but they still exist in a photograph.

A good example of photographing change over time are the photographs by Nicholas Nixon of the Brown sisters. In a series of photographs from 1975-1999, he captured the beauty, grace, and maturing of four sisters each year.  That’s quite a wonderful book, and as I age, I appreciate how much effort it is to take on a long-term project.  I’ll be turning 70 in December, and I have a lot that I want to accomplish in the years ahead.  Fortunately for me, I have a lot to draw from as far as accumulations of “projects.”   I use Flickr a lot - I can organize my images better, and as I accrue additional photographs, it's easy to add them to an album. For me, it's worth the money to have as much of my work in there as I want.

some rest areas - soon to be a small zine.

My advice for anyone starting out in photography is first of all -- observe.  Look.  What things do you see that resonate with you?  I know some photographers start out with “I want to be a X photographer,” where X= whatever genre fits.  Others sort of find their metier after a few years of photography. Some photographers are all over the place (that would be me), but strong in a certain genre.  The more you photograph, the better you’ll be, and the experience and accumulation of images will be a benefit if you keep at it.

Another project in the works

I’ll be traveling to Tucson in about a week to help my daughter move back East, and having her close-by in NC will be absolutely great.  While I’ll be driving a U-Haul truck, I’ll still be able to stop and take some photos, and fill in some gaps in my “projects” yet to come.  If you have never been to Route 66, this is the centennial year of the road.  A lot of what was there 50 years ago is either in ruins or gone, but enough remains to make it worthwhile to see for yourself.  However, it does not matter what route you take, but the time that you spend on it with a camera and an open mind will be a gift to yourself.

I’ll be back with some new posts in September.

Lomo Color 100 and a Pentax 6x7

Last October, I spent a week in Arizona, staying in Tucson, and making day trips to explore other areas.  Bisbee, Arizona was on my bucket list, and I was not disappointed.  It's a mountain town, SE of Tucson, and while originally settled due to the mines nearby, it is now a resort town with lots of arts and local flavor.  I've posted a lot of shots from that trip on my Flickr site.  

One of the places that I also wanted to visit was the nearby "ghost" town of Lowell. All that really remains of Lowell is one street (Erie) that was part of the former business district.  When the open-pit Lavender Mine expanded in the 1950s, it ate up the residential areas, and as the homes were demolished, miners moved elsewhere, leaving the actual business district bereft of customers.  Local residents managed to turn Erie street into a sort of open air auto museum with storefronts and signage from the 1950s.  If you haven't visited Lowell, it's worth the short drive S from Bisbee.

I shot a lot of film that afternoon, and some of it was with my Pentax 6x7.  These images were shot on Lomocolor 100, and I'm pretty happy with the results.  After almost a year, I finally got around to editing the scans that I made on my Epson V700.  

If you like vintage autos that look their age, don't miss this spot.

More Svema 100 love

Over the past decade, I’ve shot a fair number of rolls of the Film Photography Project’s Svema 100 film. Manufactured in Ukraine, and still in stock from the FPP and its distributors, Svema 100 is a fine-grained, medium contrast film that is worth checking out if you haven’t shot with it. It’s on a tough polyester film base that lies extremely flat in my Epson V700 scanner, and I appreciate that a lot.  

I’ve shot several rolls more recently, and would like to share some of the images with you.  This first set was shot on my Pentax Spotmatic II, mostly along the Blue Ridge Parkway and Mt. Mitchell State Park.  If you didn’t know, Mt. Mitchell is the tallest mountain east of the Mississippi, at 6,684 feet above sea level.  You can also drive within short walk to the summit. On a sunny day, you can see a lot. However, you are more likely to find the mountain top to be either in the clouds or surrounded by lower-lying ground fog.  Mt. Mitchell State Park is around an hour’s drive from my house, and is also as far N as I can currently drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  

I used an SMC Takumar 55mm f/1.8 lens – one of the sharpest lenses you will find, and often used an orange filter with the roll of Svema 100.

I never tire of views like this.

Great view from the Porta-Johns at Craggy Pinnacle parking lot

At an overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway

Turk's Cap Lilly

Mt. Mitchell picnic shelter detail

 It's a severe place there at times.

I really like how these came out.  I developed the film in FPP D-96 for 8 minutes at 20°C. If there is one complaint that I have, is that I find a 24 exposures go really fast for me, and would love to have a choice of 36 exposure rolls.  

At Ball Photo in Asheville. Yes, those are copies of Monochrome Mania for sale there.

Asheville Airport

Redbud leaves - wide open

coneflowers coming on.

The second set was shot on my Pentax K2 as pictured at the top.  Same developer.  Quite different circumstances, and a range of subjects. Svema 100 had no problem in subdued lighting, bright sunny days, and everything in between.  

If you are looking for a different 35mm emulsion to try, I highly recommend Svema 100. This is a film that would be fantastic in 4x5 and 120 -- if they ever make it.

Seven Years

 

The movers arrived 2 days later - during a downpour, no less. The yard has changed a lot since then!

Yesterday marked the 7th anniversary of our move from Ann Arbor, MI to Weaverville, NC.    It was quite a change combining two households, in addition to moving far from Michigan.   Beverley, Adrienne, and I have no regrets about the move, and the last 7 years have really flown by.  I like where we are situated, and while not at the top of a mountain, we are at 2200 ft. above sea level, and the Blue Ridge Parkway is a lovely 8 mile drive from us. Main Street Weaverville is 2 miles away, and Asheville is 7 miles from us. So, we have all we need pretty close by.    

Main Street, Weaverville, June, 2022. Pentax Spotmatic, Svema FN-64

One of the reasons for our location is that Adrienne and I wanted to be near the mountains, as both of grew up in hilly areas of New York. While we really did enjoy Michigan and the Great Lakes region, a move to better overall weather and a more relaxed way of life was a factor.  I love the extended spring and fall here, and there’s no hindrance going out in the winter.    The few times we have had more than a dusting of snow were beautiful and short-lived.    In short, the weather here is usually quite nice.

Vance Birthplace, NC Historic Site, July, 2020. Nikon F2S, FPP IR200.

Moving here was a boost to my photography, especially regarding nature.  While the September 2024 hurricane devastated many of my favorite spots, it has caused me to visit other places, as well as being able to document nature’s recovery in the affected areas. I still have much to discover, and the eastern part of NC is pretty much untraveled for me. Unlike the grid system in Michigan and Ohio where the roads run NSEW, the roads here meander, and in the mountains you cannot be in a hurry. I’ve gotten comfortable driving our curvy roads, but I do wish the roads had decent shoulders. The lack of them really makes it difficult to stop and photograph things that I see along the roadsides. 

       

Along the Old Marshall Hwy, March, 2023.  Yashica Electro 35 GTN, Kentmere 400.

Yesterday, I drove up to Barnard, an unincorporated community along the French Broad River near Walnut.    There’s a nice little park (Barnard Park) along the river where river rafts put in. A bridge takes you over the river to Big Pine Rd. Until last week, I hadn’t been up there since the hurricane, and it was nice to see that things looked pretty much the same.

The Barnard General Store, July, 2026. Intrepid 4x5,
101mm Kodak Anastigmat Special, Cat Labs 80 film

 Last week, I drove up to Barnard to photograph the Barnard general store that had just opened, and I’m impressed with the work the owners had put into rehabilitating the brick building that was built in 1913. I had planned to make some exposures of the bridge with my Intrepid 4x5, but the rain put an end to those plans. So, yesterday’s trip was to take those photos, and whatever else I thought worthy of 4x5.    After that, I drove back up to US-25 towards Hot Springs, and took NC 208 N to Guntertown Road and then to Big Laurel Rd.    

Bridge over the French Broad at Barnard 07/21/26. Panasonic GF-1

Roadside attraction, Barnard Rd. 07/21/26, Panasonic GF-1

I’d wanted to take that route for some time, so it was a good day to do so.    A very winding and scenic route, it follows Laurel Creek. This was a recon mission, and there are a lot of nice old barns and moldering buildings along the route. Again, there are few places to park off the side of the road, but I managed to get some shots with my Leica M2 and my Panasonic GF-1. About 2/3 of the way it started to downpour, and that was the end of the day for photography.  I still observed what was along the road, and plan on a return trip for a cemetery that looked to be quite interesting.   Big Laurel Rd. connects to US-23A, which I took south and then onto 1-26 and home.    Not a bad way to spend an afternoon!

 

Abandoned, near Spill Corn Creek, off Big Laurel Rd. 07/21/26, Panasonic GF-1

  

So, it’s been a good 7 years here, and I look forward to many more.