A photograph freezes a moment, but for me, it often does something more. Certain images bring back not just the scene in the photo, but my detailed feelings of that time. This is known as episodic memory—the kind that lets me recall the weather, the conversation, the mood, even why I reached for my camera in the first place.
These photos that I revisit here carry stories—some small and quiet, others full of motion—and over time they’ve become markers of my memory, perspective, and change. You’re welcome to scroll through, pause when something catches your eye, and maybe be reminded of a few special moments of your own to get lost in. Let your mind relax, and enjoy the journey!
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Golden Hour Freedom
If I were asked to select one of my photos that expresses the feeling of freedom to me, this is the one that would quickly come to mind. At first glance, this is a simple family snapshot of a child running up a path taken somewhere outdoors late in the day. To me, though, it’s more.
This afternoon was spent with my daughter exploring a small mountain near our home in New York. My wife and son were busy with something else, so it was just the two of us out for the day.
It was a sunny, cold November afternoon, and there were no other people around on the mountain top. We went there to hike down into the woods to find our “family Christmas tree”, which our family hikes to before winter to place some small holiday decorations on its branches just for the fun of it. It sits on the edge of a rock outcropping, so it survives some harsh weather during the snowy winter months. We return in the spring to take the decorations off and leave the tree to grow for the summer. We’ve been visiting and decorating this tree intermittently since we found it when it was a small sapling just two feet high. It’s now over 15 feet tall, and we have to return soon to see how it’s doing.
We were getting tired from hiking and being out all day in the cold, but I told my daughter that I wanted to stay just a little bit longer because golden hour was coming. She asked me what that was, and I explained to her that it’s the time of the afternoon when the sun is just about to set, and the sunlight slants across the sky to light up everything with a pretty orange light that’s nice for taking photos. I’m not sure that she ever noticed this lighting before, and certainly didn’t know its virtues for photographers, so she was a bit energized about the idea of seeing what I was waiting for.
As I was setting up my camera to capture some mountain scenes in the special light, she started running around the area where we were. There was nobody else there and no cars driving in the parking area, so I told her to go wherever she wanted in the area near the observation tower in this photo. She ran around the winding paths in the tall grass, laughing and enjoying herself. She didn’t have a single care or thought in the world, except being free to roam.
I snapped this photo as she took off running, not thinking too much about it at the time. I then turned around to take many great photos of the mountains and valleys behind me in the deep, orange, golden hour light. I called to her in the distance while I was shooting, and when her head appeared above the grass, I said, “THIS is golden hour light!” She looked around at how the grass, tower, sky, and rocks were lit up orange, and she knew exactly what I meant. Then she went back to her exploring, enjoying her freedom as the light show continued to its end.
When I reflect back on this memory, it reminds me how wonderfully human it is to be together with someone, in the same time and place, and yet you both experience the moment in completely different ways. These memories come to life in the stories that we share about them. My daughter might remember this day as one when she ran around on the mountain top in pretty orange light. Or the one where we hiked into the woods to decorate our tree. Or, she might not remember it at all because she was young at the time. I will remember for us, though. This day was when I took some great golden hour photos, yes, but more importantly, it’s when I saw my daughter experience a simple moment of carefree childhood freedom that I locked up in a picture and a memory. That, my friends, is a great day indeed.
Peace
We all have things, activities, and places that bring us peace. When I’m in a state of total peace, it’s almost transcendental. I’m not even sure sometimes that if someone called my name in that state, I would even notice.
Before I retired, I traveled to Germany around twenty times during my career. As anyone who’s traveled internationally for business knows, it’s an exhausting, yet also rewarding experience. My days were packed with meetings, and the evenings were often filled with business dinners and activities that ran late into the night. It was always great to see colleagues and friends that I didn’t see often, but it was usually hard to find a few moments to myself to just think and breathe for a bit.
Arrival day was typically the only time that I could find to spend by myself. I would land Frankfurt Airport in the morning after the overnight flight from JFK Airport in New York, pick up my rental car, drive to my hotel, and get situated before going outside for a walk after the traveling. For most of my trips, I stayed in the city of Mainz at the Hyatt hotel directly next to the Rhine River.
When entering the historic and quieter sections of many European cities, you’ll often find a hush over the whole area. I’ve experienced this in Wiesbaden, Ingelheim, Bingen, Rome, Florence, Mannheim, Mainz, and others. It’s so quiet that when I first experienced it, I was amazed. The areas are often pedestrianized, there’s no loud noise, no large trucks, it’s rare to hear someone beep a car horn, speed limits are typically low if cars are permitted at all, and many people walk or ride bikes, which further reduces noise. When I was in the heart of historic Rome, it was amazingly quiet and peaceful. I thought it was funny that I could hear people’s footsteps at night while walking with my wife back to our hotel after dinner.
In Mainz, one of the places I always visited was Mainz Cathedral. The walk from the Hyatt over to the Marktplatz where it’s located is short and quiet. The cathedral, built over 1,000 years ago, is stunning and massive. It has an intricate sandstone exterior and impressive soaring interiors.
I’m not an overtly religious person, so I didn’t go to the cathedral for that reason. I did, however, find peace there, as I do in other cathedrals that I make a point to visit when I’m traveling near them.
I find this cathedral particularly impactful because of its age and beauty. Consider that it’s 750 years older than the country that I live in! I always walked all the way around the interior each time I was there. I touched the stone, walked through its crypts, looked at the statues and the architecture, the giant mural panels, the windows, pews…everything. I’ve taken hundreds of photos of its interior and exterior grandeur. I soaked it in while there, and my sense of peace deepened thinking about all the people who have come and gone in this place over its one thousand-year history. It’s an overwhelming, weighty, and yet very peaceful feeling.
When I came around a corner and saw the scene above, I paused to set up a symmetrical picture straight down the aisle. Then I noticed the man sitting in the pew nearest to me, and he made me think. For no specific reason, I wondered why he was there alone. Did he arrive early for the next mass? Perhaps he was there to mourn or meet someone? Or did he come for the same reason I did, to be alone, think for a while, and find peace for a few minutes?
I continued the process of taking my photo, and originally excluded the man from my framing so I could capture just the cathedral interior and pews. Then I decided to move the camera slightly over to include him in the lower right corner. As I thought about it, I felt that perhaps he represented the reason why I was there more than the cathedral itself did. I wanted that reason in my photo. And so he was…
Beach Silhouette
Photography is all about light. The amount, type, color, and angle of it are all tools in the arsenal of photographers.
Since first becoming interested in photography, I’ve often been drawn to photos with some type of extreme lighting, and I have several books on the subject with many great examples to learn from. Extreme lighting photography is very much about intent. I often don’t stumble into a photo of this type; they usually have to be thought out in advance and their capture planned.
On this day in September 2004, we were at the beach late in the day. Everyone was jumping into the ocean or playing at its edge to have one last swim before heading to their cars for the drive home. As I sat on our blanket, I noticed how the sun was getting low in the sky up the shoreline to my right, and it was quite an intense light. I walked to the water’s edge to look up the beach. I knew what was coming next!
I ran to grab my camera and came back to the water’s edge to wait. I jockeyed around with my viewpoint to get some of the people directly in front of me out of my way so the foreground of the photo would have some free space to breathe. In the next moment, there in front of me was the perfect beach scene! Waves crashing, people enjoying the surf, some kids running out of the waves to their father in the foreground. A little boy crouching at the edge of the waves, the intense light reflecting off the sand, and even some seagulls passing through the frame.
I knew that aiming the camera directly into the bright sunlight would throw everything in the photo into silhouette. Because of that effect, the photo becomes timeless in nature. You can’t see colors, bathing suits, hairstyles, or anything else that would indicate whether this photo was taken today or back in the 1960s. It’s exactly what I wanted!
This is one of my favorite photos that I’ve ever taken, not only because I like the subject and lighting, but also because it was captured with pure intent, timing, and photographic knowledge. When I have an intent of what I want to capture in a photo, and I’m actually able to pull it off and get the shot, the photo often feels like this one here. A prize!
Layers
You can often tell when a good sunset is coming. Maybe there are dramatic clouds, a certain angle of light, the rapid passing of a storm, clear air, or many different layers and types of clouds blowing around. This day had all of them, and my camera was ready.
This photo was taken one mile from my house. When I walked outside and saw the sunset, I jumped in my car to get to the top of a large hill with a good perch looking west, and then the show began.
There were so many possible images to capture that my attention was darting everywhere. I shot the full scene with a wide angle, then tried isolating certain clouds. Some pictures had the sun in them and others didn’t. Playing with all the options was a visual feast!
This shot was my favorite of all them. I placed the sun far down in the frame because it’s not the star of the scene, the clouds are. They were low and foreboding in the front with orange-tinged edges, the middle layer was almost colorless and was moving faster than the top and bottom layers, and the top clouds through the gap were normal white and seemingly avoiding the dramatic light below them. I imagined what it would be like to be flying in a plane, swooping in and out of the different layers and colors. Off in the distance, the clouds flattened out and parted to let the sun rays through. Great!
Sometimes I get the shot, but don’t clearly remember the event because the process of taking photos in a rapidly evolving scene can be a distraction. Other times my memory of the event is clear, but I missed the shot I was hoping for. My best photographic experiences are when I get the shot and the process of doing it helps cement the event in my mind, and this was one of those days. Win/win!
Opposing Forces
I’ll start my Visual Stories photo project with this photo, a sweeping view of the Sonoran Desert from the Valley View Trail in Saguaro National Park that I took in 2025. The desert environment and landscape resonate deeply with me, and I’m guessing they’ll appear frequently here.
Each of the many times I’ve traveled to the Southwest U.S., an immediate sense of serenity and connection envelops me. It’s my happy place. My mind and body sigh and let it all go there. I can eliminate every other thought on my mind except for the immediate moment of where I am, and for me that’s not always easy to do.
This photo captures a lot of what I love about this area. Sweeping views as far as the eye can see, the harsh existence, the combination of the mountains, plains, sky, and rock. There are dramatic clouds that often roll in out of nowhere, and also the abundance of life hidden in plain sight, like inside the bodies of the thousands of Saguaro cacti standing before me in the valley. It’s a land of paradoxes and vast space.
There’s more going on in this photo than immediately meets the eye. The primary thing is the “fight” that’s happening in the center of the photo miles from where I was standing. Look closely and you’ll see a dust storm coming from left-center that’s about to be greeted head-on by a sudden hyper-local rain shower coming from the exact opposite direction. The extreme dryness of the blowing dust meets the drenching wetness of the rain, an example of opposing forces that always coexist in the desert. The otherwise beautiful day all around me ignores the conflict happening between the dust storm and the rain. All the while, none of this made a sound. I took this photo in complete silence except for the sound of the wind and chirping birds. Amen to that.
Slant On Life 