I like this blog. Bear Woods comes up with lots of good shots. And more interesting for me, his images are just the tip of the iceberg for his deeper content, the interactions of a photographer with the life around him.

This approach, writing about one’s interactions with life through photography, using the art form as a lens for Seeing, is what I’m going for these days.

It’s a style of blogging and photographing (and living as an artist) I’ve been exploring more and more. I think it began with that piece I wrote in the Arches, Canyonlands book that I called “Secret of False Kiva,” And I don’t know how many folks who bought the book even read it.

But that was the first piece I wrote whose subject was me living my life through the practice of photography. Kiva was my fascination with getting this shot in Canyhonlands, False Kiva, and how that artistic exploration led me to realize some stuff about myself as an enthusiast/artist who is out in nature.

And since I’ve been researching the new book, Sacred Southwest, that more personal style has been the goal…. living the experience of a writer/ photographer in long-form blog style. That’s also the motivating force in why I’ve been talking with so many amazing folks on the reservations, tourist shop workers and Monument Valley guides, health care workers, Katsina and pottery artists.

I’m never going to get all these interactions into the blog pieces (or eventual book). And there’s no way I can fully portray in my writing the true quality of the folks I’m running into — or the nuances of the intriguing cultures of our Southwest. But I think some good will come of it all the same.

Canyon del Muerto, Canyon de Chelly National Monument

So I’m not taking my blogging in quite the Bear Woods direction (understatement alert), but it’s useful to appreciate another celebrant.