Along the rocky coast, there are so many pathways and roads stacked almost directly on top of one another, it seemed unnecessary. Over the years, I’m sure they each served their purpose, and the traffic along the larger roads increased to points beyond their original intend. The smaller walkways, which in many cases empty directly onto the main roads, are now unsafe because of blind turns and the speed of modern vehicles. Yet there didn’t seem to be many dead ends. Perhaps disused gates and some ruins here and there, but at no point is it required to stop and turn around.

In Pieve Ligure, at a villa rented from a tech high-flyer, the concerns were for health and laundry, and I looked for date palms to photograph for a commission.

At a roadway hotel near Lake Garda, ornamentation overflowed and statues of dogs sat in the corners and outdoors in the sun. The place had nothing immediately around it except fields of grapes and a pool. Closeup, the ornaments and dogs and classic- or Eastern-inspired objects come from different times and décor sensibilities, but, taken as a group, cohered into a certain feeling that lands slightly short of comfort—though I was so exhausted from the heat, it hardly mattered.

These dog statues are part of a rare, valuable collection, warned a placard in the room. If you damage one, you will be billed an amount dependent on the dog in question.

And on a day trip to Verona, it was clear to me that there was a city filled with charming details somewhere beneath the disorienting heat. A tourist passed out in the street just ahead of us. Maybe one day I’ll return in better weather, and with more time to spend.

Earlier this month, at an ancient hilltop church not far from Verona, I attended a wedding. Jet lagged and wearing a wool suit on a blazing-hot day, my lens mysteriously refused to focus while inside. On a terrace overlooking the surrounding countryside, wedding-guest couples and families posed for photos, while locals and other visitors to the town looked on, sipping their spritzes. I didn’t take any photos of the sweeping views, but in the hazy distance was Lake Garda.

Plants behind the windows, separated from summer dusk for the best and on expired film

The air quality is so good before the summer makes it into something to be warned about, when it holds heat, pollution, and humidity over our heads, hanging around for days sometimes, before continuing on out to sea. During those times, the atmosphere’s pressure feels like the massive weight it really is. I can’t think straight in humidity; it takes up too much mental bandwidth.

After the summer is good, too. The departure of the those awful, heavy days leaves a light-feeling autumn behind, a good sort of void. And while, as the days get shorter and the temperatures begin to dip, some brace for seasonal melancholy, I think more clearly, and selfishly enjoy the transition.

Clutter

I used to walk this street in Williamsburg almost daily, on my way to a job that, for the better, I no longer have. I don’t think this clutter was here back then, but the light of this sunny spring day made it appealing, throwing long, sharp shadows. Only in Williamsburg could this plastic Jersey barrier, sitting mysteriously useless on the sidewalk next to a Nissan, collect stickers like a pier collects barnacles.

The picture took itself

Earlier this month, there was a series of days when the light was so good, the photos took themselves. The aperture ring turned on its own, the shutter-release pressed itself, the film advanced and did it all over again. Long, crisp shadows told it to, and I held on.

Scottish parade

I have a bad habit—or it seems like it should be a bad habit—of regretting things, or wishing I had made a decision differently. Not unusual, I know. And I know one should be careful what one wishes for. There must be many stories, reiterated over the years of oral traditions since illiterate ancient times, that highlight this point in lessons with varying degrees of harshness. But as my perspective on cause and effect is limited to the parameters of a life lived in the first person, in a physical world, my imagination, my ability to imagine other decisions and other outcomes, also exists within these parameters. And so it is possible, unfortunately, to feel I should have done differently.

This past-facing, useless view burns energy, confuses sleep patterns, and makes it more difficult to look forward to things in the future. My future-tense language hardly gets used in this season, and my head fogs, feels filled with styrofoam; I’ll allow it to be filled so, in as much as anyone can allow what enters ones head to be there.

I took the first photo at a parade honoring New York’s Scottish community, which I happened to stumble upon one day while wandering through Midtown looking for something else. Bagpipe music and tartan were everywhere. The parade’s Grand Marshall was a Scottish actor, who I’d never heard of, who stars in a streaming show I’d never seen. Many onlookers gathered against the aluminum barricades that lined the parade route, yet I suspect many of them were equally wondering “who is this famous man?”

On a walk in LIC

On a walk in Long Island City, Queens, which can fluctuate so quickly from charming tree-lined brownstone streets to a mix of gritty industrial roads and strip malls, I found an old Mercedes that reminded me of my childhood.

The first cars in my memory, as I became aware of the concept of a vehicle at some point around the age of four, in the mid 80s, was my parents’ black Volvo 240 DL and a what might have been a blue Buick station wagon, though I can’t be sure of the latter. When I was 17 I bought a secondhand 1990 Lexus ES 250, which I drove and meticulously kept up until I left for college a few years later. When I was 29, in 2011, I bought a Honda hatchback brand new, with a manual transmission, and a sports-package upgrade. I loved that car and put over 30k miles on it before I had to sell it in 2014, while I was in a particularly tight financial period. Although that period passed many years ago now, I’ve lived carless ever since.

But I remember those old boxy Mercedes, with their mono-wiper, asymmetrical side-view mirrors on the A-pillar, and optional diesel engines. I still want one. And I like knowing there’s still a few knocking around out there. One day, in some distant, suburban future, I’ll have a garage and the by-then “classic” Mercedes sedan I admired in my younger years. I’ll fix her up and spend way to much money on her, deeply impressing the four to seven other guys like me who care about such things.

Ongoing studies

I’m finalizing my plans for an artwork using the UN headquarters building as its subject, though of course, changes happen after things are underway. It will involve maybe six photos of it.

The structure itself would be totally anonymous in Manhattan’s skyline were it not, I think, for its placement, that is, separated from the island’s architectural density. The separation is really negative space—probably a hundred yards or so along the north and west exposures (due to First Avenue and a generous setback that I assume exists for security reasons), and a vast amount of space along the south and east (due to the a small park and a notoriously vacant lot, and the full width of the East River respectively). But that amount of air and sky makes it stand out like almost no architectural properties would.

The simple monolithic form is intriguing to me. Its dullness and its reflectivity make me think of how it photographs over times and in varied weather conditions. But somehow I think this work best by being limited to the summer. So let’s see what the season brings over here on the East Side.