gifts for N's 24th birthday, inspired by the art of manliness. included— nice circular silver cufflinks, a silky grey-blue pocket square, handkerchiefs, a gift certificate to an old-fashioned barber, with the old breed by e.b. sledge, helmet for my pillow by robert leckie, here, bullet by brian turner, casablanca, the big sleep, thank you card set.

❝just because❞ flowers from nick

the american west

Twelve landscapes from the American West, ranging from Wyoming to Arizona. Shot in July of 2009. I channeled my inner Ansel Adams, who changed the way we shoot landscapes, as well as how we, as photographers, look at and appreciate the natural world. It was difficult to narrow it down to twelve images after spending three weeks camping and hiking through some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world, but these images here represent the most beautiful works of nature that I encountered. I shot many other subjects, mostly humans and animals that I met along the way (and many landscape shots contained humans) but here I wanted to showcase the stillness of nature in its rawest form.

To the complaint, 'There are no people in these photographs,' I respond, There are always two people: the photographer and the viewer.
—a. adams




view from angel's landing, zion national park, utah


les trois tetons, grand teton national park, wyo.


the grand view, arches national park, utah


ruby mountains, lamoille canyon, nev.


grand canyon of yellowstone, yellowstone national park, wyo.


sunrise swim in the great salt lake, antelope island, utah


the edge of the world, gooseneck state park, utah


the grand canyon, grand canyon national park, ariz.


south rim, grand canyon national park, ariz.


devil's garden, arches national park, utah


105°F, arches national park, utah


bryce, bryce canyon national park, utah


No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied — it speaks in silence to the very core of your being.
—a. adams

a life of folding

Phenomena are perpetually folded back on themselves. In the vast cosmic changes, universal life comes and goes in unknown quantities, rolling everything up in the invisible mystery of the emanations, using everything, losing no dream from any single sleep, sowing a microscopic animal here, crumbling a star there, oscillating and gyrating, making a force of light, and an element of thought, disseminated and indivisible dissolving all, that geometric point, the self; reducing everything to the soul-atom; making everything blossom into God; entangling from the highest to the lowest, all activities in the obscurity of a dizzying mechanism, linking the flight of an insect to the movement of the earth, subordinating--who knows, if only by the identity of the law--the evolutions of the comet in the firmament to the circling of the protozoa in the drop of water.
—victor hugo

The folded paper fortune-teller was sent via post from my friend maggie, who wanted to help me make an important decision. Thank you, mags.