After over 20 years of this I have gathered a fairly large collection of exposed film and digital files.  Among these are some that rise above the others.  Photographs and images that define for me what it is I am trying to do.  Sometimes I believe I am chasing something I can never have:  The perfect exposure.  Not perfect in a technical sense, although that can be important, but perfect in that the resulting photo will finally, after all, reveal the answer.  I do have some that come very close, and some that DO provide that answer, even if only for a moment. 

Some years ago I was eastbound through the West Texas desert and I saw this structure in the distance.   A quick jump off I-20 and I was alone on an empty access road in the late afternoon.  A storm had been chasing me all day and the clouds were forming on the horizon.  I took my bags out of the trunk and settled in, loading film, affixing the camera to the tripod and checking the viewfinder.  And then I stepped back, reveling in that instant.  The paradox is that even now, in this moment, the photograph gives me a little of that brief shining time when everything came together in the middle of America, outside Toyah near Pecos Texas.