The roosters of Key West don’t care that you’re on vacation.
I took these on December 22, 2023, over the course of one morning. They’re on the sidewalks, in the flower beds and, as it turns out, in the road, and not one of them seemed to be in a hurry about any of it.
Crossing the street, past a fire hydrant.
The one at the top had settled into a patch of dirt beside the pavers like it owned the lot. Between the red combs, the copper chests and the green-black tail feathers, they might be the best-dressed wildlife in the Keys.
August 12, 2019, a little before six in the morning, and the beach already had company.
A crowd of small shorebirds was working the edge of the surf in that pink light you only get before the sun is up. Nothing in this frame is sharp. The birds wouldn’t hold still and the light was thin, and it works anyway.
5:54 AM, shorebirds at the waterline.
The photo at the top is from twenty minutes later. By then the cloud bank on the horizon had a lit edge, the water had gone to copper, and one slow wave streaked through the frame.
If someone asked me what kayaking the Pictured Rocks is like, this is the photo I’d show them.
It was July 30, 2024, and we’d been on the water a good while when the fog came in off Lake Superior. It was the kind that takes the far end of a cliff first and then keeps going. We were paddling toward Lovers Leap, a sea arch cut through a sandstone point, and the kayaks beneath it are the only reason you can tell how big it is. The water was still that clear green, with the sky gone gray behind it.
Heading toward Lovers Leap as the fog thickened.
All of this shoreline is sandstone, and the color is minerals. Groundwater seeps through the rock and carries iron, manganese and copper down the face with it, and each one leaves its own stain as it dries: reds and oranges from the iron, black and brown from the manganese, blues and greens from the copper. From a kayak you’re close enough to read the streaks like brushwork.
Looking back out at the lake from inside one of the sea caves.
Most of this was shot on my phone from the cockpit, with a paddle in one hand and a lake that never holds still. I took more than 400 photos that day and kept a handful. A couple of the cliff shots from that paddle are in the Mineral Cliffs bundle.
