It was lucky that we ran into Jan, because otherwise we wouldn’t have backtracked and spent the afternoon crawling through stalagmites hundreds of feet under Montana.

I think any more weight from so many tourists might force the Yellowstone caldera down into the magma that powers all those geysers.

The 1500-year-old Bristlecone Pine trees tumble into the slowly eroding limestone breaks at a pace measured in centuries.

It takes most people five hours to complete the five mile journey to the top of Angel’s Landing and back. I did it in half that and still took a bit of video now and then, while sucking in much-needed oxygen.

Had I stumbled onto a sales pitch for the Mormon church, disguised as a ranger talk?

I’ve now spent the last two Julys tucked in a car, traveling hundreds of miles a day for weeks on end.

Recently I had the privilege of helping judge the San Diego CityBeat annual photo contest. It was fun despite being conducted through Flickr so that no one could hear my snarky comments. It was also a welcome excuse to ponder photography theory: How does one compare unrelated photos and ultimately choose one over the other, and just what exactly makes a successful photo anyway?

I was shooting Le Book all last week, a French company that puts together a book of creative and production companies for others to browse when looking for help in either of those areas. I was at the trade show they have once a year, and, as they are French, they asked me to capture the glamour of the event. I suggested I hold the camera at angles and slow my shutter down to get the feeling right. The employee I was talking to interrupted and said “yes, capture …

An email from a stranger asked me to fill out a questionnaire recently, for a student’s career project. The career this student said she is deeply interested in, according to her email, is photojournalism/photography. Having the time and plenty of thoughts to collect, I obliged and asked her if she’d mind if I posted her questions and my responses on Meridian. So, here are my perspectives on the industry as an emerging photojournalist, exactly as I wrote them on the survey. Not being a firmly established photographer yet, I’d be interested to know whether I gave this student good advice.

The World Naked Bike Ride usually means plenty of completely nude protesters, but not in San Diego.