I went out with my camera at dawn and dusk for the low light raking across the fresh snow, the blue shadows, the sparkling icicles. I didn’t see anything I hadn’t seen done a thousand times. It was beautiful, but there was nothing new to me and my lens.

A while later, after breakfast, seven dads and eleven kids began exploring the challenges of gravity on an unregulated sunny snowy hillside. Soon, pure speed wasn’t enough. We needed a jump, and soon we had one, and some explosive action. The record jump had a boy flying over eight people, but style points went to some spectacular crashes.

Some dads obviously have better health insurance than others.

Case in point – what photographer can resist a perfectly still hotel pool in the early morning with a swirling sky and palm tree silhouettes in it? I can’t. I might throw them out a week later, but I have to look – and look some more. It’s cool. I snap a few shots. But something’s missing. I’m not much of a landscape guy – empty vistas . I like a person in there somewhere. So the next morning, as soon as the pool is open, I get my 7-year-old to come with me [$20] and swim by underwater per my instructions. It went better than I expected. In the midst of shooting and just trying to get all the technical things right and the swimmer and the reflections just right, I never even saw the best part until I downloaded the images later. The shadow swimming with him. This was a surprise gift I wasn’t expecting. Magic.

Keeps me interested. Keeps me excited. Keeps me young. [It’s great to have a camera, and a 7-year-old.]

This camera has been my companion, and ­ a very trusty and dependable one. Sure, I expected it to be ready and dependable for well-planned and costly shoots, but it was also there for me for anything else, for everything else – for every great sneaky moment in the day – for my daughter peacefully asleep in her bed, for a friend caught in a moment with their kid, for some action in the backyard, for a change in the weather, for some item on the kitchen counter and the way the light fell upon it just so, for the breakfast room light in the morning. It was always there and ready to serve.

And then it wasn’t. It was discombobulating. ­ I had to finish the shoot with a much inferior camera. I was ready to get a new one shipped overnight no matter the cost, but even the biggest suppliers don’t have them because of supply disruptions due to the catastrophes in Japan ­ and, AND, ­ there were only a few days before we were off on a week-long, absolutely middle-of-nowhere shoot/adventure in the Sea of Cortez. I have to be grateful my Nikon D3 didn’t die in remotest Mexico where I would have had no options.

I have been able to rent one for Mexico and mine is off to Nikon to be repaired . . . but it’s pretty weird having even one day without my Nikon D3. Without the possibilities it always has for me. I realize that it’s such a companion that I have come to completely take it for granted, like nearly all the technologies and loved ones in our lives. You can have my cell phone, my DVR, my TV, my computer, my car, even my wife and kids (for a couple of days), ­ but I’ve got to have that camera. Who knows what I’d miss.

In the early afternoon, after a scraped and bleeding shin and a few hours of play up Rattlesnake Canyon and its carved granite pools, my 5-year-old told me without being asked, “Dad, I never want to go home. This place is the best.”

In the afternoon we had peanut butter and marshmallow spread sandwiches, airplanes made of trash and duct tape, lizards, boulder climbing and burning your name into pieces of wood with a magnifying glass. All that texture, taste, smoke, touch, dust, risk and dry fresh air – none of it can be felt in my photos. There’s only so much you can convey with light.

Joshua Tree Wonders: Using a magnifying glass, climbing up steep rock faces, and chocolate chip pancakes and bacon cooked over a fire.

Majestic rocks led to moments of magic at Joshua Tree, whether it was petting a lizard, flying a handmade airplane, or climbing with a dad.

A strong wind and clouds made it a bit challenging to capture the night sky.

I went to PhotoLA late last week, [didn’t bring my camera] a chance to wander for hours and see the work of hundreds and hundreds of photographers from every kind of work you can imagine–and some you never could.

My wife, Sharon, pointed out how much new work there was from China and Chinese photographers. I’m always bored [dramatic naked babe body parts? Bah] and always surprised. That’s the best—that I’m always surprised. Maybe even better than that is just being able to see something new for the first time that really touches you, that in some simple and profound way is moving to you. My favorite photo of the entire day was just a B&W of a country road covered in snow leading away into the distance.

My friend Miguel, another photographer, and I made fun of some of them. “That looks like the guy went out on the beach on a bright bright day with ASA 800 film and accidentally shot it at 100.” “I’ve done that shot – and threw it out.” Both he and Sharon loved the B&W underwater photos of Ernest H. Brooks II. The same gallery representing him, Photokunst, had some amazing photos of Ethiopian tribesmen from the OMO Valley. The photographer, Joey L., had obviously, but laboriously, taken sophisticated lighting equipment out to the back of beyond—and came back with great stuff. Huge prints with amazing detail and resolution that in another time you were sure he must have hauled an 8×10 view camera out there, but it turns out to be medium format digital.

And the guy is only 21.

Wow—youth snapping at your heals. Time to get to back to work.

My 5-year-old came home today from art class with three paintings, all of them volcanoes. You can see that they are all volcanoes, but they are certainly not all the same volcano. It reminded me of Monet’s haystacks painted in all different seasons and times of the day. They are all haystacks, but far from all the same. I guess the point is that it’s kind of okay to repeat yourself—but with variations. If you love volcanoes there’s no reason not to paint a thousand of them—all different. Make a thousand different photos of someone you love sleeping—no two alike.

I see that in my own work, or rather, it’s in my own work, but I don’t always see it.

I love photography. I love it the way some people love music or food or sports. It is always teaching me, always challenging me. It interests me to no end.

I had reason the other day to dig into a file of old photos [slides] of NYC. First I was surprised at how really bad, or at least boring, most of the photos were/are. Photos apparently taken pretty much just to be able to show someone else that you’ve been there—souvenirs, trophies, evidence. Why is that? Am I more sophisticated or demanding now? Have I seen so many hundreds of thousands of images since then that it’s hard to make an impression on me? You bet. I think that’s a good thing.

On the other hand, some of the photos were more interesting now than when I took them simply because of the passage of time – people don’t dress like that anymore – and – it’s not what you see but what you don’t see—no cell phones, no ipods, no cords and earbuds, no personal mobile technology. If someone was looking down they were looking at a newspaper. Can you imagine a street corner in any large city in the world now without all that technology?

The world changes. So do you. The photos you saved do not. That’s an amazing thing.

NEW GALLERY: Montana Dreams – View it here