Encounters with couples — Until I started this series, I had no idea I had photographed so many birds. Considering there are between 50 billion and 430 billion birds on Earth (according to National Geographic) it shouldn’t have been much of a surprise. There are about 8 billion people alive today, so there are…

More serendipitous encounters in Puerto Rico — According to the World Atlas, there are 18,000 species of birds — with more to be discovered. No wonder it is so hard to identify them! I recently began trying to ID the birds I have come across while photographing other subjects. As I explained in the first post in…

The end of the adventure — Note: This is one of a series of photo-memoirs about a 1964 expedition to Isla de Mona, an uninhabited island in the Caribbean. Friday, January 10, Sardinera We arose late and showered at Pozo Portugués. Our provisions were about exhausted, but Hernández shared food from the Police storeroom.

When I actually see them — Until recently, I knew virtually nothing about birds. I admired their beauty and their aloofness — they always seemed far above earthbound mortals like me. But until recently, I didn’t even know their names.

Ups and downs — Note: This is one of a series of photo-memoirs about a 1964 expedition to Isla de Mona, an uninhabited island in the Caribbean. All photos were copied from contact sheets as the negatives and prints were lost. Thursday, June 9, 1964, Sardinera We checked in at the police station first…

Through a viewfinder — “Beauty in things exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.” David Hume’s Essays, Moral and Political, 1742 What makes a photograph beautiful? People have been prescribing rules of composition for centuries — or even longer, even the cave artists probably had rules. You can find 10, 15 or 50…

The octogenarian in the garden — What struck me — in the vegetable garden this summery morning — was the preponderance of plants with bright yellow flowers. It made sense: the bed I was weeding produces several varieties of squash — all of them yellow.

Going underground — Note: This is one of a series of photo-memoirs about a 1964 expedition to Isla de Mona, an uninhabited island in the Caribbean. All photos were copied from contact sheets as the negatives and prints were lost. Wednesday, January 8, 1964 We had explored and photographed much of the flat…

Marooned in paradise — Note: This is one of a series of photo-memoirs about a 1964 expedition to Isla de Mona, an uninhabited island in the Caribbean. All photos were copied from contact sheets as the negatives and prints were lost. Monday, January 6, 1964 After days of near-perfect (if perfectly hot) weather, we…