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In addition to being the minister, the voice of God, and my Father, my father was also my Boy Scout leader. So I watched him closely, trying to figure out how this Power Trip worked.

Then I noticed that my father also was the one who took the pictures of our family; he held the camera, told everyone where to stand, when to smile, and what to say. Power. Just like always being the driver.

Part of my initiation into Manhood allowed me to hold the Kodak Pony IV camera. Loaded with Kodachrome film, sun over my shoulder, my brothers and sister squinting into the light, I was invited to mimic the position of authority. Not that I had any yet, but the rituals were intoxicating. And since Methodists only drank Welch's grape juice in our communion, that was as close as I got to intoxication for a long time, especially after my mother found a six-pack of Coors in my underwear drawer. I know, dumb hiding place.

So photography offered a way to cross the line of demarcation between "little kids" and Figures of Authority. Just like being Good, brushing my teeth, doing my homework, being quiet and sitting still. All important behavior I learned by being the preacher's kid. Everyone is watching you.

I loved that camera. It was in a leather case, smooth satin surfaces, and so very quiet. You might call it the Methodist's Leica. We didn't have a light meter, so I memorized those funny diagramatic pictures that came with the Kodachrome: Bright Sun, Hazy Sun, Cloudy.

During the endless presentations of all those slides from our family vacations, I realized that the narrator was the one who told his version of the events. But it was always a LIE. "What Really Happened" was a secret. He left out the yelling, the tension, the whipping, the tears.

Disillusioned at such a young age, mendacity prevailed. Or was it merely a pretense of the ideal minister's family? A show for the congregation?

My interest in photography began with the desire to write the narrative, to use the descriptive power of the camera to show how it really is. In my innocence, I was choosing Truth, and Beauty be damned.

In Sheridan High School, Sheridan, Arkansas, I worked on the yearbook; it was fun to get out of class, and it was terrifically powerful to be the one to decide who's pictures were included, who was excluded. I followed my father's suggestion and entered Rice University to study architecture, but luckily the Menils came to Rice during that time, and my photo-journalistic approach to photography was challenged by the art department attitude and the teachings of Geoff Winningham.

He introduced me to Atget, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, Robert Adams, and John Szarkowski. It was his passion for the medium that was so contagious, and his enthusiasm convinced me that I had to be a photographer. I took independent studies with him, borrowing stacks of photography books, memorizing those images, and the words that went with them. I spent a summer in San Francisco, went to the Fillmore West, watched guys take pictures on the moon, and came back to Rice only to drop out of architecture school and to edit the yearbook.

I was so busy taking pictures that it took me an extra year to meet graduation requirements; that was a good thing. That last year I was given a traveling fellowship. Stipulation: leave the country. So I got married, took my Leica, and spent a year traveling around Europe, photographing constantly in the parks and streets: promenades; soccer games; guys just standing around in dark coats and dark glasses while military dictatorships in Greece and Spain paraded their weapons before the spectators.

I'm still waiting for another grant to come along; meanwhile, I decided to go to graduate school so I could be a teacher like my teacher. When I came across a book of photographs by Harry Callahan, there was no question. I had to study with this guy.

Rhode Island School of Design had expanded its graduate program in photography so Aaron Siskind could join his friend Callahan in Providence. What an unlikely pair of teachers. Siskind had worked in the Photo Leage in the 30s and 40s documenting Harlem while he taught English in the New York public school system. Talkative, a joker, intelligent and articulate, he was abrasive, challenging, and wonderful. Callahan was quiet, almost inarticulate, except when he would earnestly tell you a little story, or fable, unsure himself what it had to do with your pictures. But we craved his secrets, so we placed great significance to his few words.

Meanwhile, they were both preparing to retire, and brought in a string of other teachers to give themselves short breaks. Minor White came along and told us to photograph blindfolded. I thought his efforts to break our habits of seeing were extraordinary, and I embraced his unorthodox spiritualism. Lisette Model demanded honesty and openness; she refused to take an "I don't know". "Everyone knows," she retorted. "You are just afraid to say what you think!" I needed that!

Wife Number One was going to law school in Boston, so when a friend offered to bequeath his teaching position at a local girls boarding school, I grabbed it. But being dorm daddy to rich sixteen year olds was more than I could handle. So we bailed out and I called Geoff to see what was up in Houston. He offered me a job at the Rice Media Center, working half-days, with lots of time to be out and about making pictures.

It was great to be back in Houston after four years. My eyes were refreshed and the city was crystalline after the dreary light of the Northeast. I bought a used Superwide and walked and walked and walked. For two years I explored the city from alleys to rooftops to parties to bayous.

But I wanted to teach, and Rice's Art Department didn't have a place for me, so I was scuttling between their Continuing Studies, the University of Houston, and even my old School of Architecture at Rice.

Soon it was not easy to take pictures, because I was either in class, teaching a class, or driving to the next class. So I quit it all and started taking pictures for all my architecture friends. Wife Number Two was an architect, and that was a good introduction to even more architects. After a while I didn't know anyone but architects.

I do like photographing buildings. They stand still, they don't talk back, they are patient. And if I can persuade a few folks to stand around the building, so much the better.

But after twenty years of night shots, strip shopping centers, developers' wet dreams, and architects' control issues, I was burning out.

Lo and behold, across my monitor comes a beautifully long expanse of red rocks: the mountains of Sedona Arizona. My friend Doug Milburn had snapped a panorama of paradise, and I wanted to do that too. Back in 1982 I had supplemented my meager earnings with eager participation in the Houston Center for Photography. What fun we had, meeting all kinds of other photographers, curatoring shows, critiquing each others work. I met Curtis Bean in a round about way, and he introduced me to the Cirkut pictures of Frank Schlueter, made in Houston between 1920 and 1960. The Houston Public Library had an amazing collection of his negatives, AND the camera he used to make them. Curtis and I scribbled up a grant, learned how to use that Cirkut camera, re-wired the 60 light bulbs of the contact printing frame (these negatives are 8 inches wide and 72 inches long). We did a re-photographic survey, locating the sites of the original pictures, making new ones when we could. It was a blast. But the camera was a pain, not to mention tray developing those monster negatives.

So this panorama of Sedona seduced me, again. When Doug tells me he made it with a $200 point-and-shoot DIGITAL camera, I was ....chagrinned. So I bought one, and it was a good way to learn a few things.

Enjoy these panoramas. My Olympus 360 DL has almost given up the ghost; the lifespan of consumer cameras has changed from that old Kodak Pony IV, but so have the potentials.

My interest in photography was revived; it was fun again! I even dug up a little belt bag and started carrying a camera again (something you don't do with a Sinar, even if it is a "field camera").

Panoramas are so Powerful for me; it is possibly that sense of Total Control that comes from seeing in 360 degrees. They can't sneak up on you that way. Kinda like a good lookout post.

It also goes back to my interest in The Truth. Context is everything, I believe, and the more information available, the more connections a viewer can make. Look over here, NOW, look over there, too; bring those disparate spots together in one frame. It seems to me that we need to understand the relationships between those parts to gain any meaning. That's why I love stories-- narratives-- the suggestion of time passing as you scroll from one end of the picture to the other.

I have always been curious about the age when a photographer made a particular picture; certain pictures have different meanings for me now than when I first encountered them as an undergraduate. It adds a layer of context that offers a clue to how that picture might mean something else.

Nothing irritated me more in the old days when some crotchety old fart would say: "Wait until your older. THEN you'll understand." I didn't believe a word of that bullshit. But you know, things do look different from this perspective. History is more interesting to me now. I'm trying to piece together new fragments that have come to my attention at this late date.