One evening, I was sitting nearby while Lynda was preparing dinner in the kitchen. She probably thought I was watching the little kitchen TV, but I wasn’t. I was watching her. And for some reason, a thought came over me: What if God took her home tonight? What if this were the last time I would ever see her standing there, chopping carrots on the cutting board? That thought sent my mind in several directions at once—which, for me, isn’t all that unusual. I’m a little ADD. I b

Follow this link to a song about time and regrets. I used AI to write the song and produce the music. https://youtu.be/LLVItHCzu28

A Texas Town Called Paris The link above will take you to a song I co-wrote with an AI app (ChatGPT). The song was sung by an AI app called Suno about my hometown, Paris, Texas. First let me say up front, I have little musical talent. But, I can write. To write a song using AI for assistance with rhymes and flow, I start by writing what I want to accomplish with my song, the genre, tempo, and whether I wanted a male or female vocalist. In this case I wanted a country genre, 9

When we lived in Kenya, some of my favorite moments came from being in a Masai boma, surrounded by fellow missionaries and Maasai pastors. Life there moved at a different pace—slower, simpler—and I almost always had my camera in my hand. Over time, the villagers grew used to me, used to the quiet click of the shutter as I tried to capture pieces of their world. One day, a group of American visitors arrived from a church back in the States. They came bearing gifts—bags of cand

All I ever knew him as was “Old Man Edwards.” He lived just behind our house when I was growing up in Paris. To us kids, he was something of a mystery—an eccentric old man with a gift for carpentry. Day after day, under the hot sun, he built small clapboard shacks, only to tear them down and start again. Nothing was wasted. He saved every board, every nail. I don’t recall ever seeing him throw a single one away. As I remember, he had been a World War I veteran. Back then, the

In her younger years, my mother, Evelyn Ragan, turned heads. She was a natural beauty—graceful, confident, and full of life. She and my dad were newlyweds just before he shipped out to North Africa during World War II, and they were deeply, unmistakably in love. Like so many couples separated by war, they found ways to stay close across the distance. Mom would send him letters, of course—but also photographs. Plenty of them. Some were what you might call her “swimsuit shots,”

At first glance, the photo looks like nothing more than an ordinary snapshot from another era—maybe the 1920s or ’30s. The Christmas tree is a little scraggly, the room slightly cluttered, nothing especially remarkable. Just a moment in time, frozen like so many others. The boy in the picture is my father. The house belonged to my grandparents. And, as Paul Harvey used to say… now for the rest of the story. My dad, as I later learned from more than a few reliable sources, had

I’ve always thought I knew what art was. It was the sculptor, hands covered in clay, slowly revealing a form that wasn’t there before. It was the painter, brush in hand, layering oils onto canvas until light and shadow felt alive. It was the photographer—someone like me—waiting for just the right moment to press the shutter and capture something real. Even a tattoo artist, I’ve believed, turns skin into a living canvas. That all made sense to me. Until recently. Because now I

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I often say, you can't take a cool picture if you don't have your camera. That adage sure fits for the picture below. I was sweeping the...

For several weeks I had been thinking about a certain location on the Tyler, TX downtown square; a place that I thought would make an...

When I owned a photo-lab, a reoccurring question I heard from customers was, "Why are my pictures out of focus?" Of course, there are as...

I have photographed birds in East Africa's Serengeti and in my own backyard. I get an adrenaline rush in both places. When I first...

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It really amazes me that my Samsung S20 cell phone camera can take such a crisp, semi-close-up photo, without much effort. I just stuck...

Anatol lizards roam all over East Texas and the southern USA. They are especially abundant in the spring and summer. This little guy...

You can do it and here is how Position yourself as far away from town lights as possible. I took all these pictures over Lake Grandbury...

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I must admit, when I look back on my years living in East Africa, it seems like a lifetime ago. This day though, I remember the details...