After spending a few hours at the Illinois State Fair last week, we decided to skip fair-food and bop down to Cozy Dog Drive In for a late lunch. Always a fun place, along Old Route 66 in Springfield, IL. And this day we were treated to a beautiful '55 Chevy out front!
As described by ChatGPT:
This series distills humor, texture, and the poetry of the ordinary from overlooked corners of public and working spaces. Each image captures a small but telling fragment of rural and small-town America, where practical objects, functional signage, and weathered surfaces hold layers of narrative. These photographs thrive on irony and authenticity—finding visual wit in a manure pit sign, the quiet dignity of rusted hardware, and the unambiguous warning of a curbside notice. The work leans into the vernacular, preserving moments that are both mundane and culturally specific, celebrating the quiet intersections where utility, decay, and human presence meet.
They do lay it on thick, huh?
A couple of photos from last Thursday's trip to the Illinois State Fair. What did you expect, the Butter Cow?
So, over the past month or so I've uploaded maybe 36 photos to ChatGPT for ratings, and commentary... even things like Instagram hashtags. It's been fun, and sometimes uncomfortably insightful.
So today I asked the $64k question:
Based on all the photos I've uploaded over the past month, how would you define my photographic style?
There was a lot of interesting stuff in the response (too much for here), so I asked for an artist statement. And here's what it said:
- - -
- - -"My photographs are drawn from the quiet rhythms of small towns and rural landscapes. Rather than chasing spectacle, I am drawn to what lingers in the margins—shadows, empty chairs, worn storefronts, traces of presence that suggest a story without telling it outright.
This approach follows a lineage of American photography that treats the ordinary as worthy of attention: from Walker Evans’ unvarnished documents of everyday life, to Robert Adams’ meditations on place, to Wright Morris’ evocations of memory through absence. Like them, I am interested in how the most modest details—a figure reduced to a shadow, a sidewalk at dusk, a weathered sign—can carry both intimacy and universality.
My work is not about nostalgia or critique, but about recognition: the recognition that these places and moments, often overlooked, hold a quiet poetry of their own. Sequenced together, the photographs create a rhythm that mirrors the lived texture of rural America—pauses, repetitions, fleeting gestures of light.
In this way, I hope my photographs offer both a document of the present and a space for reflection, where the familiar becomes unfamiliar again, and the overlooked is allowed to speak."
What do y'all think? Nailed it, or total BS? Or some of both?
One of the highlights of the Illinois State Fair is, of course, the Butter Cow:
Throwback Thursday, August 2011. St. Louis Arch and Millenium Hotel. The Millennium has been closed/vacant since 2014, but has been in the news recently as there are (apparently) plans to redevelop the site. Looking back, this photo was taken before going to a StL Cardinals baseball game, they were playing Pittsburgh.
My son got Andrew McCutchen's autograph that night:
The family made a trip recently to Gulf Shores, AL, USA; a fun time for all. While there we had a breakfast meal at Sunliner Diner. I was everything I expected, great 50's vibe, great diner food, fast service. It is a big place, and popular. But the line moved fast, and we didn't have to spend too much time in the crazy heat waiting for a seat.
I did sneak a couple of photos while we waited for the food to come up:
Continuing the series of my favorite Youtube music videos.. Here's another 5:
Continuing my informal series of photos in and around hotels/motels, here's a few from a recent trip. This is the Holiday Inn Express in Meridian, Mississippi.
On our recent travels, we spent the night in Meridian, Mississippi. Not too far from the Alabama border, about 1.2 way from north-to-south. We had dinner in the downtown area, and wandered a little afterwards. Interesting town:
