David’s Blog
I’m Back!
It has been a long few years but I'm back now, cranking away, as creative and grumpy as I have always been. The book I started 4 years ago is now mostly finished- just a couple more chapters to go- 100,000 words! - a curious number since I only know about 300 words. I will say that once I learned about verbs the writing became much easier. The book...
Faces of Northern Kenya
I’m Back!
It has been a long few years but I'm back now, cranking away, as creative and grumpy as I have always been. The book I started 4 years ago is now mostly finished- just a couple more chapters to go- 100,000 words! - a curious number since I only know about 300 words. I will say that once I learned about verbs the writing became much easier. The book...
I Still Take Photos
I still take photos, I just don't try to sell them anymore. My book project is all words, there won't be any photos included but that doesn't mean I don't see and then capture images that intrigue me. I have been chasing light for 40 years, can't stop now and don't want to. I'll put up some favorite recent images here for you to enjoy. These images were...
Big flight of Migrants
Wingbeats in the Night Last night, October 8th, 1.25 billion songbirds migrated across the Untied States; a hugely spectacular number. A normal big migration flight in the Fall is 700 to 800 million birds. In Vermont, 17,742,700 crossed the state last night of which 6,747,600 crossed Rutland County where I live. These are all very, very high...
Wingbeats Update
At last, the travel, research, scribbling, writing and editing are finished; my manuscript is complete. The book is a hybrid memoir/science genre that tells the story of the people and places I met following the spring migration of Blackburnian warblers from Ecuador to my home mountains of Vermont. It’s been quite a journey. I started my book, working...
Wingbeats
You can type here
On Writing
It is much easier to begin not to write than it is to not write once you begin.
My Native Habitat
Blackburnian warblers are niche trackers- they keep to the same ecological niche- cool, damp, diverse, mature forests- whether they are in South America during the winter, on migration or nesting in North America. Same applies to me except my niche is much simpler (and more delicious!).
Thoughts on Writing
I have several rules to writing. OK, there are not really rules. Let’s call them strong suggestions. None of these are original and I take no credit for any of them, but all have proved true over my 30 years of writing. The suggestions are not listed by importance — I put them on the page as they tumbled off my pointy, little head. Write however is...
How to Write a Book
Since you didn’t ask, I thought I would give you, my lone reader, a personalized insider’s view of the hows, whys and wherefores of writing a book. I have done this 12 times in the past and I still don’t really know how it happens and I certainly haven’t learned how to not torture myself through its completion. Ok, you’ve decided you want to write a book....
On Photography
There are rules, guidelines, suggestions, recommendations, procedures, instructions and directions in photography and all of them are handy most of the time and dreadful some of the time. As is said “Rules are made to be broken.” But there are also Laws in photography that are sacrosanct, to be broken only under great penalty. Curiously, most photographers...