Photos by Barry Hass

Welcoming home our friends Phil and Lynn, just back from their Hawaiian adventure.

Richard Avedon was one of the preeminent portrait and fashion photographers of the late twentieth century. One of the signature elements of his style was the presentation of his subject against a white background.

Of course, Ansel Adams – the Beethoven of nature photographers – needs no introduction.

I have no idea whether the two of them ever met, but I would like to imagine that Ansel dropped by Richard’s studio one winter afternoon to drag him out for a walk in the park. And that if he had, they might have collaborated on a picture that looked something like this.

Back in real life, I photographed this Dawn Redwood in the schoolyard behind my house after a recent snowstorm.

I found this friendly vendor at a farmers market in Grenoble, on the same trip as the picture I posted last week.

This is from a 1983 trip to Switzerland and France. Lucerne’s iconic Kapellbrücke looms in the background.

Strangely enough, the snowy part of winter this year seemed to coincide almost exactly with the Winter Olympics. I’ve been enjoying walking in the woods by day and, notwithstanding the endless scandals and psychodramas, watching the Olympics at night. But as the games have faded away, so has the snow. I saw this melting stream while walking at Pegan Hill in Natick this week. It reminded me of an abstract painting.

This is what last weekend looked and felt like.

It was nice while it lasted.

Reaching way back for this one. Summer of 1970. A hot, crowded, noisy festival in Boston’s North End. I can still smell the greasy smoke wafting up from those grills. Mmm-mmm. I’ll take one with plenty of fried onions and peppers, arteries be damned.

The weather has been alternating between gloomy gray and bitter cold, with little or no snow to brighten things up – dismal conditions for outdoor photography. So I’ve been scrounging around in the cellar to see what I could dig up.

We got a pretty good shot of snow last week. Unfortunately (from my point of view), it didn’t last long.