In this vertical landscape, I contrast a vast field of saguaro cactus with the sharply defined crest of a rocky outcropping soaring above them at sunset. The saguaros are defined by the day’s last light, as it illuminates them from the lowest possible angle. The saguaros create a field of prickly texture that fills the lower third of the frame. Golden red rocks provide a transitional texture in the middle third of the frame. The diagonal thrust of the comb-like outcropping at the top of the frame reveals deeply carved texture, repeating the verticality of the saguaro as well as duplicating the colors of the rough boulders that litter the middle ground. The illuminated fortress-like wall of stone also provides an incongruous contrast in scale to the tiny saguaro arrayed below it.

I contrast two strikingly different textures in this image – a sea of tightly packed grass against the weathered face of a semi-obscured granite headstone. The textures play against each other in color as well – the deep green grass encroaches on the mossy black and white grain of the old granite. The image expresses the nature of remembrance itself. It fades with the years. The stone speaks only of “Mother,” and is matched by another stone that simply reads “Father.” The grass has turned what once was a rectangular shape of stone into a circle, obscuring the final letter in the process. As the circle grows ever smaller, the memory of mother dims with time.

I zoomed in to make a close up shot of the head and shoulders of this sand figure featured in a nativity scene on one of Recife’s public beaches, emphasizing the tactile nature of its texture. The only parts of the sculpture that are not made of sand are the innocently primitive and incongruous eyes, which are made of glass or plastic. The sculpture expresses its idea through not only form but through surface texture. Even though the light itself may be flat here, the power of that texture beckons the hand of the viewer.

Photographing through an open window of a railroad locomotive barn, I caught the textures of the surface of this antique tender in the evening light. Its metal plates come at us out of the shadows, looking every bit as old as they are.

The Romans named Istanbul Byzantium in 64AD, and this tomb dates back to the Byzantine era. It stands just outside Istanbul’s massive archeological museum, seemingly forgotten, its marble surface pitted by the elements. This texture creates a palpable reference to the passage of time – more than 2,000 years of it. The figures in togas stare out at us as time ravages their home – a huge crack in the top reminds us that Rome, as well as the many Byzantine and Ottoman regimes that followed, eventually vanished. Even the dead leaves that litter foreground echo the relentless cycling of time.

The Choate Bridge has spanned the Ipswich River since 1764. It said to be the oldest stone arched bridge in the United States. In this image, I exclude most of the bridge, keeping only the edge of one of its two arches in my frame. This forces the eye down into the waters that surge below the bridge. The play of light and shadow on this water reveals four distinct textures: a stippled foreground, a seemingly calmer patch directly below the bridge, a curving segment of water that appears to be folding in upon itself, and the massively tranquil area of greenish water in the background. Textures will change in appearance as the effect of light itself changes.

The massed ferns surrounding a young redwood tree create a study in texture. The dappled light deep in the forest plays on some of the ferns and leaves the others in shadow. The result – a comparative array of leafy textures and colors defining the density of growth, and the seemingly chaotic world of nature itself.

The early morning light brings out the ragged texture beneath the white and yellow paint that covers this sealed storefront. It has two doors. One is sealed as tightly as the large windows that once looked out onto the street. It's surface is scuffed -- somebody has probably tried to kick it open. The other portal has no door at all -- the opening reveals an exterior space within, featuring an abrasively textured wall. I found a fascinating incongruity here -- the warmly sunlit building, painted in pleasant colors, seems at first glance to be nostalgic and benign, yet the rough wall standing within, along with the scuffed, sealed door and the blocked windows up front, speak of harsh and unforgiving realities.

I found this toilet in the rest room of a long closed service station. Like the rest of the service station, it no longer functions. Nature has taken it toll on the paint that once covered the wooden seat. It is cracked and flaking, the flakes covering the floor around it. The lid is turning green, as is the cinderblock wall behind it. I make the image into a study of abandonment, decay and erosion. What once offered relief to generations of desperate motorists has become a study of unwelcome textures. Yet the lid remains upright, an incongruous gesture of welcome.

This old boiler once powered the cranes that served Cochin’s dry-dock. The cranes have moved, but the boilers are still there, retained as relics of the 1950s. I found layers of textures here – not only are the old boilers rusting, but placards and advertisements that have been pasted on to them over the years are rotting away as well and form their own textures as a result. Every bit of free space on Indian walls, signs, posts, and even old boilers is made use of, again and again. Such is the nature of communication in a land of a billion people.

The reflected bridge at left breaks into long strands of shimmering blue steel. The reflection makes them tremble in the face of the waves that prepare to engulf them from the right. This reflection works because of tension created by the contrast between the shimmering bridge at left, and the surging dark textures that stalk it from the right. It is a study in contrasting textures that echo the story of Nanjing itself, a city that has known much destruction and tragedy over the centuries.

A steam powered working sawmill is featured at this restored 19th century mining camp just outside Jerome, Arizona. I photographed some of the planks of lumber stored in the sawmill, featuring the different textures revealed by the blades that sliced through massive pine tree trunks. The planks were stacked vertically against a wall of the sawmill, and I arranged them in my frame as a series of diagonal thrusts.

In this image, I’ve contrasted light to dark, small to large, rough to smooth, and, most likely, new to old. The boulder in the foreground seems to me to be the newcomer – the evening light has defined its texture for us, showing us that it is a boulder made up of many smaller parts. The boulder waiting in the darkness is much larger and smoother, and therefore probably the senior partner here. I am sure that a geologist could tell us much more about the comparative history of these huge rocks. But at very least, this image pulls even an uninformed eye over each of these surfaces, inviting the hand to touch and the mind to wonder about the millions of years it must have taken nature to create such a sight as this.

A photo of someone talking on a cell phone in the street is not expressive photography in itself. However, in this case, the woman on the phone wears textured clothing, and she stands before a wall in Marrakesh’s old walled city that is equally rich in texture. A sliver of morning light slips between two buildings to illuminate just the edge of her garment. I used my spot meter to expose on this highlighted area, allowing everything else in the image to fall into shadow. The rough texture of her clothing echoes the heavily textured wall. These intense textures complement the intensity of the expression on her face, and help this image tell its story.

It was just after dawn. I was on the bank of the Bou Regreg River, looking into the far distance at the 12th century crenellated wall surrounding Rabat’s old city. I wanted to erase all traces of our time, and take the viewer back to the medieval world. This wall was built nearly a thousand years ago, at the time of the Crusades, protecting the Almohad dynasty from the attacks of both European armies and pirates. I used a 750mm telephoto lens to reach across the river and stress the pink tinged walls. The image acquired a painterly effect, due in part to the low light, which caused me to use ISO 400. The electronic static or noise at ISO 400 works in my favor here, creating a mottled texture in the walls, grass, and sky that makes the scene less real, and more of an illusion. The pink light and textures recall a time of fire and blood. I felt as if I was looking directly into the past.

This goat was exploring the remnants of an ancient rockslide in the High Atlas. There are two entirely different kinds of texture in this image. The texture of the rocks in shadow is smooth and almost glossy. The textures of the rocks in the sunlight appear more rough and coarse. The goat navigates between the edge between shadow and light, rough texture and smooth.

I found these abandoned fences stacked against a boarded up building – they had outlived their purpose and have been left to the ravages of time. One was once painted a turquoise blue; the other had been left unpainted. The early morning sun warms the color of both, and brings out the texture of flaking and peeling paint on the other. The image is a poignant one – both of these fences were hand made, and one of them painted in the hopes of appearing beautiful. Both now show only the bittersweet textures of nature at work.

The textures of the curving, bleached dead wood and the richly colored red rock contrast mightily here: sun vs. shade, red vs. gray, rough vs. smooth. The wood, of course, was once living material, and is now as lifeless as the rock behind it. While the rock holds its color, the wood does not. Ultimately, however, it is texture, defined by light that makes the dead wood seem dimensional, and incongruously alive.

I had a Mexican Fan Palm planted in my own backyard when I moved to Phoenix 12 years ago. It has already grown higher than my house, and perhaps someday, long after I’ve moved on, it will top 100 feet. Its thick trunk is ringed with the remnants of palm fronds that have long since been pruned away. I thought these fanciful stubs, fringed in wispy hairs, would make a more expressive photograph than the overall tree itself. And what better challenge for a brand new camera’s very first assignment than a close-up of nature in my own, all-too-familiar backyard? I had just taken delivery of my 10MP Panasonic Lumix FZ-50, and wanted to see how it would render texture, detail and color. I was delighted with the resulting image, and look forward to making thousands of new images with the FZ-50’s remarkable Leica zoom lens. I made this photograph deep in the shade of the palm tree’s own huge fronds. I set my white balance, as usual, on “cloudy” -- warming the color as I prefer. Using my spot-metering mode, I exposed on the brightest part of the wood to bring out the maximum detail in the stubs and the fragile hairs that surround them. These stubs are like an old, well-used skin that still clings to a body -- an interwoven patchwork of frond stubs reminding us of both life and death. As with us all, a tree begins to die the day it is born, and this is how it displays the reminders that mark its passage through life.

The curves and swirls on the back of a bronze dragon create a fancifully tactile experience for visitors to the rock garden at the north end of the vast Forbidden City complex. The shiny parts have been worn by years of touching. By moving in on only part of the dragon, and emphasizing the detail, I’ve stressed the textured grooves that catch the light and draw the fingers of visitors. The image is alive with rhythms that repeat the twisted shapes again and again. Dragons are imaginary beasts, and I tried to make this image a tactile feast for the imagination of my viewers.

The Boneyard is a place where old vehicles are unceremoniously left to decay. The setting sun brushes its rusting hood into a soft velvet sheen, and at the same time illuminates its trim and rear window in a matching glow, evoking a timeless mood. I used my spot meter to create this mood by exposing on the brightest spot in the image – the chrome strip. This darkened the picture, helping me to contrast the pitted texture of the chrome to the smooth texture of the hood, and then compare both to the translucent opaque color in the windshield. I designed this image around a series of curves. The curve of the tightly cropped chrome hood ornament echoes the curved shadow in the windshield. The gentle curve of the hood itself echoes the curve of the windshield. Within the arcs of these curves, it is texture and color that brings both mood and meaning to the image.

Two 30 foot high winged bronze figures flank a 142 foot high flagpole on top of the Hoover Dam. They were called "Winged Figures of the Republic" by sculptor Oskar J.W. Hansen. I chose to photograph just one of them, and in a very abstract manner. I moved in on just the legs and feet, incongruously abstracting the image to stress the textures that tell a story. The great dam, still the highest on earth, is now more than 70 years old. Since its dedication in 1935, millions of visitors have rubbed the feet of these statues for good luck, or just for the tactile pleasure of touching them. The contrast in color and texture is striking – the smooth golden toes quickly become heavily textured feet and legs, fading gradually to green. I also included the textured wall behind the statue. It is natural rock, part of a canyon carved by the river now tamed by the dam itself. All of these textures, so different in color and feel, combine to help me tell my story.

I built this image around three contrasting textures, each providing a separate layer of meaning. A tangled mass of branches in the foreground separates the viewer from the waterfall, and gives it a sense of isolation. The forceful textures of the backlit water itself provide the focal point of the image in the second layer. The brown rock underside of an overhanging cliff offers a background layer. Its texture is rough, yet warm in color and dappled with light. Water pours from a crevice in this rock as well. The entire image is literally awash with textures that demand our attention and etch the character of this natural setting into our consciousness.

An early morning sun reflects a touch of gold on the churning waters of the Virgin River as it plunges through the heart of Zion Canyon. There are numerous contrasting textures creating meaning in this photograph. The frothy water at the bottom contrasts to the dark undulations above it, as well as to the gold water flowing so placidly at the top. The large rocks that strew the river each are studies in opposing textures as well, ranging from smooth at the top to roughly textured in the middle. At the top of the frame, I’ve included a touch of shoreline for scale reference. It, too, is defined by its difference in color and texture.

Sometimes texture is merely implied, rather than fully revealed. Such is the case here. This trio of hikers almost seem to be meditating as they rest on the river-bank and gaze into the heavy woods on the other side. I don’t describe the texture of these trees in this image. I underexpose the trees by aiming my spot meter on the brightly illuminated hair of the hikers instead. Only the branches that hang out in the light over the narrow river are clearly seen. The rest of the trees recede into darkness, offering an abstracted texture of barely seen tree trunks, leaves and branches. I use texture here to express nature as both intricate and mysterious.

Someone has placed old bottles and a dream-catcher in the window of an abandoned gas station on Route 66 in Newberry Springs, California. The subject of this picture is what is in the window. But it is the context for that subject that makes the image work as expression. And that context is based largely on textures. The rotting wood window frame and peeling wall, revealing an old coat of paint, are both rich in texture. They are redolent with age and time. It is texture, more than anything else that tells the story of abandonment here.

I created this image of a sun-kissed, crushed and rusting boiler as a metaphor symbolizing the end of the age of steam power. It is a virtual map of textures. The boiler itself is a smooth and silky golden color, except for streaks of rust and a long row of round industrial rivets. The deep red hollow indentation is abstracted – its texture can only be imagined, not seen. The light red crushed ridge of metal is a texture in itself – we can almost feel the damage with our fingers. The shadowed area on the far left of the picture is seriously rusted, offering a coarse and unforgiving texture. The boiler no longer works. It is in a junkyard, and has become essentially irrelevant. No matter how sensuous its texture and color maybe, it, like the age of steam it represents, is gone forever.