For the incorrigibly curious, I offer 379 words about myself:

I was born in the late spring of 1960 in Southern California, where I’ve lived all my life. For my formal education, I graduated from Palos Verdes High School (1977— I am the composer of the Sea King March); I have a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from the University of California, Irvine (1981), and a law degree from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles (1985). Explaining exactly what I do for a living would take up far too much space here. But it’s enough to say that I work for a large company.

Obligatory picture of the Web site owner. Lassen Volcanic National Park, California, September 2000. My beard is noticeably grayer now, and I no longer use my Canon Elan II (film) SLR. Thanks to my good friend Tim Williams for the only picture on this Web site I didn’t take.

I sort of fell into photography at a rather early age, and decided that I liked it. The interesting thing is that it’s the only “visual art” for which I seem to have any aptitude at all. I have no talent whatsoever for drawing or painting, and can barely draw a straight line without mechanical assistance. Photography classes have helped me to varying extent, but what I’ve found most helpful is going out and doing it.

Another thing I’ve been involved with from an early age is music. I play the tenor saxophone in a community band, which I’ve done since getting out of college (and, of course, I played in bands in high school and college). I also have composed and arranged various pieces for band over the years. I would probably be more active with this now if I had sufficient incentive to put in the necessary effort. Photography and computers provide more immediate gratification, I suppose, especially since I’ve never found much merit in synthesizers or computer-generated music.

It should be apparent from the content of my Web site that I enjoy travel very much. I take most of my trips alone. I’m not enthusiastic about going solo, but if I could travel only when a suitable companion is available I’d seldom get to go anywhere. Photography helps to make solo travel a more enjoyable experience, both during and after the trip.

You should not be surprised that I spend too much time with my computer, including a fairly active on-line social life, scanning photos, and working on this Web site. When I’m not communing with the computer, I often enjoy listening to classical music and musical theatre cast recordings.

Although I have designed this site for grown-up readers, it includes none of what is often unfortunately termed “adult.” There is nothing prurient or indecent, as that would not be relevant to what this Web site is about. There is no violence, as I much prefer violas and cellos. The pictures include neither concupiscence nor birthday attire— indeed, there are practically no pictures of people at all.

There is also no obscene or vulgar language. That’s not because I find it inherently inappropriate or offensive, but because I don’t want my site blocked by those imbecilic products that purport to shield Web surfers from “offensive” material. Though ostensibly intended to protect the precious innocence of minors, filtering software increasingly “protects” American library patrons of all ages because its use is a mandatory condition for receiving federal funding. Filtering is also ubiquitous in American workplaces, and increasingly common in Internet cafés and public access kiosks.

So is there any offensive material? That’s impossible to answer. I often describe this site as Travel and scenic photography with irreverent commentary. The phrase irreverent commentary means only that I follow Stephen Sondheim’s admonition to “laugh at the kings or they’ll make you cry.” So when I feel it’s appropriate and relevant, I’ll paint barbecue sauce on any sacred cows I encounter (as I’m doing right now). Given the vacuous combination of “political correctness” from the Left and “Family Values” from the Right encouraging people to take offense at any substantial statement, I would be disappointed if something here didn’t offend someone, somewhere, at some time.

Is this Web site appropriate for young children? That’s another impossible question I can answer only by suggesting that young children probably won’t find it very interesting. But to use the politicians’ latest undefinable term, there is nothing “harmful to minors.” Unless you believe (for example) that it’s harmful for children to know that their Christmas toys are made in third-world sweatshops rather than in Santa’s North Pole workshop.

The closest trademarked Motion Picture Association of America rating that might apply is Parental Guidance Suggested. But that’s true of any Web site, including those specifically intended for children. Many of those sites exist primarily to inculcate into young minds the Values of voracious and conspicuous consumption. No responsible parent would leave such guidance to companies that sell filtering software for profit, to groups and individuals that appoint (or anoint) themselves Righteous Guardians of Family Morality, or to pious politicians pandering for re-election.

Contrary to John’s Gospel, in the beginning there are the Pictures. The Words come later. After I get over the peculiar blend of excitement and disappointment from the first viewing of my processed film or raw digital camera files, I choose a relative handful of the most interesting images. Then I spend however long it takes in Adobe Photoshop to prepare the final versions of those pictures. When I’m done with that, I can start assembling the pictures into a Travel Photo Essay.

My approach is perhaps the opposite of the usual way to write travelogues. Rather than illustrating a story or journal with pictures, I’m “illustrating” a set of pictures with words. My goal is to make the Travel Photo Essays a “total experience” that shows off my photography, and is also informative, opinionated, and thought-provoking. I’m also mindful of the need to make pages “interesting” to the search engines that bring nearly all my visitors. I’m still telling a story; but it’s a selective story about the places and the pictures, with inevitable constraints.

While I do hope the Travel Photo Essays help your travel planning, they are in no way comprehensive guides. As an American worker with very limited vacation time, what I’m able to visit and photograph is necessarily (and frustratingly) limited. I also can’t revisit most places to keep material current. But I do make updates when I find out about significant changes, such as when Waikiki’s Kodak Hula Show became the Pleasant Hawaiian Hula Show in 1999, and then No More Hula Show in 2002. I try to emphasize what seems likely to remain relevant over the long haul. I generally avoid mentioning hotels and restaurants. Because those establishments are inherently subject to frequent changes of ownership, management, and quality, I have no way to assure that what I might say about them remains current, accurate, and useful.

Travel Photo Essays are not scholarly treatises. The main informational sources are the guidebooks, articles, and Web sites I used in preparing for my trips. But I always end up spending more time than I expected on supplemental research. Guidebooks often contradict each other on details; they’re clearly not scholarly treatises either (and they often seem to be updated less frequently than the year on the cover might suggest). They also lack much of the information I’m looking for. I selectively filter facts to fit my pictures and opinions. But if you notice something factually inaccurate, please let me know.

Over the years some well-meaning readers have told me that my Travel Photo Essays aren’t “personal” enough. They would prefer first-person journals of what I did, saw, ate, and felt, including some snapshots of myself and my family. The criticism has merit, as there are some excellent travelogues of that sort (and many more not-so-excellent ones that reveal far more about Jason, Tiffany, and Grandma than about the places they visited). Reading them suggests that the short trips I’m able to make would not yield compelling narratives. And most of my travel is solo, which tends not to be conducive to family snapshots. However, the article about my first cruise is a first-person narrative, as that was the only way I could write it.

That said, I think my Travel Photo Essays are quite personal. They reflect what I find interesting, including information and observations you probably won’t find in guidebooks. For example, I’m fascinated with the origins of place names, so that figures prominently; the Hawaii essays even include the meanings of the Hawaiian place names. While I do my best to capture in pictures what’s beautiful and inspiring, I often give my essays an irreverent tone. If I think something is overrated or excessively hyped, I won’t hesitate to say that. I enjoy questioning sanitized official history, casting a skeptical eye on “sacred” institutions and heroes, and ridiculing absurdity when I encounter it.

My essay on the cathedral of conspicuous consumption known as Hearst Castle offers an appreciation of Mr. William Randolph Hearst somewhat different from the official hagiography dispensed to visitors. My page on the Santa Barbara Courthouse contrasts that delightfully exuberant expression of civic pride with the oppressive new courthouse in Los Angeles where I served jury duty the year before my first visit there. And the pages on the California Missions at San Diego, Santa Barbara, La Purisima, Santa Inés, and San Juan Capistrano obligingly genuflect to the official Catholic history of Franciscans enduring hardship to bring the Indians the loving gifts of civilization and salvation. But then I note that the Indians rioted and burned down the missions because the Franciscans (and the Spanish military) enslaved them as laborers, decimated them with European diseases, and systematically eradicated their culture.

My pages on the very beautiful Palos Verdes Peninsula where I grew up consider the snobbery that’s as much a part of the scene as the stunning coastal views. In describing the very impressive renovation of San Diego’s once-decrepit Downtown, I wonder about the fate of the former inhabitants of the demolished flophouses. And I express amazement at how the federal government— with its mandate based on “Family Values”— could run a national park called Grand Teton, the English translation of which would surely merit an indecency fine if broadcast. (Parents and Puritans need not worry, as I don’t provide the translation.)

Just as clouds make a blue sky more interesting and dramatic in a photograph, I think opinionated irreverence is much more interesting than the uncritical sunniness of many newspaper and magazine travel articles. And I think it gives readers a better (and more interesting) picture of me than any family snapshots.

Although pictures of “natives in their native habitat” are a mainstay of travel photography, I have very few pictures of people on my Web site. There are two reasons for this. The first is that I dislike being photographed, so I tend to assume that people I encounter while traveling feel as I do.

The second reason is a legal one. There is rather little I can do with a picture containing recognizable people unless each person signs a “model release” giving me explicit permission to publish, sell, or otherwise use the picture. Some photographers can approach strangers, warm them into posing for excellent pictures, and then persuade them to sign a legal document. But I can’t do that. So any pictures of people that I do take will remain locked in my file cabinet, where only the dust bunnies can see them.

There are a few pictures of people on the Europe Through the Front Door pages. When I took them, more than 30 years ago, I was a teenager who had never heard of model releases. I also couldn’t imagine that anyone other than a very few friends and relatives would ever see the slides. Those pictures aren’t for sale.

That is, of course, a question only a U.S. reader would ask. The World Wide Web is supposed to be “world-wide,” as the name suggests. Metric units are the legal standard everywhere in the world, with the exception of Liberia, Myanmar (Burma), and the United States. So I have consciously chosen to use metric units throughout my Web site. But I use American spellings for them— proof that I am indeed a good, loyal, patriotic American!

The continued use of the ridiculous “English” system of inches, miles, pounds, gallons, and Fahrenheit degrees is a national disgrace. All the other former “English” countries, including the United Kingdom, have mandated the metric system. But Congress has consistently lacked the sanity and guts to bring the US in line with the rest of the world. It would seem that the only way to end the lunacy is for individuals to advance the metric system one inch (2.54 centimeters) at a time by using it themselves.

An enjoyable Web experience includes pages that load and display in a reasonable time. Not everyone has broadband Internet access. So I’ve selected picture sizes that should let the pages load acceptably fast with a dial-up modem connection.

The small images on the main pages are 120x180 or 120x153 JPEG files, depending on how I’ve cropped the original full-sized scans. I try to keep them smaller than 5 kilobytes. They’re a bit larger than the typical “thumbnail,” so you’ll get a good idea of what the picture looks like even you don’t choose to look at a larger “magnified” image. The larger images are twice the size of the small ones, usually 240x360 or 240x305. A few of them are a bit bigger than that, when I think that’s helpful to show more detail.

The images should be just large enough for enjoyable viewing at all the common screen resolutions without taking unacceptably long to load. Please take some time to look around— and tell your friends, too! But this also means the images are nearly useless for anything else. That’s entirely intentional.

I put a lot of effort into taking the pictures, scanning them, and assembling what I hope is an attractive and interesting Web site. If you like any of my pictures enough to want them for something other than viewing here, I’d be glad to sell you a file or print that should meet your needs. You need only send an e-mail telling me what you’re looking for.

You can sample eight of my pictures at higher resolution. They are specially cropped to enjoy as “wallpaper” background for your PC or Macintosh desktop. The images are in three common screen sizes, 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768, and they discreetly advertise this Web site. You can download them for personal use.

If you use AOL please read this first!

There is nearly infinite variation in the way monitors and video hardware render color. Every one is adjusted differently, often according to the user’s taste or the amount of light in the room. Some people don’t even change the settings that came from the factory. So I can only create each image as best I can, and hope it still looks good when you view it.

If my pictures don’t look good on your monitor, you can start by using the page I’ve prepared to help you adjust your monitor. Unfortunately, there are situations where that adjustment won’t help much.

All the pictures are JPEG files with 24-bit “color depth,” allowing up to 16,777,216 different colors. The pictures will thus look best if your video display is set for 24-bit or 32-bit/16.7 million colors (“True Color”). Since most of the pictures actually use far fewer colors than that, they should also look acceptable on a 16-bit/64 thousand color (“High Color”) display.

If you have a display set for 8-bit/256 colors, or if you’re running 16-color VGA, any full-color images will probably look pathetic. Your browser will attempt to simulate the thousands of colors in an image by breaking it up into dots or blobs of the colors it has available (a process called “dithering”). The result is a coarse and ugly rendering that’s particularly inept with small images at 640x480 resolution. If you have video hardware that can’t display more than 16 or 256 colors, there’s really nothing you can do other than replace it.

I have chosen fonts and colors that I consider easy and pleasant to read, and that display the pictures at their best. But like any other matters of aesthetics, those choices necessarily reflect personal taste and judgment and may not please everyone.

I use Microsoft’s new “Vista fonts” (included with Vista and Office 2007) throughout these pages. Most text on Travel Photo Essay pages is white Candara on a black background. I chose that color scheme to maximize the impact of the pictures. Most text on these Commentary pages is in Cambria, on a robin’s-egg blue background that I find much more comfortable for extended reading than the usual bright white. Links are in Corbel; page headers are in large bold Calibri. Monospaced text is in Consolas.

If you don’t have the Vista fonts, the CSS style sheets specify alternatives from the older Microsoft “core fonts” (which I used until April 2007). Most text is in Trebuchet. The footers at the end of pages and other special text are in Georgia. Links are in regular Verdana; page headers are in large bold Trebuchet. Monospaced text is in Andale Mono. If you’re using an old computer that doesn’t have those fonts, the CSS style sheets provide additional common alternatives. If you’re using a very old browser that doesn’t support CSS, the text will be in whatever font your browser is set to use.

Whatever your opinion of Microsoft, their Web fonts are pleasing and better optimized for readability on monitors than the ubiquitous Times New Roman, Helvetica/Arial, and Courier. That’s why the core fonts have become popular and appear on many Web sites. I think the new Vista fonts are even more appealing, which is why I have changed over to them.

There is one caveat, however. The new Vista fonts are specifically designed and optimized for LCD monitors and the ClearType sub-pixel rendering that makes text more comfortable to read. (If you’re using an LCD monitor with Windows XP and you don’t have ClearType enabled, I recommend downloading Microsoft’s ClearType Tuner PowerToy. It enables ClearType and lets you easily optimize it for your monitor.) The new Vista fonts can look blurry or “blocky” on CRT monitors (although they look very good when printed). Other fonts, including the older Microsoft “core fonts,” don’t have this problem.

A reader informed me of the CRT monitor problem several months after I converted this Web site to the Vista fonts. I decided to keep the new fonts because, as best as I can determine, most people who actually have them installed are using LCD monitors. The typical Vista user got this operating system pre-installed on a new computer (and probably had no other choice). Those new computers most likely came with new LCD monitors. For a number of very good reasons, rather few users of older computers are upgrading them to Vista. So I don’t think the incompatibility will affect many users. And since CRT monitors are now practically obsolete, compatibility problems with Web sites using the Vista fonts will diminish over time.

Microsoft uncharacteristically made the older “core fonts” freely available for download in both Windows and Macintosh formats from 1996 through 2002. That encouraged their widespread use, to the benefit of all Web users. Microsoft includes the fonts with Windows XP and Vista, and with versions of Internet Explorer and Office released since 2002. Apple includes them with Macintosh OS X. They’re now ubiquitous on the Web. If you don’t have the “core fonts,” you can download them here (Microsoft’s licensing terms specifically permit free distribution of the fonts in their original packages).

Microsoft acted in more typical fashion with the Vista fonts, making them officially available only to purchasers of Vista and Office 2007. But presumably because they expect the fonts to have widespread use, they provided a legitimate alternative way for Windows users to get them for free. The PowerPoint 2007 Viewer for Windows XP and 2000 includes the fonts, and also lets you view PowerPoint presentations without Microsoft Office. If you have Office XP or Office 2003, and you don’t share Microsoft’s sense of urgency about upgrading, the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack will update your software to read the new Office 2007 formats for Word, Excel, PowerPoint files and also install the new fonts. Either one is worth the time spent downloading (they’re 25.8 and 27.1 megabytes, respectively). The Vista fonts are quite attractive— except for the CRT caveat— and are increasingly used on Web sites.

Unfortunately, I don’t know of any way for Macintosh or Linux users to obtain the Vista fonts legally, other than by purchasing them individually from Ascender Corporation at an unspecified price that’s most likely prohibitive for an individual user. It is possible that Apple might eventually license the fonts and include them with future versions of OS X.