The archive

Cars, and everything
that is not cars.

The archive runs to thousands of frames. What follows is a working selection, and it grows as sets come off the card and get pulled together.

Click any frame to see it large. The viewer then steps through the rest of that collection, so you can sit in one set without coming back out to the page.

Looking for something specific? Whitetail at dusk, the capitol rotunda in a particular season, a downtown block at last light, a specific car from a specific year. There is more Alaska in the archive than the set below, and the southwest, which has no collection here yet. Ask through the form at the bottom and I will go and find it.

Route 66 and car culture

7 frames

Four seasons of festival days on the Illinois stretch. Chrome, crowds, tire smoke, the twelve seconds of light you get between one car pulling out and the next pulling in, and a downtown plaza on an evening when somebody parked something worth walking over to. The last three are the 2026 Abe Lincoln Car Show Spectacular, which rained the whole way through, and rain on old paint is worth the wet shoes.

A red Ford Mustang convertible rolling down a downtown street past a brick building, with the chrome grille of a maroon 1956 Chevrolet filling the right side of the frame. — Mother Road Festival, downtown Springfield

A cream classic Cadillac lit up in a burnout at the center of a closed street, tire smoke towering over the roofline while a crowd watches from behind barricades and a drone hovers overhead. — Burnout, mid street, full crowd

The open hood of a red Mercury Cougar at a car show, blue plug wires and polished chrome under the lid, the Cougar script badge sharp on the front fender. — Cougar, hood up

Late day sun flaring through the trees of a downtown plaza, a white supercar parked along the brick walk and a tower rising behind the canopy. — Downtown plaza, late light

Black and white close view of a 1960s Plymouth head on in the rain, the hood covered in standing water beads, the chrome hood ornament centered above the PLYMOUTH letters and the full width of the bar grille below. — Plymouth, holding the rain

The front fender of a restored white Illinois State Police Plymouth beaded with rain, its stacked headlight and turn lamp at right and the State Police door lettering running down the left of the frame under a spotlight mirror. — State Police cruiser, out in it

Low three quarter view of a white muscle car with gold and black side stripes parked on soaked pavement, its rear wheel and dented quarter panel filling the left of the frame and the car mirrored in the water pooled along a painted parking line. — Rain day, parked on the line

Full Mother Road Festival gallery (opens in a new tab)

The Skyview Drive-In

4 frames

My family owned this one for eight years. A 1950 screen tower on the original alignment of Route 66 in Litchfield, the last of the road's drive-ins still running in Illinois, and the place where I learned what an audience does with an evening. These are the frames that survive from those seasons.

The screen tower of the Skyview Drive-In standing against a red and orange sunset, with the corrugated perimeter fence running back toward the setting sun and the gravel entrance drive alongside. — Skyview Drive-In, gates about to open

The lit Skyview Drive-In marquee at dusk, red neon spelling DRIVE IN down the pillar, bulbs around a yellow reader board and a panel reading VISIT OUR SNACK BAR, with the last of the sunset along the horizon behind. — The marquee, lit for the night

The Skyview Drive-In marquee in daylight reading OPENING CARNIVAL APR 28 29 and 30, with a Route 66 interpretive marker for the drive-in in the foreground and grain bins along the horizon. — Opening weekend, first event of the season

The Skyview Drive-In screen seen from the middle of the gravel lot at sunset, the sun going down at the left edge and broken clouds across the whole sky. — From the middle of the lot

The Route 66 Film Festival

6 frames

Two days at the Hoogland Center for the Arts in Springfield. Programs on the table, filmmakers taking questions from the stage, an audience that stays for the credits, and somebody going home with a clapperboard.

A stack of programs for the 24th annual International Route 66 Film Festival fanned across a table, the cover showing a gold film reel and the dates at the Hoogland Center for the Arts in Springfield. — Programs, before the doors open

The wide stage at the Hoogland Center for the Arts with the screen up and the red curtain drawn back, two filmmakers seated for a question and answer session and a host standing at the right of the frame. — Question and answer, Hoogland Center

Admit One tickets scattered across Illinois Route 66 brochures on the festival welcome table. — Admit one

Festival goers with lanyards talking between screenings in a row of theater seats, shot from the balcony above them. — Between screenings

An antique cash register in the foreground lit blue and green, with a film playing on the screen behind it out of focus. — Back of the room, film running

Three people on the red carpet in front of the Route 66 Film Festival backdrop, one of them holding a clapperboard trophy. — An award, handed over

Full Film Festival gallery (opens in a new tab)

The Illinois State Capitol

7 frames

Four years shooting for the Illinois State Senate put me inside this building often enough to learn it, and it rewards a return trip in every season. The dome from the tile wall on Sixth Street, magnolias in front of the columns in April, the rotunda from the floor, a hearing room in the hour before it fills, arched windows in the limestone, and the bronze soldier on the monument shot straight into the sun.

The inside of the Illinois State Capitol dome seen from the rotunda floor, ringed by a painted frieze of figures and rising to a stained glass oculus with the state seal at its center in green and gold. — Illinois State Capitol, looking up

A saucer magnolia in full pink bloom filling the left of the frame, with the columns and grey dome of the Illinois State Capitol soft behind it against a clear blue sky. — Magnolia against the dome

The Illinois State Capitol dome against a deep blue sky, with a long mosaic wall of hand painted tiles in red, yellow, green and blue running along the sidewalk in the foreground. — Capitol dome and the tile wall

A row of tufted oxblood leather high back chairs behind wooden desks fitted with microphones, in a hearing room with a tapestry on the far wall. — Empty chamber, before the room fills

The Illinois state flag hanging on a gold corded pole, the eagle and the UNION ribbon visible in its folds, with the United States flag and a trailing ivy behind it. — Illinois and the Union

Two tall arched windows with green weathered copper grilles set into a pale limestone wall, an iron lamppost and an empty black bench on the brick sidewalk below. — Downtown, nobody about

A bronze soldier on a stone monument shot from below into the sun, rifle over one shoulder and a bugle in hand, the light flaring across the figure. — Into the sun, monument square

Nature, water and wildlife

4 frames

The morning work that nobody commissions. A creek running through old growth timber, a heron coming up off a lake, a hawk holding a thermal over the treeline, one bumblebee on one woodland sunflower. This set grows every time there is a walk to take.

A shallow creek running over stones through deep green old growth forest, sunlight breaking through the branches at the far bank. — Creek through old growth

A great blue heron lifting off a still lake with its wings spread and its feet trailing rings across the water, a wooded point and a hazy morning sky behind. — Off the water, Illinois lake

A hawk soaring high above a green treeline under a bank of tall white clouds, with the sand edge of a lake and a cut field in the bottom of the frame. — Riding the afternoon thermals

A bumblebee working the orange center of a yellow woodland sunflower, with a second bloom above it and an arching green foxtail seedhead alongside. — Woodland sunflower and one bee

Alaska

7 frames

Southeast Alaska runs at a scale that makes everything in it look temporary. A whale blowing on water that goes flat and dark for miles, a fishing boat running out under a hull that dwarfed it, a peak standing above its own cloud line, a few houses holding a spot in the spruce above a low tide, and the pilings of an old dock left behind on the flats when the water went out. Nothing here is arranged and none of it needs to be. Travel frames rather than paid work, and the same job either way: be outside early and wait for the light.