The Casual Blog

Last month Sal and I went on a scuba diving trip to Dominica.  Although we’ve done a lot of diving, this was our first diving trip since before the pandemic, and we were out of practice.  We took a scuba refresher class at Gypsy Divers, which was a very good tune up. Safety first! Our trip was organized by the Triangle Dive Shop in Durham.

Dominica is a small island in the eastern Caribbean.  It is lush and mountainous, and very beautiful.  It was the location for shooting parts of The Pirates of the Caribbean movies.   The coral reefs there seemed less healthy than when we were last there, and the ocean life less abundant.  With ocean temperatures and acidity levels rising all over the world and threatening sea life, this was sad but not surprising.  Still, it was good to be diving again.  We had some good sightings, including sea turtles, sting rays, squid, and lots of small tropical fish.  Life has not given up. 

The photos here, other than the first, are ones I took over the last several years on trips with my friend and mentor, Chas Glatzer, who died recently in a car accident.  His death left me shaken, and I’m still processing it.  

I did my first photography workshop with Chas back in 2018 in the area around Brevard, NC, photographing elk and the vistas of the Blue Ridge mountains.  In the years since, I’ve gone with him to Yellowstone, to Florida, to the lower Hudson Bay to photograph polar bears, and to the Falkland Islands, where we encountered thousands of penguins.  

Chas was a gifted photographer and gifted teacher.  He taught me a lot about the technical details of exposure, about how to evaluate natural light, and how to use digital processing tools to fashion better images.  He gave me lessons in perceiving and capturing beauty, but just as important, in appreciating the fragile and endlessly varied wonders of nature.  

Chas was a lively, funny guy.  He was somewhat of the MAGA persuasion, which I found unfortunate.  But there’s a lesson I took from that, too:  people can be great people, smart and highly accomplished, and at the same time hold ideas that are not well founded.  I try not to judge too harshly, and hope that others will grant me the same grace.  

I spent some time this week looking through the thousands of photos I took during some of the adventures I had with Chas, hoping to find a good picture of him worth sharing.  But no luck.  In general, when we were together, I was looking at the amazing animals other than him.

But there’s no shortage of pictures of him on the internet.  And my own recollections of him are unusually vivid.  We were side by side as bison ran for their lives from a pack of wolves and headed straight towards us.  Side by side a few yards from a polar bear that seemed worrisomely interested in getting closer.  Side by side in front of hundreds of screeching penguins tending to their chicks.  

I’m so grateful for all the lessons and adventures Chas shared with me.  I’ll miss him.