"Snap Decisions", my photo memoir of my time at the former Anchorage Daily News, is now on sale through my website store. A bargain at $20, it's now $16.50 with shipping. I can autograph and personalize your book when you order from me.

For the next month, I'll be posting a selection of the interior pages of my book. You'll see that my book is not like a typical book of photography. The image above shows the front and back cover of "Snap Decisions".

I think the stories behind photographs are as interesting as the images themselves. My idea for this book was to create two-page "spreads" within the chapters (News, Features, Portraits & Personalities, Traveling the Greatland, The Iditarod) of the book. Each spread has a theme and the short text tells the story of what the assignment was, how I took the photo, what was going on in Alaska at the time, or my was going on in my head at the time.

The short stories on each spread give depth to the photos. It makes the reader come back to the picture and understand more about it with each new viewing. Enjoy!

I haven't talked about the Kachemak Bay Winter King Tournament in Homer before on this blog, but I did blog about the joy of catching a "winter king" back in November of last year. Ruth and I have been fishing for winter kings for probably 15 years. Before we bought our boat Skookum, we fished for two years out of our old open skiff before we hit it right and caught one of these kings.

When the rod popped off, we looked at each other and wondered, "Could it be?"

We catch them regularly now and the  tournament -- the largest and highest prize payout in the state of Alaska -- is an annual rite for us.

This year my fishing buddy Mike Barth, a longtime Alaskan and Homer resident, and my brother (who lives in New Mexico now, but lived in Seldovia in the 1980's), fished in the tournament as Team Skookum. It was a cold and windy, but gorgeous day. The other two caught a fish each; I was content to drive the boat and hunt for fish as their captain.

We didn't win any prizes, but there's one side bet I make on the boat every year: that it won't be "skunked" (not catch fish). Unbelievably, in the twelve tournaments we've fished in, we've been skunked more times than we've been successful.  There's lots of stress to perform on tournament day, and that pressure can make a captain desperate!

This year, with our little fish, we won that bet.