When Rich Ryon accepted a job in the field of construction engineering recently, he ended a long stint during which everyone knew he was the fastest and most skilled courier in Denver. With his preference for huge gears and low cadence, Richard was an amazingly smooth rider who could produce blazing speed with what appeared to be very little effort. He won pretty much every race he entered, seemingly at will. In the past year he had taken to riding a fixed gear on occasion. His chosen gearing? 53 x 12. Rich complained of spinning this gear out. In short, Rich was faster than spit goin' East. But his riding downtown was about more than just speed. Rich is also an ultra-smooth trials rider with masterful balance. The ultimate Rich Ryon messenger moments were those that combined his easy speed with some jaw-dropping spectacle of skill. Rich made his stripped down flat-bar GT road bike do some improbable things.

It's Friday. Almost midday. I just tanked up with gasoline in the old truck and a few cups of coffee at La Baguette, a great French cafe in downtown Colorado Springs, with my elderly folks. Now getting ready to head south to Taos, New Mexico. Four and a half hours on the road, under a cloud-mottled sky that portends a cooler weekend. Sunday, don't forget, I'll be giving my photo program "The Climbers: Life on the Edge" at 11:30 AM at the Taos Center for the Arts.

The show is a collection of 75 photographs of climbers that I've made since 1971. Lots of great shots of famous and not-so-famous climbers, including Earl Wiggins, Jimmy Dunn, Ed Webster, Henry Barber, Eric Bjornstad, Bob D'Antonio, and John Gill...photographs of climbers as people, doing everyday normal things rather than heroic actions. A lot of the photographs will be appearing in my new book "On the Edge: The Climber's Life."

I took my gang to Oceanside Pier yesterday. Just me and my Peeps.. my Posse.. ok.. ok.. my kids.

It was a perfect SoCal day. Crystal blue sky... Good visiblilty into the ocean.. some thunderheads setting up shop on the mountains.

My boy, aged 4-and-a-half, wore long pants, a long-sleeved, flannel shirt, bandana around his neck, cowboy boots, and a cowboy hat. Perhaps a bit over-dressed. He was pretty stoked.

Our plan was to walk out to the end of the pier, have lunch, and go back home. A nice simple day where neither I nor the kids were stretched to the breaking point. That was my plan.

©Bert Gildart: In Organ Pipe National Monument, the skies (as I discovered this past month) are among the darkest found anywhere in the United States. Increasingly, that’s becoming a rare condition, and for photographers, the pristine conditions found in this remote Arizona national monument located along the Mexican border is very good news.

If you understand the theory, and know your camera, you can dramatize your landscape images by back dropping your foreground with concentric lines that ring themselves around the one star in the sky that does not appear to move—the North Star.