Unphotographable

This is a picture I did not take of two young soldiers, a man and a woman, the former clean-shaven and the latter effervescent, both smiling and chatty while passing through an airport in their fatigues, their mood a stark contrast to the soldiers returning from battle who...

This is a picture I did not take of a six-foot long tree limb as thick as an arm, crashing to the ground and missing my head by inches while I stood beside one of those official historical signs you see dotting former battlefields of the South, this...

This is a picture I did not take of a home security firm, housed in a fortress-like brick building ringed with wrought-iron fence and razor wire in the bright sunlight of an early Sunday, the security firm's own burglar alarm ringing loudly into the empty morning, out and...

This is a picture I did not take of a girl riding her bicycle in slow circles at twilight in the parking lot of a motel that advertises weekly rates, the sound of trucks on the nearby highway leavened by the buzz of the motel's flickering neon sign,...

This is a picture I did not take of a young woman stifling a yawn, standing in a chaotic room within the Red Zone of a Level 1 Trauma Center on a hot Saturday night in the middle of June, hallways filled with a dire backlog of gurneys;...

This is a picture I did not take of a table half-filled with vintage Nazi and white supremacist literature, alongside an equal amount of Dion Sanders memorabilia, each and every piece priced to sell at a stop on the 90-mile long yard sale on the Dixie Highway on...

This is a picture I did not take of two accomplices to a crime on Mother's Day weekend -- the first, a mom in a maroon sweatshirt and headwrap, impatient beside the getaway car (an unlicensed, rusted Ford Taurus GL) mom holding her daughter's hand, the girl no...

This is a picture I did not take of the most optimistic homeless man in America, spare changing at the Fox News-sponsored "Tea Party" in Atlanta on April 15th, rattling his empty cup as hundreds passed-by and grimaced at the sight of him approaching, trying to avoid meeting...

This is a picture I did not take of a live cartridge from a .44 Magnum, resting in the litter-strewn grass outside a McDonald's at dusk, the bullet sitting there quietly, just to the right of my foot, while I photographed a neighborhood anti-crime rally in the dying...

This is a picture I did not take of a man holding down the first spot in a bread line on a cold February morning in the United States of America in the year two thousand and nine....

This is a picture I did not take of four men standing in the DC Metro on their way to Barack Obama's inauguration; three of them African American, in matching black leather jackets and knitted black ski hats, each hat emblazoned with the sequined word "OBAMA", and the...

This is a picture I did not take of a man running in front of mid-morning freeway traffic, his right hand clutching a closed, plaid umbrella, his left hand gripping the handle of a hamster cage (complete with spinning-wheel and water bottle) in which the hamster is attempting...