This blog has been a steady fixture in my life and on this site since November 2012. Thanks to you my readers and photography itself I have never run out of things to write about. In the earlier years of the blog when I was more active in the photography community in the New England area, I wrote about other photographers, shows, books, and events more than I do now.

Age has a way of forcing retirement even if that is not the chosen path and I am no exception. Older and wiser? Maybe a little. While still strong and vibrant there can be no doubt there is less output from this artist than in earlier days. As I write this there is snow on the ground and freezing rain falling from the sky. January was always a time to process and print for me. For 25 years or so this meant long hours in the darkroom, now it means long hours in front of a computer screen. I have concurrent projects I am final printing now, from Utah made in November

and from wildfire damage in Paradise, California in early January. 

My daughter Maru and I are working together to promote, market and sell my work. We have formed an LLC called: Insight Arts Management (IAM). Although I am her first client she will represent others as well. There is a new site   (insightartsmanagement.com) that will launch in the next few months. We also plan an invitational evening event that will showcase my work and others in March. Maru has made sales already. I am very excited at this new venture.

Ahead, as I view the state of my affairs in this place and time? I can report that the state of Neal Rantoul is excellent. I currently have infrared work shot in the early 80's hanging at the Boston Society of Architects on Congress Street through June. 

The reception, open to the public, is January 30 from 6-8 pm. I have work from the Shrink Wrapped series

 that has just been accepted into the upcoming exhibition at the RI Center for the Arts that will open February 21, juried by Aline Smithson (thank you, Aline). And will be exhibiting in a one-person show at the Harvard Ed Portal in Allston this coming spring.

I am of an age where being unaware of one's own impending demise would be irresponsible and, as you know, I travel often to make my work. Travel will continue and has been particularly worthwhile this past year. High on the list is another trip to the Palouse, the extensive wheat growing country in eastern Washington that I have been photographing since 1996. For an artist who makes work in series that can need as brief as an hour the Wheat series is truly exceptional, for it is ongoing and begun in 1996! This time I hope for a trip there in mid to late June. There can be great worth to the same content re-approached and the Palouse is a remarkable constant for me, continuing to produce work that is fresh, innovative and qualitative. Palouse crops are first planted in April so June is a "first harvest" period as well as triggering a second planting. Late June is wheat fields at its most glorious and lush.

Since then, meaning since I started writing the blog in 2012, you and I have been on many journeys, both physical and emotional, intellectual and metaphysical. I don't think of blogs as having much staying power, meaning readership after they are written and read.  But they are all still there, contained in the "Archive" heading on the Blog page. If you subscribe and follow along, great, I appreciate that. But there are more posts that, no doubt, you haven't read, back in the archive. I encourage you to take a look.

As always, I welcome your thoughts, comments and criticisms: here