Talking Pictures

Heading home on New Year’s Day after dropping off a family friend at the bus station, Peter Baumgarten runs into a blinding snowstorm. “Whiteout conditions,” he says, “almost impossible to see 10 feet in front of me, trying to make out car tracks to follow, but they’re completely covered.” After about 20 minutes of anxious struggle through blinding snow, he’s had enough, and he pulls over near a little park in the small town he and his wife, Christianna, are trying to drive through. With a sigh of relief, he lets the stress dissipate.

The kinds of commercial images Ann Elliott Cutting is likely to be called on to create for her clients are interpretive, fanciful, or elaborate illustrations of ideas and concepts. Or, in some cases, they’re all of those adjectives combined into one image. In other words, “create” is exactly the right word for what she does.

"There's No Place Like Home"
I live at the end of a sandpit that curves off the northeasternmost tip of Bainbridge Island, just off the coast of Seattle, Washington. In January the combination of high tides and low barometric pressure frequently floods out the street at our end of the sandpit.

The tide was particularly high on...

A few years ago, on a hot summer afternoon, I was roaming the streets of New York City when I came across a lively group of domino players. They had set up a table on the corner of 91st and Amsterdam and were enjoying a game in the shade. Charmed by the scene, I watched from a distance while I built up the courage to ask if I could photograph them. I knew I couldn't let...

Beauty In Unlikely Places

Where does one find beauty? Sometimes it can be found in the most unlikely places. The Hohman Avenue train station resides trackside in Hammond, Indiana. It is abandoned...

I don't believe there are any accidents in life. My friend from Seattle came to visit me several months ago. He wanted to catch up and go take pictures with me. After an uneventful afternoon, we decided to get something...