This weekend I had the opportunity to contemplate what it means to be within arm's reach of a lion. A sleeping lion, to be sure, but a lion nonetheless—and close enough, and with few enough impediments between me and it that if I had wanted badly enough to know what it's fur felt like, I could have found out.

I didn't, though. It didn't seem... prudent.

Bright sun on a bright, sunny, Big Sur morning, and me lucky enough to catch it.

[Editor's Note: I've pinned this post to the front page for the duration of the sale, but new updates will continue to be posted below.]

For the first time ever, I've decided to hold a print sale. From today through the end of the month I'll be offering the 18 images you see below, so if you've ever thought to yourself "Hey, I really wish I could own a Mike Sakasegawa print," now's your chance. I'm including images from several ongoing series as well as a bunch of singles. (Note: you can click on each image to see a larger version.)

Halo Big Sur, CA 2010 10" x 15" on 12" x 18" sheet	Lake Morena Lake Morena, CA 2010 10" x 12.5" on 12" x 16" sheet	Frog Pond Shutesbury, MA 2010 10" x 12.5" on 12" x 16" sheet
Well Worn Shutesbury, MA 2010 10" x 15" on 12" x 18" sheet	Garden Carmel Valley, CA 2012 10" x 15" on 12" x 18" sheet	Sand La Jolla, CA 2012 10" x 12.5" on 12" x 16" sheet
Sunbeam Big Sur, CA 2012 10" x 15" on 12" x 18" sheet	Into the Blue Again From Series "Quality Time" 2010 10" x 10" on 12" x 12" sheet	Doctor's Office From Series "Quality Time" 2012 10" x 13.3" on 12" x 16" sheet
Just Keep Swimming From Series "Quality Time" 2012 10" x 15" on 12" x 18" sheet	Socks (Jason) From Series "You Were Here" 2011 10" x 15" on 12" x 18" sheet	Sweater (Juliette) From Series "You Were Here" 2012 10" x 15" on 12" x 18" sheet
Untitled Del Mar, CA 2012 10" x 15" on 12" x 18" sheet	Untitled Carmel Valley, CA From Series "It Forgets You" 2011 10" x 15" on 12" x 18" sheet	Cherry Pits 2012 10" x 15" on 12" x 18" sheet
Silver Sorrento Valley, San Diego, CA From Series "Stochasm" 2010 10" x 15" on 12" x 18" sheet	Folding La Jolla, CA From Series "Stochasm" 2012 10" x 15" on 12" x 18" sheet	Bars Big Sur, CA From Series "Stochasm" 2012 10" x 15" on 12" x 18" sheet

The details:

• Prints are digital C-prints, sized as noted above, on Fuji Crystal Archive paper.
• Prints are signed, uneditioned, and unmounted.
• All prints are priced at $60 US.
• Orders that will be shipped to California addresses will have sales tax applied.
• Domestic shipping via UPS is included in the price.
• International shipping is available at additional cost.
• Orders must be paid via PayPal.
• Rather than printing and shipping each order as it comes in, I'll be collecting orders through August 31 and then submitting the entire run to the printer at once. I expect orders will start shipping in the second week of September.

[Ordering info removed.]

Looking forward to hearing from you!

The morning before my father-in-law's birthday found a big group of us walking along the beach near his house. I miss being up there sometimes, with so much beauty being so easy to find. Sometimes, though, the obvious stuff—the cliffs, the ocean, the hills, the trees—makes us forget to look for the things that need to be found. Things like the sky and the rocks making stripes on the surface of a rippling lagoon.

I decided recently to try my hand at a different way of shooting—what photographer and printer Ctein calls "stochastic photography." I suppose I should rather say that I decided to try getting back into it, or perhaps further into it, since this sort of intuitive, catch-as-catch-can shooting is something I did a lot of when I was first getting into photography. In any case, I'm fairly pleased with some of the results.

A few seconds later, most of this lovely detail was gone.

It's a little unnerving to be around other artists sometimes. Just after I snapped this, my sister-in-law leaned in and told me that she'd noticed the textures in the rock face, too, as well as the contrast between the orange of the rock and the blue of Jason's shirt, and she'd just been about to ask me to take this picture so she could use it to paint from. I guess the fact that we both saw something means that there was something there.

Done with one thing and on to the next. A bath, in this case. Such is the life of a child—always forward.

I think the worst part of my day is the time between when I get in bed and when I finally fall asleep. In part because the day never feels finished, and in part because I'm not ready for it to be tomorrow, when I'll have to go back to the office. And, in part, because where my mind will go when there's nothing to focus it can be unsettling—panicking about the fact that I'm going to die some day, maybe a long time from now, maybe soon, or maybe this will even be the last time I close my eyes, and what would that mean, and how many things have I left undone, and...

I do what I can to avoid giving myself the time to obsess, lying there with my eyes closed. I try to wait until I'm exhausted, knowing that I'm not doing myself any favors. Or I force my mind into stupid, repetitive patterns until I finally slip away. ("Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas... no, Arizona, Arkansas, California, start over, that's cheating.")

Sometimes, instead, it's flights of fancy. When Juliette isn't shifting positions and the kids are quiet and the dog isn't licking himself, I can convince myself that I'm back in my old college dorm room, or the room at my mom's old house, or the one at my dad's old house. I'll never be in those rooms again except in my head, at night with my eyes closed.

But lying there, when I'm in the right frame of mind, I can feel the presence of different walls just beyond where I can feel the sheets and blankets against my skin, and if I stretch out I'll feel the spot on the wall where my friend cracked the plaster with my head back when in middle school. Or if the window is open, the midnight breeze might have just stirred a basketball net and riffled the leaves of a tree full of beer cans.

Sometimes in my mind's ear I can hear the hollow "ca-chunk" of the door handle leading out of the dorm lounge. I can feel the prickle of dry oak leaves in the soles of my bare feet as I carry a load of laundry from from my mom's front door out and down to the laundry room. And it pains me that I will never, ever hear or feel those things again. Sometimes I wish I were still back there, and I wonder, lying there trying to fall asleep, if maybe I'll wake up to find myself with a pile of homework on the floor and class in ten minutes.

It's happened to me before that I've been in the middle of a dream and felt myself start to wake up, and desperately tried to hang on and keep the life I'm in from evaporating. I remember dreaming about a girl, once, a beautiful girl who I loved and who loved me, and as I started to rise back into the conscious world we both cried, knowing that it would be over soon—I felt numb for a while after I woke up.

Sometimes, when I'm lying with my eyes closed, I wonder—as I'm sure everyone does—whether dying would be like that, like just waking up into a different life. And it seems nice to think that way sometimes, to think that I wouldn't just stop and cease to be. Except that then all the joys of this life—tickling Jason and hearing him scream with laughter, the smile Juliette and I shared just after we'd been married, making faces with Eva, hell, even laughing at the sheer horrendousness of my dog's flatulence—would all have been mere imaginings, and how could I ever get over that? I can't imagine even wanting to.

Lying awake, with my eyes closed, I ponder and panic and come to no conclusion, no resolution. Eventually I do fall asleep, though I don't know how. It gets late, and somehow I trick my mind into ignoring itself.

Albuquerque, Boston, Charleston, Des Moines, Chicago (come back to that the next go-round, or is that cheating?), Edmonton (can I use a Canadian city?), France (not a city), Grand Rapids, Home (a place, maybe, a state of mind, a memory, a . . .

The last of the semi-decent shots from my last roll of film.