Bye, Randy Langstraat

I have written briefly about Flickr photographer Randy Langstraat before, mainly on Twitter. 

I have noted his claims to have "captured" sunbursts, which he frames to shoot at the edge of a rock, when it's clear, by the regularity of the bursts, that he's using a filter. 

 I can't remember how much I've written before about something more serious, and non-photographic. That is, per the late David Roberts, that he appears to be one of those people who feel compelled, when hiking in the Southwest, to gather potsherds into one place, on top of a rock, for display. 

At times, he's hiking places with enough visitation, even in more backcountry, that, per Roberts' worries, he's not destroying "provenance" of the potsherds. In other places he's been at, though, he may be. 

A recent visit of his to Homolovi State Park in Aridzona has a twist. I quote: Shortly before sunset we went on one final hike together to the Homolovi I Pueblo where we found potsherds scattered all over the ground. But, in the picture that is captioned, they're NOT "all over the ground." They're on top of two rocks. So, were they there before, or did he put them there? Ditto with a lower picture, where the caption says: We found a couple large potsherds at this site, too. But, the pictured potsherds are all on one rock.  

In this album and blog post and many others, he has some great photos of petroglyphs, too, and has pictographs in other albums and on other blog posts. But, he rarely digs into details. He may say that site X is Fremont, not Anasazi, but he won't go into more details, like Basketmaker III, Puebloan I or whatever, nor will he talk much, beyond a Kokopelli, about what the figurines may represent, other than generally giving most of them Anglo names. I also am not totally fond of one of his hiking friends not spelling things like "Hubbell" correctly. There's also, to be honest, the bits of envy that DINKs who are in the tech world have both money and free time to blow.

In the album after that, he had THREE sunbursts. Enough. Bye.