Month: October 2019

My Favorites…

Sometimes I get lucky and the camera grabs exactly what I am looking at, just the way I want it.  The color is right, the lighting is perfect, and the camera doesn’t try to improve it.  This is a smart camera after all…  I’m not sure that I have a goal in mind when I take out the camera (iPhone or iPad).  I often see something that takes hold of me, and I must capture it.  Often it doesn’t work…  And I am so glad that I am not wasting film.

The picture above is from Hurricane Ridge, Olympic National Park, just after an early snowfall.  Sometimes the moment is perfect. Hurricane Ridge allows us to look out over and into the deep wilderness of the National Forest.  I was looking the other way…

But later, further down the road, we stopped for this view of the deepest darkest, velvety green of a wilderness.

The next two views are from another favorite place, Lake Crescent, also in the Olympic National Forest.   Grey days!  The light is silver, the shadows deep.  The shapes of things stand out.  There are fewer distractions when color is muted.

Another thing I like to experiment with is taking pictures up close or from odd angles so that I lose the identifying details and the image moves towards abstract.  I don’t know where my love of abstract art really comes from.  It just feels so natural to me to look at things that way, to imagine, to suggest what goes beyond what is there in reality.

It intrigues me to go in close and see something isolated from its surroundings, changing the context of the view, focusing on just that one thing.

 

How to capture a sense of place is always a challenge.  In the Hoh Rain Forest water defines the place.  Wet is its gloriously natural state.  Though it isn’t always that way.  I’ve been in the rain forest during drought and it feels strange and frightening, anxious and stressed.  This trip the rains came down, sometimes gently, sometimes determined.

And finally, atmospherics…that’s the way I think of it, partly a sense of place, recording a moment captured—all those sky and weather shots I love to go for.

Sunset, Kalaloch Beach, Washington.

Jim stood out in the rain and wind to catch his shot of the Cape Disappointment Light House.  I did not…

As always, Baker Bay, Cape Disappointment, seemed ever different, ever new, and at the same time eternal.

Good trip, and good to be back home.  Cheers everyone!

Glimpses of community…

We are just home from our road trip around the Olympic Peninsula and the wild coast of Washington, a month of easy-going travel.  We left on a rainy morning, with just hints of the Fall color to come.

This time I decided to focus my picture taking on the details, the overlooked and quiet things in places of big vistas.  All pictures were taken with my iPhone camera, or my iPad camera—I used both—dealing with dodgy internet, sparing use of electricity/batteries in the more basic National Park campgrounds, and often buffeting wind.

We revisited the Elwah River Restoration project, where two old dams were removed to restore environmental and river health, salmon runs, and renew the cultural importance of a free running river to tribal cultures.  This has been a huge project, and one very close to my heart.  The Elwah runs free now, and salmon are returning, the estuary is rebuilding.  This confirms for me that Nature wants to heal and thrive—especially when we get out of the way.

The community has built a wonderful information center, displaying the history and progress of the project, surrounded by art tiles created by the local children.  Wonderful!  This is just a taste…

Western Washington is slug country.  Our native Banana Slug is big—they can reach 6-8” in length.   They generally eat the detritus of the forest, rather than one’s potted plants.

A favorite cafe of ours displays other options….

Local informational signs began to catch my eye.  This one made me laugh every time we passed it!  “Little Dribblers”, beginning basketball…it also rains a lot in this home town.

And “Kitchen Music” just sounded so welcoming.

And near the town of Forks (setting for the Twilight Series—books and movies) we found this one….I was really glad to know the threat level was low….

With the artistic belief in using what you have, what you find, someone created this…

And someone else left these behind on a shingled beach…

And, finally, one of my favorites, along a neighborhood road quite a ways from town…

There are good things out there, good folks.  What a pleasure!