Top Three Shots of 2007: #1

I realize that 2008 is almost over and i never did post my #1 favorite image from 2007.

So, just to get it out there......this was taken in July (2007) during a week with our friends in Bermuda. Kayce and I were tooling around on our scooters on a beautiful Saturday morning and came across ernest s. painting the roof of this house in pembroke parish, also known as the 'north shore'. i struck up a nice dialog with ernest and learned a little about him - he drives a cab on the island when the work is available, and he paints roofs to fill in the gaps. i emailed him a copy of this image and a couple of others that turned out nicely....but haven't heard back.

I love the way the white of the roof and ernest's clothes blend in with the clouds, and the blue house with the sky. it's almost as if he's painting in the clouds.

Melinda Hannigan

I've had the good fortune  become friends with Melinda Hannigan who in addition to being a wonderful person, is a an amazing - I repeat, amazing artist. She paints sections of big ships which as I've found in my work, provide infinite beautiful material: bleeding paint, rust spots and welds, faded symbols and miscellaneous scars and bruises they've acquired at ports all over the world.

Earlier this spring I was wandering Fishermen's Terminal as I'm prone to do, looking for some of this industrial beauty, when I saw the side of an old hull with some painted-over markings and new symbols immediately above the old that reminded me of Melinda's work. I snapped a few shots and later that week took a print to  her studio. I thought she would like it but wasn't prepared for the reception it received...and a few months later was bowled over when she said she had decided to paint it for her fall show in Seattle.

We visited her Studio again late this summer and were able to see the piece - "New Life" - almost completed. Then, this past week, Kayce and I stopped by the opening of her October show at the Fetherston Gallery in Seattle to see not only "New Life" in it's finshed form, but many other beautiful pieces Melinda had been working on during the past year. If you have a chance to

 stop by the gallery during the month of October, I guarantee you will not be disappointed. The photographs of Melinda's work don't do it justice - you have to see the texture up close, the seams, the rust, the scars...and feel like you're looking at the a section of a ship that's been surgically removed and mounted in front of you. It's very nice stuff!

You can also read more about Melinda and see more of her work at www.melindahannigan.com

site update

a little easter project.....this afternoon i finished an update to the main site by posting an new intro slideshow and one new gallery of 40 images.  when you go to the 'images' page you'll notice two links in the upper left-hand corner - gallery 1 & gallery 2.  gallery 1 contains the new images; gallery 2 is the collection that was posted in january when the new site launched.  

the new images are an assortment of favorites, several boats with reflections, some landscapes, architecture and moon shots - have i mentioned before how much i like the moon?

the last five new images are from a series called 'swallow' and are of a mother and father sparrow working on their nest...inside of a fountain next to a friend's swimming pool (even though these aren't swallows, the name of the series should be self evident).  

i always appreciate feedback - please let me know what you think and what you would like to see more of.

light on the water...

a beautiful day in seattle - one of those teasers before the rains set in again for the most of march and april - who knows, maybe we'll get lucky this year. one of my favorite spots on the planet is fishermen's terminal, on the ship canal between puget sound and lake union, where a large part of the fishing fleet from the seattle area parks between trips and during the offseason....and when the light is right and wind is down, the show is spectacular. i told a friend once that from a photographic standpoint it's almost not fair - all you need is a nice day, a tripod and a couple of lenses and these images almost jump out and whack you over the head!

more theology

my wife (known to some of you as lucy) emailed this afternoon to remind me of a full lunar eclipse scheduled for tonight. i skipped out of a meeting i probably should have gone to, but it was worth what ever trouble i'll be in...

the site was spectacular - and for a guy who gets excited about rocks (see yesterday's post) - you can imagine what a thrill this was. i arrived home just as earth's shadow eclipsed the moon and for about an hour we sat out on the deck and watched the show unfold. and miracles of miracles (this is seattle, right?), who would have thought we'd have a crystal clear sky to watch an eclipse in the middle of february? ten minutes after i took the last picture, clouds had completely obscured the scene. the picture above was taken just before the moon peeked out from behind earth's shadow - a friend emailed a little while ago and said the two bright specs of light above and to the left of the moon are saturn and regulus; the picture below was taken earlier in the eclipse.

theology of geology

i went for a walk with a friend saturday morning through a state park on the key penninsula, southwest of seattle. we came out onto a beach strewn with some of the most beautiful rocks...hundreds, thousands, millions! for some reason the scene brought to mind the title of a book i'd recently read, written by the late stephen j. gould - "rocks of ages" a wonderful and (in my opinion) successful attempt to view science and religion as noncompeting realms which can each play a meaningful role in our lives. this post is more about the science of the literal rocks on the beach. what a thrill to look at and hold matter that is positively ancient....tens if not hundreds of thousands of years old...and imagine the journeys each took to finally arrive on this out of the way beach in western washington.  i'm sure this kind of wonder displayed toward....rocks will elicit a few eye-rolls; i could care less - this stuff just stirs me to my core!

Top 3 Favorite Shots of 2007: #2

this image isn't on the main site yet....it'll be added during the february update, but i thought i'd share it now since it's 2007 favorite. there isn't a big story around it - a perfect example of what happens when you walk around with eyes open! my daughter and i went to see friends on the east coast in the middle of december and one of the mornings there was a light frost. autumn leaves are a favorite subject - their colors and textures make for infinite possibilities and the ice crystals really dressed this one up.

abbey of the arts interview

i was interviewed last week by christine paintner who is the creative force behind the rich and varied site, abbey of the arts. the abbey's primary mission is "to cultivate the sacred art of living through teaching, spiritual direction, writing, and art". i really enjoyed the experience....check the interview out here if you're inclined, but in any case be sure to spend some whorthwhile and rewarding time on christine's site!

Helpless

i love the moon….and birds. combined they evoke a reaction in my spirit i’ve never been able to explain. my friend rob lives on a beautiful farm outside washington d.c. and loves going for morning and evening walks with his pack of wild muts.

a few days ago this image popped into my inbox. it was, i think, taken by rob with the camera on his blackberry. wow! they say of the (literally) billions of images taken on cell phones each year, only a tiny fraction ever make it off the phone. This one deserves to be seen - i hope it sparks something in you the way it did in me. to make it a rich multimedia experience, view this image while listening to neil young’s “helpless” on the classic csn&y album “déjà vu” or for a wonderful cover of the song, go to itunes and download deb montgomery’s version on her “ask for angels” album:

blue, blue windows behind the stars
yellow moon on the rise
big birds flying across the sky
throwing shadows on our eyes
leave us helpless, helpless, helpless…

Thanks for the shot rwt – send more…

Top 3 Favorite Shots of 2007: #3 Splendor of Spring

looking back on 2007, i wanted to share my top-three favorite shots and the stories behind them. i named this picture 'splendor of spring' and its story is one of my favorites of the year.

in may i was driving from seattle to lind for my 30-year high school class reunion. it wasn’t much a reunion; turns out i was one of only two people who showed up...and I didn't even see the other guy until it was over - he was sitting at another table with his wife who graduated in a different year....our class of 18 was not, shall we say, really tight. but i digress.

highway 26 is a long, straight, two-lane highway that begins at the columbia river and cuts through miles of irrigated and dry-land farms before terminating in the roaring metropolis of 'dusty'. just west of royal city, i saw this tree calling to me, about a mile north of the highway. it looked spectacular, even from a distance. i turned onto the nearest dirt road and with a little winding through fields and over canals, managed to get right next to the tree. after a half hour "working" the scene i got back into my car and......it wouldn't start - the battery was completely dead!

i walked a half-mile to a complex of trailer houses with a machine shop and found a mechanic working on a tractor. in my broken spanish I asked him for help and he, in not very good english but using extraordinarily clear communication told me 'no'; actually, 'hell no' would be a better translation. shocked and discouraged, i walked a mile in the other direction and eventually waved down a little guy driving an irrigation pickup. his name was antonio mayorga and he was as happy to help me as the mechanic wasn't - not only 'yes', but 'hell yes'! in a few minutes i was on the road again, lighter by three nice cigars and a promise to send him a custom print of the tree, that he also thought was very beautiful in its spring colors. a couple of weeks later I sent antonio the print and another small collection of cigars.

everytime i see this image i'm reminded of how easy it is to blow off those that may need a helping hand, even in the simplest of ways.....and how equally easy it can be to take just a few minutes out of a busy day to do something for someone else. the mechanic's adamant 'no' didn't anger me; it shamed me because i recognized an all too familiar part of myself in his reaction.

it may sound cliché, but i think of antonio often, like when i'm asked for a couple of bucks from a guy on the corner selling the 'real change' newspaper or an occasional telephone sales person that gets past the front desk in the middle of an urgent project. it's a great choice....take a few minutes to be kind....just because you can.

no, they're not blueberries...

i've had several questions about one of the images in the main gallery....a bowl of blueberries? no, they're palm nuts from a chinese fan palm in bermuda. the island is covered with the trees which in turn are laden with these beautiful blue-green nuts. the real surprise is the bright orange meat that's revealed when the nut is plucked.

new site...finally!

after some prodding from close friends and 'associates' i finally got off my tail and put this new site together....which, if things go as planned should be much easier to scale and add images to than the old one was (i think i only added one new image to the old site in two years).

for me, the learning curve of most available 'solutions' for designing simple websites was daunting and every time i touched the old site, it took hours to make even the simplest change. i recently swerved into a great tool called "SiteGrinder", an elegant plugin for photoshop, developed and (very well) supported by the folks at medialab. it's a superb tool for people like me who have intermediate photoshop skills but no web development abilities and are too cheap to pay someone else to do the work (i'm sure it doesn't have anything to do with control!). SiteGrinder basically allows the site to be designed directly in photoshop and then will generate all the code, links, text, graphics, etc. in minutes.

the new site features 40 images, most of them new, in a single gallery - the thumbnail strip below the main image shows 10 at a time; just click the arrow button to the right or left to advance or retreat 10 thumbnails. Mousing over the large pictures will reveal the name and where each was shot.

i'll be adding fresh material monthly and eventually increase the number of galleries to three - one for new stuff, featured projects and an archive. the site is heavily laden with flash which, i've resisted up to this point...but the image transitions are really nice and it has become much easier to build with.

so, enjoy the new design and images....come back often, and let me know what you think.