Monthly Archives: June 2013

A PARTICULAR POINT OF VIEW

This week’s Daily Post Weekly Photography Challenge is to present photographs that show the world through your eyes, thinking carefully about the subject of your image in order to convey just what you saw/thought/felt at the moment you pushed that shutter.

I love to photograph flowers, and I’m most happy with them when they express a particular point of view – the way I see the world –  instead of being  just another pretty flower picture.

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These studies were done at Seattle’s Pike Place Market, where food and flowers overflow and tourists contentedly wander the ramshackle wooden buildings and stroll along the old brick street. From inside the market flower stalls present a stunning array of color and form that changes with the seasons, as local farmers bring in new varieties. It’s an irresistible scene to photograph and I’m sure it’s been done thousands of times.

Out on the street, the long row of flower stalls is open to the air. Most people don’t pay attention to that view because cars crowd the curb, and it’s the working end of the business: the buckets, scissors and florist paper, the workers assembling bouquets.  In chilly weather the vendors hang clear plastic tarps at the back of their stalls to keep out the cold.

One early spring afternoon I noticed that buckets of flowers were pushed back hard against the tarps, making interesting flattened images; it was a whole different view of the flowers. Pressed against the dirty translucent plastic, they took on new, compressed shapes and softer colors. Flecks of dirt and scratches in the tarps conveyed the feeling of Old European still life paintings.

I squeezed between the cars, nodded to a shabbily dressed man having a cigarette, and photographed the small masterpieces head on. Bright lights shining through the tarps and the ambient light reflecting off the plastic made it challenging. But it was worth the effort. It was the world through my eyes. It was right there for all to see, and it could have gone unnoticed but it caught my eye. Now, with a few clicks, I send it along to you.

More Weekly Photo Challenge entries can be seen here.

CURVALICIOUS

This week’s Daily Post Weekly Photo Challenge theme is “Curve.”

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                                                                                                                                       I love curves!

Be they subtle curves,

or strong ones,

Tight curves,

Or loose and flowing ones…

Be they sculptural,

Rhythmic,

Joyous,

Or a little loopy.

Curves piled upon themselves,

Begging to be handled,

Or elegantly arrayed in orderly rows,

They all please me, so much so that I feel them as big, gestural curves in my limbs, arcing through space…

but then,

there are also curves

that emerge

fresh

from the oven –

Those ones are just CURVALICIOUS!!

Curves of every imaginable type, from photographers all over the world can be found with a simple click, right here!

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The spiral sculpture is “Salmon Waves,” by Paul Sorey, 2001. It’s located at the Hiram M. Chittenden Memorial Locks in Seattle.

The stone work is on a building in Philadelphia – I didn’t get the name or address.

The Chinese rooftop is at the Chinese Scholar’s Garden at Snug Harbor in Staten Island, New York.

The white wildflower is a White campion, or Silene latifolia.

Those wonderfully smooth, round stones can be found on the beaches along Washington’s coastline. These were at Rialto Beach.

The pleated leaves are False or Indian Hellebore (Veratrum viride), a very poisonous North American wildflower.

The sticky buns?  Wish I could say I made them. They’re from a small, home style restaurant in the little town of Edison, WA.

WHEN WEST IS EAST

It turns out that I moved so far west, I have to travel east to experience what I think of as the American West.

So last week we drove east over the mountains to explore a few old mining towns and a pretty creek that paints the canyon whose bottom it traces a rich, vibrant green.

An hour and a half east of Seattle it’s such a different world.  Far less rain falls here because the Cascade Mountain Range blocks the rainclouds that ride on the prevailing westerly winds (those are the clouds that hang around too long, like bad guests, on our side of the range).  The ecosystem we visited is called the shrub-steppe – a “cold desert” – a semi-arid region with its own flora and fauna.  There may not be much rain, but snow melt from the mountains delivers water in rivers and creeks, and irrigation provides good growing conditions for fruit trees, pasture, and other agricultural enterprises.

Traveling east on Route 90 at 70 mph, the mountains of Snoqualmie Pass shine and beckon, but today we’re going to dart through the Cascades and on down to the other side.

A wind farm and snowy mountain peaks draw my eye as we drive along.

I take a picture from the car and when I get home I blow up the image find this timeless moment preserved.

I didn’t even see him when I took the picture! But there he is, soaking in the sun and letting the clouds’ changing shapes loosen the grip of any cares he may have (yes, you might say I’m projecting!).

Muscular folds shape the hills along the Yakima River.

In the nearby old mining town of Roslyn, corrugated steel roofs and weathered wood perfectly mimic the landscape’s colors.

There are many vintage vehicles around; some are well kept up and others are left to rust.

I picked a sprig of aromatic sage to bring back to the wet side of the mountains.

It will be comforting to smell that distinctive fragrance when the weather turns cloudy and cooler here in the fall.

And when overcast days begin wear on me, I know I can hop over to the east side of the mountains,

where it’s sunny,

dry, and

spacious.

FLEETING MOMENTS IN RURAL AFGHANISTAN

FORGIVE ME – these photos were taken by my son, not me.  As I thought about this week’s Daily Post Weekly Photo Challenge and sifted through my own images of fleeting moments, I thought that these photos, taken while my son was deployed in Helmand Province in 2011, seem to capture fleeting moments that catch the heart.

It’s easy to think that as their villages and farms continue to be invaded by one group of strangers or another, these kids are lucky to have any pleasurable, carefree moments. But they do, fleeting though they may be.

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ON THE OTHER HAND, I think the culture and way of life in this part of the world will endure.

One might as easily call these images “timeless” as one would call them “fleeting.”

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Fleeting glimpses of fleeting moments can also be perused here, at the Daily Post Weekly Photo Challenge.

SIGNS…

This week’s Weekly Photo Challenge says, “Share a picture of a sign” and explain why you chose it.

Easy!

There we were, the same day the Photo Challenge was announced,

wandering around a small town in the foothills of the Cascades.

It was bursting with interesting signs.

Snap, snap, snap went my phone, and

click, click went my camera.

All the best sign pictures were on my phone, so I sent them to my email to download onto my computer.

And they never arrived.

Boo hoo!!  Two lengthy phone calls to my phone carrier did not solve the problem.

I’m still working on it.

Meanwhile, I can’t wait, dammit

so I present you with certain

signs of life.

Most are posted in small towns in Washington State.

One is in New Jersey,

and two are in New York City.

I leave it to you to guess which signs were seen in New York.

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You can find many more interpretations of this week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge right here.