Bye for Now

I’m about to shoot a big Tibetan celebration that will be part of my ongoing labor of love: Events of the Tibetan Community in Seattle.  I’ll be so tied up by this shoot that I’m not even going to try to do blog posts for a few weeks.  I ask you to check back in late July to see what I’ve been up to.

In the mean time, the images I’m posting today are from an event I shot several weeks ago when the respected Tibetan Buddhist Lama, HH Sakya Trizin, did a teaching in Seattle. 

Photographically the day was amazing for me,  and pictures seemed to be everywhere.  The light was wonderful,  and the fleeting, visually-charged moments of humanity were many.

For me, these pictures feel like a good way for me to hint at what I’ll be working on in the coming weeks, and to say: “Bye for now. Tashi Delek!”

An East Indian Wedding

I spent three days this week photographing an East Indian wedding that was held on nearby Bainbridge Island. And, though I rarely post pictures here that I have been paid to do -- this is a space for me to share my personal, non-work imagery --  I thought that today I'd post these wedding photographs.
 
What a go-go-go three days it was for me (not to mention for the bride and groom, their families, and guests!)  Forty-eight hours have passed since I finished covering the events,  and I'm still amped-up, high on the energy of the amazing celebration.

The wedding, as you can see, was an over-the-top affair, full of the cultural traditions of India, but with a few Pacific Northwest, Bainbridge Island wrinkles.  For example, I was told that, in India, the groom often arrives at the wedding venue on horseback, or even riding an elephant.  On Bainbridge Island, the groom sailed in on a boat named Yachta Yachta. He and his friends and family then danced their way down a dock to the site of the ceremony, the waiting wedding guests, and the bride.
 
I shared a few of these pictures via email with a writer friend, and his reply was priceless:  "Sedate little affair, wasn't it?"

 

 

Seeing Yellow

The woods and pastures that surround our home have been absolutely and utterly crazy with spring buttercups the past couple of weeks,  and I think I’ve blown my camera sensor’s mind with all the scenes I’ve been photographing that are over-the-top full of the color yellow. If photographic equipment could talk, I imagine my gear -- with a heavy Brooklyn accent --  might say: “Enough with the yellow, already! Give it a rest! Can’t-ya find something blue or red to shoot, ‘fer god’s sake?"

(Why does my camera have a Brooklyn accent, you ask?  Beats me...but I can tell you I’ve never heard a camera speak with a New England accent, or a southern drawl...have you?)

Anyway, one recent afternoon I walked down the lane to a neighbor’s place to look for pictures as my horse friend, Rusty, grazed in his buttercup-filled pasture, and the image I came away with is posted above. Another day we invited the folks who live next door to bring their four goats over for a play date in our pasture, and images from that visit are below.

This is nice, the way spring weather brings us all out, humans and animals alike.  Maybe there’s something about the color yellow that speaks to us and tells us winter’s dreary darkness is over, and that nature has bright and sunny gifts for us to enjoy.