Away, and Home

My hiking buds cooked up a plan to climb Mt. St Helens this past weekend. And, though my reaction to any proposed outdoor adventure is typically "count me in!", my feeling about slogging up St. Helens for the umpteenth time was:  "Been there, done that (too often!)"

What I'm posting here today, then,  are my What I Did With My Weekend (Not Hiking or Climbing) pictures.

On Saturday Leah and I made a little one-day road trip to Central Washington and to Yakima. Above is a picture I shot from a ridge high above Ellensburg -- Mt. Stuart and her sister peaks (Sherpa, Argonaut, Dragontail) under a dramatic, Ansel Adams-esque sky. The first two pictures below are from our drive through the rocky landscape of the Yakima River Canyon.

The last two pictures are from Sunday, back at home in Western Washington,  as Leah, Pax and and I worked at gardening and other outdoor chores…the payback labor I had promised my mate who, other weekends,  lets me run off and play in the mountains with my ne'er-do-well friends.

Talking to Trees

 

 An admission: I often talk to myself.  Not silent and mindless monkey-mind chatter.  I mean I talk out loud.

I'll be out alone, walking the half-mile trail that winds through the woods on one side of our property. I'll come around a bend in the trail and, through an opening in the trees,  I'll see an eagle flying overhead,  or, at my feet I'll notice a wildflower in bloom,  and I'll say "WOW!" 
If I'm feeling particularly verbal I might say "OH MY!"

Other times, when I'm out in the mountains on a hike with my friends and I see something amazing and comment about it, my friends probably think I'm sharing a thought with them. This is not necessarily so. I'd likely say the same thing if I was hiking alone…as if the big trees and ferns or the mountains might answer back.

Since today is Earth Day, I thought I'd post a number of recent photographs I have made when I saw something that prompted me to stop, and to respond, either verbally or photographically -- most likely,  both.

Above are two pictures from the property where we live. Below are images from a hike two friends and I did in the nearby Olympic Mountains, starting out in lush, green forest and climbing up and up above the clouds into the alpine high country. It was a day of many WOW moments.

 

Bits 'n Pieces

I'm afraid I've gotten into a bad habit of using our dining room and table as a bit of a messy,  gear-organizing space and kind of catch-all. Cameras and lenses, assorted batteries and chargers, even running or hiking gear wind up there, waiting for their next trip out the door for work or play.

A couple of days ago I decided I owed it to my mate to de-clutter the table, so camera gear got packed away in the closet where it belongs and my hiking stuff got stowed in its proper place in the garage.

As I cleaned up I found a tiny insect wing,  and,  when I showed it to Leah,  she suggested I put it on the window sill in our kitchen -- a place where we keep little miracle-objects we collect from here and there.

The delicate wing now has a spot near a Buddha Eyes pendant we brought home from one of our trips to the Himalaya, and a small bird's egg we found in our yard.  There is also a length of string that came from I-can't-remember-where,  and a piece of red blessing cord from one of the Dalai Lama events I have photographed.

That evening, for no particular reason except perhaps to note the winding-down of summer, we turned on the "party lights"  that hang from the wisteria that grows on our front porch.

This winter, when it is chilly, dark and rainy here -- a season we happen to enjoy for its own qualities -- I suspect it will be nice to look at these pictures and remember the sweet summer.

Queen not-so-Mum

Once upon a time, in a long ago age, there was a phrase that was common and men far and wide quoted it to one another -- though, even back in those days of yore, men knew the phrase was an Untruth.

"A Man's Home is His Castle" was the phrase; and today, those words seem ancient and have the ring of some kind of Olde Joke.  In my home, for instance, I have no illusions that I'm Lorde of any Castle. I live in a house with three females: One of the human variety,  and two canines.  And I am most definitely Number Four in the line of succession to the throne.

Even Leah -- who is MY Faire Lady -- is not Queen of this castle.

No, the Royal Majesty here be Miss Pax, whose pictures I doth post today.

Everything revolves around Miss Pax, Queen of every rug that must be shed upon, every pile of bedding  that requires rearranging, every window that needs nose-smudging.

"Woo-woo-woo," proclaimeth the Queen.

ALL HAIL QUEEN PAXIE!!!

Close to the Heart

No pro shoots were on my Work Calendar for Saturday.
No hike was on my Recreation Calendar for that day either.

Leah was stuck with me for the day.

So, we drove to Bainbridge Island to shop the Farmers' Market.
Leah wound up buying a bagful of radishes,  with a Sunday plan (when I would be hiking) to make preserved relish. I wandered around with my camera and people-watched.  What caught my eye was that there were a number of individuals carrying and wearing various stuff on their chests:

A chicken was sleeping inside a kid's jacket.
A man was wearing an amazing necklace he had made of seals' teeth.
A young woman was showing off her baby goat.
Another woman had a baby human on her chest.

All these things were being worn,  or carried,  close to the heart, you might say.

Nature's Ways

I have a wedding to photograph tomorrow evening and it will be held in a sweet little park on the east side of the Olympic Mountains not far from where I live.  I'm sure that, as the bride and groom planned their event, they hoped for good weather because Hood Canal is nearby and there is a peaceful beach where wedding guests could gather to watch the sunset.

I've been keeping my eye on the weather forecasts; and though, for two months we have had no real precipitation to speak of -- there was a 30-second shower Tuesday that produced the rainbow above -- we might finally get some rain tomorrow. Nevertheless I suspect my wedding clients will happily hold their ceremony indoors in a quaint and cozy cabin on the park grounds, not complaining one bit if it rains on their big day. Our land is dry, dry, dry and we all know that "perfect" weather is not perfect.

All of the photographs I'm posting today were shot this week, offering a visual example I guess of the take-away/giveth ironies to be found in Nature:

A forest fire, caused by a lightening strike back in the Spring,  has been smoldering in the Queets Valley Wilderness in Olympic National Park, perhaps two  hundred miles away from my house. The fire flared up this summer and is taking away incredible old growth trees and putting smoke into the atmosphere.

At the same time,  that smoke is making for some dramatic and "picturesque" evening skies.

Beauty is resulting from destruction.

And, for we little humans,  I guess our wisest reaction might be to just shake our heads and be amazed.

This, that, and the other thing

It seems to me that photography these days sometimes tends to be a trendy, flavor-of-the-week kind of thing. Last week my image-making brothers and sisters were shooting pictures with their cameras tilted crooked, trying, I guess,  to produce imagery that was "different" than the norm. This week maybe they are shooting everything with a wide lens, kind of half out of focus. Next week…well, who knows?

Last week we were sharing our work online using Flickr, this week it is Instagram, and next week…?

I say: Hooey!  None of the above really matters, does it? At least not to me.

What matters is this: Is my heart in an image I've made? Do you, as a viewer, sense even an inkling of any kind of soul in what I've shot?

Here is a sampling of a bunch of personal pictures I've shot fairly recently (they're "personal,"  in that no one paid me to do them.)  They're images I made because I was exercising my eyes, or I saw something that pleased me, or maybe I was just goofing around, playing. 

Will they last for me? Will I think the pictures are worthy a year from now, and do the pictures have visual staying power? I can't answer that because I don't know. Only time will tell.

I do hope the pictures aren't the result of me simply following a stylistic trend.

                                          ***
Above: Leah and I were invited to dinner at a friend's house, and it happened that they had a swimming pool ("it was here when we bought the house," my friend said, half-apologetically.) I liked the light near the diving board.

Below: Some friends stayed overnight at our house and I shot pictures of their child.

And I shot these pictures of the Tibetan prayer flags that hang in our yard...my way of remembering when the wisteria was in bloom, and sketching (with my camera) early-morning light.

And of course I'm forever shooting pictures of our Best Friend, Pax.

A friend and I did a hike last weekend on the north side of Mt. Rainier.

And, as I cut the grass near my strawberry garden, this little fellow hopped past the mower. I stopped the machine, carefully picked up Little Froggy, and moved him out of harm's way.

Diary of Days

A couple of mornings this week I walked into the kitchen with the intention of making tea, but instead happened upon the pictures you see here.

--Amazing and angular Spring light was streaming in the window, creating striking shadows of Leah's Christmas Cactus plant,  and the hand-crocheted curtain she made.

--Another day,  sunshine illuminated bits of surf-smoothed glass we've gathered on walks on the beach over the years.  My mate has put that glass in a vase, and to me she has made art.

I wrote her a note. "I see your heart," I said.

Wow Moments

A photographer friend of mine, someone quite well-known as an artist, teacher, and author, often talks about the way images "present themselves" in his life.  And I must say that those two words -- present themselves -- ring oh-so-true for me as well.

The two photographs I'm posting today are perfect examples of images that came my way this week, not because I sought them out, but because they just appeared -- voila -- in front of me, kinda magically. And while I enjoy and practice many kinds of photography, these are perhaps my favorite kinds of pictures: Personal and diary-like.

The image above was something that I saw when I stepped into the bathroom early one morning to brush my teeth. The photograph below was made on our front porch, just before sunset, as I was splitting wood for our evening fire.  These photographic moments were not planned, or arranged. They simply appeared, in passing.

Are they high art?
Not necessarily. Maybe. Who knows?
Do I care? Not at all.

They're moments when I was going about my business, looked up, and thought: Wow!

Sweet Sunshine

Despite what you might have heard, it does not rain all the time in the Pacific Northwest (our summers here are actually quite nice.)  Why, in the months of July through September,  we often have at least two or three days when the sun comes out and those of us who live here dig around in junk drawers, trying to remember what it was that we did with our sunglasses.

I joke.

Our winter season, however, is a different (grayer and wetter ) matter. It IS true that our days now are cloudy and rainy often enough that, when the sun makes an appearance, we PNW -ers do take notice.

A number of times recently I have walked into our kitchen and have seen wonderful light -- light that seemed worthy of a photographic journal notation.

Some people use a pen and paper to keep a diary, and I even know folks who make beautiful journals using watercolors. I, of course, have used a camera my whole adult life to record the News, and these days the news is sweet, welcome sunshine.

Dames

The witch hazel plant just off our back deck is a bit wacky,  if you ask me.
Every year, right around Christmas, the crazy thing blooms, apparently oblivious to the seasonal fact of life that it is Winter.

I shot the above image this morning with a macro lens, getting up close to witchy woman's sensuous, golden curls. Though the weather today does happen to be sunny with temperatures nudging 50 degrees, the witch, Hazel,  blooms at this time,  even in years when there is snow and ice around.

As I put this morning's photographs on a backup drive, I noticed that it was just 10 days ago that I shot the images I'm now posting below. It doesn't snow often at our house -- most of the snow we get in Western Washington falls in our mountains, not in the lowlands -- so when white stuff does cover our local landscape,  I venture out with a camera, looking here and there, hoping to find an image or two to document the Big Event.

Forgive me if I sound a bit paranoid, but I think Hazel the Witch and her girlfriend, Mother Nature,  might secretly be working together: Two dames in cahoots…intent, as women often are, in keeping a photographer fella like me off-balance.

Thankful

The Thanksgiving meal is in the oven and our guests will be here in about an hour.  The house is warm and cozy. It feels like a holiday.

I got up early this morning and drove to Bainbridge Island where I ran in a 5k Turkey Trot. I know how fortunate I am to have good health, and that, most every day, I’m able to get out and go for a run or head to the mountains for a hike. I am appreciative of the life I have.

What I’m really thankful for, however, is what you see in the photographs I made recently and have posted here: The Three Girls in my life. Leah, my mom, and Paxie.

A photographer sometimes needs a muse, and I am thankful that I have three.