The Pacific

Change of Venue

Hello all you readers out there. When I first started this blog I was interested in exploring life along the pacific ocean, especially in Kauai and Seattle. For the last year I have been concentrating on photography and have increasingly used this blog to post images. As you know from a previous post I recently launched a photography website: mgmasonphotography.com. Now I have added a blog to that domain and will be posting to that site. To go directly to the site you can click on: mgmasonphotography.com/WordPress/

I plan to keep this site active for a month or two but after that I will close it down. Hope to see you on the new blog.

Marilyn

MGMason  p h o t o g r a p h y

Some of you may have noticed that my recent posts are increasingly about photography. Because I am spending so much of my time working with and expressing myself through photographs I have recently launched a website: mgmasonphotography.com. Please take a look at it and let me know what you think. To celebrate I am posting two images taken recently on Kauai of cactus flowers. 

Images taken November 2009.

The Wheat Fields of Walla Walla

More images from this spectacular place. Here are a few images of the wheat fields and highways and byways surrounding them.

Images taken October 2009.

The Windmills of Walla Walla

Technically they aren’t really in Walla Walla. They are mostly in northern Oregon. But windmills now cover the crests of the hills surrounding this small town know primarily as the center of the wine industry in Washington. 

I went out last week with a small group of photographers and was stunned by what we found: miles and miles of enormous windmills – some still under construction. Here are just a few of the images from the shoot.

At the same shoot I got a couple of other things:

Images taken October 2009.

In Praise of Printing

Yes, yes, I know it’s been awhile. I have been immersed in a new project – fine art printing. The adventure started last year when I took a workshop with Mac Holbert, co-founder of Nash Editions (yes, that Graham Nash). Nash Editions may be the single best digital fine art print shop in the world. But whether it is or is not the absolute best, Mac knows more about digital fine art printing than I even imagined possible and I learned a huge amount about how to use lightroom and photoshop to take a good photograph and make it the best print it can be. 

Unfortunately I find that if I don’t use that sort of knowledge immediately it starts fading away so a few months ago I broke down and bought an Epson 3800 (a beast of a machine) and signed up for a workshop with Andrew Rodney.  During the workshop I had an opportunity to use printers at Art Wolfe’s studio to make some really large prints (20” x 30”) of some of the work I have done in Kauai with the intention of hanging them in our place out there. 

WOW. What you see on the screen is nothing compared to what you get with ink on paper. So I packaged them flat, fedexed them out, and when I was on island last week I had them framed – koa wood, white mat. Man do they look great. I’ve included electronic versions of the ones I had framed. And I like them on the screen. But you should see them in print.

 Images taken on Kauai, 2009. Top one is of an outrigger on the beach, middle one is an abandoned sugar plantation, and the bottom one is a taro field.

Tulip Time

Every year the Skagit Valley, about 60 miles north of Seattle, celebrates spring with its annual tulip festival. Last year Bob and I planned to get up early one Sunday morning so we would be there at dawn - to get the best light. We imagined the fields of tulips sparkling in the first glimmer of daylight. The weather forecast was the default forecast for this part of the country: partly cloudy, possible rain. I think that has been the forecast for every spring day since we moved to Seattle. It can mean heavy rains, no rain, early morning overcast followed by a clear cloudless sky, almost anything really. So when we woke to rain we thought nothing of it and forged ahead, hoping that 60 miles would make a difference. But when we arrived the rain persisted. So much for the early morning light. Also we had forgotten to check field reports to see if the tulips were actually blooming. They were not. We did find fields of daffodils - but no tulips.

Undaunted we decided to try it again this year. Once again we rose before dawn and ignored the weather forecast. But this time we did check field reports and were assured that we would find the tulips in full bloom. Below are a few photographs I took last Sunday. The first was taken before dawn, when the area was still blanketed with fog. The others speak for themselves.

Photos taken April 2009.

My New Favorite Place In Seattle

is the Chapel of St. Ignatius at Seattle University.

 

When we moved to Seattle almost four years ago my brother Pat urged me to visit the Chapel of St. Ignatius. It took me awhile but I finally got there yesterday. What an experience. I arrived with a class of architectural students and followed along as the instructor, who had worked with the architect Steven Holl during design and construction, explained the thinking behind the design.

 

The interior space is organized around the concept of “a gathering of different lights” with light and dark spaces playing off each other. Holl imagined the chapel as “seven bottles of light in a stone box” with the color and light constantly changing depending on the time of day, the time of year, and the weather.

 

The impact of this amazing space is hard to describe. It is both exciting and comforting – at the same time. There is an intimacy about the space that encourages contemplation and wonder. Although each of the spaces flows into the other, each stands alone.

 

Photos here from the top are of the front and back of the nave, the choir, the reconciliation chapel and the Blessed Sacrament chapel (with a self portrait). 

 

Images taken February 2009

Kilauea: Demon Fire

 

There is something about an erupting volcano that reminds me of both Dante’s Inferno and the beginning of the world. It is both fascinating and terrifying to see fire that does not go out, that builds new land.

Kilauea is currently the most active volcano on earth. It is one of five shield volcanoes that are still forming the island of Hawaii, know more familiarly as the Big Island. Kilauea has erupted 45 times in the 20^th century, with the current eruption beginning in 1983. In March 2008 an explosive event that scattered rock over a 75-acre area was accompanied by the increase of sulfur dioxide gas that has closed much of the crater rim drive.

I first saw Kilauea with Charlie in 1979 when the volcano was relatively dormant. A few years ago Bob and I took a helicopter flight that enabled us to see the molten lava flowing across the seared landscape before exploding into the ocean. This year Bob’s conference on the Big Island gave us an opportunity to see the volcano from the ground. From Volcanoes National Park a park ranger directed us to drive about an hour to an area where we could see the lava pouring into the ocean. We arrived about an hour before sunset, walked 3/4 of a mile across hardened lava and watched as the huge steam plume created water spouts. But the real show happened after sunset when we could see the glow of the lava itself reflected in the steam. The image above was taken after dark.

Image taken January 2009.

It's Not About the Coffee

As the home of Starbuck’s and Tully’s and dozens of independent coffee shops, Seattle is one coffee-drinking place. Not surprisingly, a recent survey found that Seattle is the second most caffeinated city in the country (after Tampa – where they drink a lot of tea) but it comes in at the #1 spot for the consumption of coffee. Although the image of everyone in Seattle carrying around a cup of coffee has become a cliché, there are lots of places to drop in for a cup. It often seems that there is at least one coffee shop per block and in keeping with the pattern we have a Tully’s in our building.

One of the things that strikes me whenever I go for a latte is how so many different people use the space for so many different things. Use of the term “third place” to describe libraries, coffee shops, and other community spaces has become so ubiquitous that it now appears in wikipedia. People use our coffee shop to work on their computers, to meet business associates, and just to “bump into life” (an especially apt description by Kathleen).

It is this bumping into life part that is the lifeblood of third places like my coffee shop. It is true, as many ads for pricey coffee makers claim, that it would be cheaper to make my coffee at home. But if I did that I would miss the chat I had last week with some other residents of our building – wonderful people who I had not had the opportunity to get to know – or learning about the informal inauguration party that will be happening tomorrow. I would miss being a part of an informal community that I value.

Which brings me back to the question: why are there so many coffee shops in Seattle? Is there something about this community that values community? Is the value of serendipity an implicit value in this entrepreneurial town? As the most educated city in the US are we driven by our need to exchange ideas? I’m not sure about the answer but I am pretty sure that it’s not about the coffee.

Monk Seal Pup Revisited

When we arrived on Kauai three days late (another story altogether) Bob and I rushed to Mahaulepu beach to see if the monk seal pup was still there (see November 11 blog for pics of the pup at two days). It had been over six weeks since the little fellow was born and we knew that monk seals are weaned after 5-7 weeks. We were not very optimistic.

 

Still, it was worth a shot. As we neared the location where we had last seen the seals we noticed that the beach was littered with posts and netting used to keep humans away from them.  It looked like someone had made quite an effort to move the barrier as the seals became more active. There was even a makeshift wooden structure to keep the sun off the seals. But we did not see the seals. Even more alarming we did not see the human guards that had been stationed nearby to make sure that the barrier was respected.

 

We walked along the beach thinking we had missed them when we noticed that one of the pieces of driftwood was not, in fact, driftwood. It was the seal pup. It was much larger than before and looked like it had grown from 25 to 200 pounds as expected. Its back and top of its head were still black as pups are when they are born but its underside had turned a beautiful silver color.

 

The mother was nowhere in sight. We assumed that she had left only recently as those who look after the monk seals make a practice of tagging and moving the pup after he has been left on his own. He didn’t look too happy about being abandoned.

 

So here are the after pictures. Our seal is now an adolescent and must fish to survive. His mother won’t return. We wish him well.

 

Images: the top image is a picture of the section of the beach where the seals hung out the last six weeks, the others are pictures of the adolescent seal. All taken December 2008.