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.

Environmental Portraits

In October I was fortunate enough to be able to take a workshop with Nevada Weir, who is known for her travel photography. In addition to being a spellbinding storyteller she has a knack for pushing students out of their comfort zones. One way she did this was to send us out to shoot environmental portraits with a wide-angle lens. The idea was to capture images of people in their environment. The thing about a wide-angle lens is that you have to get right up on top of someone to get anything interesting. It’s very different from using a telephoto lens that allows you to shoot people from a distance. I find that there is something more honest about engaging people and getting their collaboration in the image making process. They can say no. But you respect their right to say no and when they say yes something really magical begins to happen. You are treating them like a person and not like an object. Plus, you learn a lot about what matters to them.

 

The first two images on this post are from that shoot. But the experience energized me and made me want to begin to capture images of people working. I was especially interested in photographing window washers. I’ve always been a bit in awe of people who will dangle from ropes to clean windows of tall buildings. A few weeks later I had an opportunity to capture Thomas, one of the men who washes windows in our building.

 

I was delighted with the images I was able to capture and wanted to thank him. Today he was back outside my window so I was able to print out the final image on this post and give it to him.

 

Now if I could just figure out how to get on a tugboat.

 

Images - of merchants at Pike’s Place Market and of window washer on the side of our building - taken October 2008

Blur

Back from Kauai I have been going through some of the photos I took. I am trying to find a way to capture the magic of the island. Lots of sunrises and sunsets and flowers, but how do you capture the essence of such a beautiful place. On this trip I tried a few new things like blurring of images, especially flowers. Here are a couple of my experiments. The first is a ginger plant.

The second was an attempt to make a flower border look a bit like an impressionist painting. 

Images taken November 2008.

A P-Patch Grows In Belltown

Several nights ago we decided to visit our local P-Patch. These are wonderful urban gardens where you can grow everything from corn to kale – as long as it fits on a 10x10 plot of ground and you grow it organically. Annual fee for a small plot is $34 plus you agree to contribute 8 hours to maintenance of the common spaces. Only problem is that there is usually a waiting list so be patient 

Our P-Patch in Belltown is glorious. We were delighted by the abundance of flowers amid all the produce. While we there taking pictures we met Robin, who is the volunteer coordinator for our P-Patch. Although he was in the middle of constructing a home for honeybees to help with pollination he took time to tell us all about how P-Patches operate.

 

P-Patches are distributed throughout Seattle and contribute 7-10 tons of produce each year to food banks that feed the homeless. The term is specific to the program in Seattle although other cities have similar types of programs, often called victory gardens – a resurrection of the World War II term. In spite of the similarity of purpose P-Patches seem far more community oriented than victory gardens.

 

And I haven’t even mentioned the three cottages that sit on our P-Patch in Belltown. One is for use by the community but the other two are rented out for $300/month to struggling writers selected by the Richard Hugo House – a writers’ program.

 

It is lovely to live in a place that values gardening, writing, and community in the shadow of condominiums and cruise ships.

 

Images of abstracted lavender, cabbage, and city roses taken at the Belltown P-Patch July 2008.

Fremont Solstice Parade

This year’s 20th annual Fremont Solstice Parade took place last Saturday. The parade featured the usual bands, floats, and marchers — plus about 300 nude bicyclists, It was one of those joyous occasions that we had been meaning to attend for the three years since moving here.

It was especially fun for us because we were attending a photography workshop at Art Wolfe’s Photography Center. Jay Maisel, who specializes in shooting street scenes, led the workshop and made the parade a workshop assignment. The photo featured on this post was my favorite of the day but I may add a few more on a future post. Some even feature a few of those daring nude bike riders.

Image: Bubbleman taken June 21, 2008.