portland

sunset, south waterfront

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south-waterfront-sunset-panoramaI’m just now getting around to processing some of the images I’ve shot in the past year (things have been really busy), and this morning, I came across this one, a two-image panorama taken in February from the balcony in our old place. I loved (and still miss) the Richard-Scarry-esque views we had from the apartment; it truly was like watching the city pass by every day.

I did some lens correction on this inside Photoshop, to take the bend off the shed at the bottom of the frame. (I had to be careful, though; it’s easy to overdo the distortion correction.) I also worked with a few crop variations here–the original images had the OHSU building looming at the left of the frame–and this one seems like the best fit overall.

cormorants, sauvie island

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cormorants-sauvie-island

Hudson and I went shooting in the fog on Sauvie Island this morning, along the Multnomah Channel. I’ve been shooting this scene for years: every January, the fog comes in for a few weeks, and it’s just a glorious place to shoot.

I’m still working through all the photos we shot, but this one jumped out at me pretty quickly. I love the three cormorants on the pilings, all aligned in the same direction, and I just got lucky with the bird flying right above the water. (Check it out full size to really see all the detail.)

where is this?

[Check out Hudson’s blog: one of his Denali shots is on the cover of this month’s Sierra magazine, which is pretty friggin’ awesome.]

waterfront, christmas morning

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portland-christmas-morning

I’m a bit surprised by the turns and twists of the back half of this year. I really had imagined that I would remain in a much sadder place this Christmas, but that hasn’t been the case. And this morning, as I headed home, the clouds cleared, and the Willamette was more beautiful than I had seen it in a while. I just had to stop and shoot.

Like many of the shots I’ve taken over the past couple of months, this one feels like a placeholder, but it is a marker for the joy and happiness I have in my life on this day.

Life is crazy and beautiful; for now, that’s all I will say about it. More to come, for sure.

where is this?

This was taken with a new camera, the Sony a7r — more on this later as well…

flight

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flight-sonata

 

I’ve been carrying the RX1 around with me everywhere; it’s such a delightful camera to put in my pocket, and I’m always looking for an excuse to shoot with it. Tonight, around twilight, Liz and I were waiting in line for one of the many Portland International Film Festival movies we’ll be seeing over the next few weeks. While we were there, a murder[1. Yes, that’s what they’re called. Poetic, I think.] of crows numbering in the hundreds swooped and cried around downtown. I loved the juxtaposition of the crows flying with the piano-style look of the museum’s building, and the light was just magnificent: moody, blue and mottled.

And the movie? Ginger and Rosa, from Great Britain. Good. Not great, but it was better than most, and Elle Fanning was very good.[2. Our favorite so far has been A Simple Life, a profoundly beautiful and touching film from China. Well worth watching, if you can find it. There was a write-up of it worth reading in The New York Times last year.] We’ve got two weeks to go — I’ll keep bringing my camera, just in case.

click above to see it bigger — it’s much nicer that way

broadway

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broadway

The light this evening was just beautiful: it was shortly after a hard rain, and the sky was clearing, with alternating bands of sunlight, storm clouds and some blue sky poking through in places. I tried a couple of “straight” shots, but there wasn’t anything that screamed at me when I looked at them on the camera’s LCD.

In the end, I just opened up the lens and kept the focus on the water drops on the windshield. I do love the colors and tones in the result.

duncan @thedaily

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duncan-@thedailycafe1

Had dinner with Duncan last night at one of our favorite places, the Daily Cafe, just shooting the breeze about cameras, photography and all that.

Duncan just got Sony’s new RX1 full-frame rangefinder camera, and it’s one of the most beautiful cameras I’ve seen in a while: compact, full-featured, with a beautifully crafted metal body and an amazing Zeiss 35mm f/2.0 lens. I wrested it from him just long enough to grab a few shots, including this one.

The images I’ve seen are just dreamy; I don’t think I could even really contemplate purchasing this camera, given its rather high price tag, but I can definitely see its appeal. It truly looks like a winner.

self-portrait (#wwpw)

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self-portrait-wwpw

This weekend, I went on one of the Portland locations of Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photo Walk, over in the Eastside industrial area. I met a bunch of great folks (here’s the group shot, before we all headed out from OMSI), but the weather was odd, and I had a hard time finding my bearings. (I’m also shooting with the D800 exclusively right now, since I really need to know if this will be my camera for the next few years, and it’s taking a while to get used to the controls and operational stuff.)

I shot quite a bit of garbage, and had pretty much resigned myself to emptying my card when I got home, when I happened upon this interesting section of a block. I took a couple shots of the tree, window and potted bamboo, and, while I liked them, there was something missing:

alarm-and-bamboo

Thinking about it for a minute, I decided to pop myself into the frame. I took a couple of shots, and ended up with the one up top. I cropped it a bit here (the uncropped version is below), but I do like the end result, even if I’m not a fan of my own face.

self-portrait-alarm-and-bamboo-full

(This is a great place to shoot, however. Two of my favorite images, Railbed, Morrison Bridge, and Water Avenue Coffee, were both shot in this neighborhood.)