the handball series

San Francisco, 2015

San Francisco, 2015

It's probably not great to explain why I made a photograph. A photograph should be able to stand alone and speak for itself. I’m going to break that rule a little.

My previous post was a flat, straight-on look through a doorway to a public handball court in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Abstractly, looked at with the eyes unfocused, it’s a flat field of straight-edge geometries of rich green, brown, and various shades of gray. That gray surface is probably 15 feet beyond the green plane.

Focused, it’s a little bit creepy, with hints of a prison-like setting or desolation. And frankly, it felt a little bit creepy when I encountered this space almost nine years ago. As I passed through the spaces, I was never quite sure what I might find around each corner. In the late 1970s, I lived about two blocks from Golden Gate Park, and I visited it often. I’d never seen this building before.

I took a small series of photographs that day in the surrounding area over a period of less than five minutes. This series of photographs began at 5:40:44 PM PST and ended at 5:44:34 PM PST. A sampling of those photographs is shown in the slide show above.

..

5:40:44

It had been a mostly sunny afternoon, but fog began rolling in during the late afternoon. Fog with cold breezes. A large lawn with perfect light and kids playing soccer caught my eye. Some of the parents are wearing coats a sign of the cold.

 5:41:36

I turned around and noticed a large blockhouse slowly being covered by too close and neglected park trees and weeds. It was large and looked a little dated and worn. I wondered what it was.

 5:42:38

I got closer. It housed a series of handball courts. There was a long, dark tunnel entrance with a blue bench. Frankly, it looked a little creepy, or like a trap to me. Hmmm.

 5:43:18

I turned around to see what else there might be nearby to shoot.

 5:43:57

Ahh, what the heck. I walked through the long tunnel and entered an atrium of doorways. The walls had recently been repainted in a patchwork fashion to cover graffiti I suppose. The flatness of the spaces made for interesting 2D compositions.

 5:44:34

I peeked through and found the strong green door, the screen over its window, the padlock, and the large gray walls.

#archivesrummaging

foggy night

foggy night

Seattle
January 30, 2015

Fog is common in the winter in the Pacific Northwest. Often I like taking a walk with a camera on evenings when it is low and thick. This small series of photographs come from one evening in late winter, 2015 on a walk I took from home.

       i.         streetlight fog
   ii.         suburban trees
     iii.         vanishing taillight
     iv.         Kerry Hall
      v.         Broadway
     vi.         taillight spotlight

#jan30 #january #2015 #capitolhill #seattle #pacificnorthwest

a winter evening walk...

photos taken: Jan 24, 2018

I took a lot of walks downtown from my home in 2016 though 2019. By winter 2020, COVID was in full-bloom, and it was best to not be out & about as much. After the pandemic, downtown was largely empty, so there wasn’t a lot of reason to head down there for photography. I did – mostly to document the desolation. But only a few times. By that time, I sort of scratched that itch for that type of streetside photography, anyway. I’m sure the interest will return, but currently I’m on to other things.

Most of the time I brought a camera along. This small collection of photographs was made on this date in 2018. Judging by the first photograph – a color photograph though on first look it might appear b&w – I must have left my home about 4 PM that day for the walk. The first photograph was taken at 4:22 PM. A large office building – I call it the barcode building – now interrupts this view.

I took a waterproof camera with me with a 23mm fixed lens on an APS-C sensor (35mm film equivalent). Winter storm clouds were blowing through, but I’m not sure it was raining hard that day. Even though it was mid-January, I suspect it was warmer that night than it’s been recently, which for the past week or so, it’s been lucky to break freezing on any given day. Even then, I wasn’t all that crazy about walks in the rain at 35˚F.

       i.         Lake Union from Lakeview;
      ii.         storm blowing in over I-5;
     iii.         layered evening commute;
     iv.         dusky bus queue;
      v.         Cinerama (I think closed during the pandemic, but I read it is soon to be reopened);
     vi.         window shoppers;
    vii.         night commute;
   viii.         Broadway

..

Turns out, January 18 was a good day for photographs in my archives. There are a lot of them through the various years. I can’t say that’s true for other January days. It must be a point in winter where I’ve tired of the indoors and decide to get out on a (usually) sunny, mid-winter day. We’re almost a month past the darkest days and that may have something to do with it as well.

#january #jan18 #winterphotography #nightphotography #rain #headlights #taillights #seattle #pacificnorthwest #pnw

winter light pasts on a frozen January morning...

It’s a mostly clear day in Seattle. But, usually around here, a clear day in mid-winter means a cold day, and at 9:30 AM, it’s a little extra cold: 18˚ F. (-8˚ C). That’s up from 15˚ F before the sun rose. It’s very rare that it gets this cold in Western Washington, which usually has a mild Pacific coastal climate. Cooler and darker winters than California, but usually not too bad.

I doubt I’ll be out with the camera today. I haven’t been for a week or two, and then only looking for birds (not many, though I spotted 10 eagles the other day, a record of sorts for me). Here’s a small selection from the archives with a sort of clear, midwinter theme, all taken on January 13.

       i.         midwinter Cascades sunset, 2012
      ii.         park lawn, 2019
     iii.         where the vanagons are reborn, 2019
     iv.         green lawn with Space Needle, 2019
      v.         downtown winter marina, 2019
     vi.         24 luxury residences in midwinter sun, 2021
    vii.         red boat, 2021
   viii.         alley of box architecture, 2021
     ix.         park bike path, late afternoon, 2022
      x.         heavy facelift, 2022
 

#january13 #midwintersun #winterlight #seattle #pacificnorthwest #pnw

the open road, Series 3

A final (for now) continuation of “the open road” series.

i. Teanaway Valley, 2008
ii. Idaho 20 (August mid-afternoon), 1997
iii. eastbound SR20, Winthrop, 2011
iv. A Certain (Idaho) Trail, 1997
v. Golden Gate fog curtain, 2012
vi. Southside Chicago, 2012
vii. dairyland, Point Reyes, 2017
viii. golden hour, Point Reyes, 2015
ix. California 1, Marin, 2014
x. U.S. 101 dawn (windstorm camp), 2015

#road #openroad

the open road, Series 2

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various dates and locales
i. Columbia River, 2011
ii. Point Reyes, 2017
iii. U.S.101, Oregon, 2012
iv. Point Reyes, 2003
v. Yachats, 2012
vi. redwoods, 2012
vii. Sonoma County, 2012
viii. Mendocino fog, 2012
ix. Point Reyes sunset, 2015
x. the not-so-open road, Oregon, 2015

#theopenroad #road #ontheroad

the open road, Series 1

I don’t spend a lot of time on social media, but I spend a few moments of most days on two photography-related sites: Instagram and Flickr. I’ve posted elsewhere what I think of these two sites, so I won’t repeat that here.

One of the things I do like about Instagram is that it exposes me to certain well-known and established photographers that I like to follow. One of those is Joel Meyerowitz who posted a series of  “The Open Road” photographs and a somber description of the road metaphor, the new year, and aging around New Year’s Day (2024).

Photographs from the road are one of my favorite subjects, both from others’ road pictures and my own archives. When I’m out on long trips, I almost always make photographs of the open road. And have for years. Recently, those trips have been fewer and farther between, mostly due to the pandemic and some health issues I think I’m past.

This time of year, when it is often dark, cold, and wet in my home of Seattle, I get out a lot less with my camera. If it’s dark, cold, and snowy, that’s another matter. My back-up source for posting photographs – my archives – can be almost empty and bleak on these days. This is especially true for January and even more so for the first weeks of January. I often post from the archives in a “this date from the archives” theme.

So, in homage to Mr. Meyerowitz, and finding another theme to organize around, I’ve put together a few series of the open road.

various dates and locales

i. modern motel, Yachats, 2012
ii. Point Reyes, 2017
iii. U.S. 2, Washington, 2008
iv. Kangaroo Ridge, 2007
v. wind farm morning, Indiana, 2009
vi. coastal sundown, Olema, 2012
vii. coastal bridge, Florence, 2014
viii. orchards, Yakima, 2013
ix. Columbia River Gorge, 2013
x. coastal morning summer storm, Oregon, 2015

this date in the archives, December 22

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It’s the darkest time of year, so most of the photographs of this small set were made at night.

1. Lake Washington exit ramp, Evergreen Point Bridge, 2006 (since torn down).

2. Holiday boathouse, Leschi, 2007.

3. Holy Names lights, Capitol Hill, 2007.

4. Park snowcat, Arboretum, 2008.

5. Holiday homes, Capitol Hill, 2017.

6. Pizza night, Margherita with homemade crust, 2018.

scenes from a winter morning's walk

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scenes from a winter morning walk
Seattle, 2023

I went on a walk early this morning after a couple of cups of coffee and a bowl of cold cereal and put the shower off until after I returned. I took a camera with a 28mm fixed wide angle lens and shot in black & white. There’s something about foggy winter days in the depth of northern winters which demands black & white.

This morning’s walk was only about 2-3 miles. Probably closer to two. The streets at 8 AM were mostly empty, but I stayed off most of the busy arterials. The ones I crossed were dead too. It wasn’t as foggy this morning as it was yesterday afternoon. That sort of surprised me. Usually, it’s foggy in the morning and if it burns off, the fog dissipates by 2:00 PM or so. But the switch was reversed this morning, and as I arrived back home about 10 AM, fog was descending in my neighborhood.

..

It’s been foggy the past few days in Seattle. Often that means gloom. But it almost always means no rain. It was foggy yesterday as well. The panoramic camera on top of the Space Needle is one of the world’s best web cameras, and the view from there at 4:10 PM and 5:20 PM were fantastic for December 20, especially the latter time. I’ll post a link to the camera if you’re interested, but you’ll have to navigate to the date and specific times yourself. I don’t know how to link to time-specific images. It’s easy to navigate their site: the Date vertical slide selector is on the righthand side of their camera homepage; the Time dial is along the bottom border.

https://www.spaceneedle.com/webcam/

#winterwalk #winterfog #capitolhill #seattle#pacificnorthwest #pnw