Inessential Stuff

My mycophobia is well-documented. Seriously, mushrooms freak me out. But when I saw these in a park, under a tree, in Lynnwood, I knew I wanted to get a picture. So I ran back to the car, got my camera, and took a few shots.

Strange little things, mushrooms. Still, these I found unusually beautiful.

Marcus and I visited my sister and her family in Lynnwood this past weekend, and we spent some time at the pumpkin patch. There were plenty of barnyard animals, which Marcus was intent on photographing. Then we went to where the pumpkins were, where Marcus found one that he particularly liked (and “liked” may be not quite an intense enough word).

Which he dutifully carried around on his head.

Eventually, he wanted to pose for some pictures, and for some reason, he thinks posing for pictures means laying down on one elbow:

Good times had by all. And I’ll conclude with a picture of my sister, Laura.

One of the reasons I love Spokane is for the architecture. For a small city, Spokane has some great architecture. I love the early 1900′s stuff, the bricks and transom windows and back alleys. Spokane has it by the block-full. Not only downtown, but in little neighborhoods like the Garland District, the South Perry District (where I call home), and Hillyard.

My friend Tyler Corcoran, an expert on analog “toy” cameras, and I had wanted to get together to shoot some pictures. And since we both like those alleys and bricks, one chilly October morning, we decided to head to Hillyard to see what we could find.

We spent a couple hours there, an hour walking on the East side of the street, and an hour walking back on the West side. I’ve tried to be selective when making the gallery, but I really do love this stuff: lines, patterns, the rhythms and shapes, the bright colors and the decay.  Click here to see some of my photographs, and here for some of Tyler’s (see November and December 2010)

So we had heard about The Inferno! Eastern Washington University’s new red turf. And we decided to check it out. We saw them play against Northern Arizona, and I’ll say, that field is red. Really, really red.

But cool, too. I liked it a lot, actually. And if it helped propel the Eastern Washington Eagles to the national championship, then all the better.

Here are just a few quick images from the last senior portrait session, with Austin. We met at Mirabeau Park towards sunset, and we fight against a rapidly falling sun. But we did manage to get some fun pictures as the sun went down. I had offered to continue the shoot the next day, but Austin and his mom felt we had gotten enough good images.  Still, it was vaguely unsatisfying to have such a quick session; it was one of the rare occasions where I never really got a sense of the person I was photographing. Or maybe that is who Austin is: quiet, self-possessed, a bit of an enigma. I don’t know.

I like to tell people, I love weather. Specifically, I love clouds. Dark ominous clouds, clouds lit up orange at sunset, or small, lonely clouds adrift on the blue sky. I love them both as collections of water vapor, and as metaphors. I think a sky with clouds is always more interesting than one without. Whenever I see interesting clouds, whether on a hike, or on vacation, or outside my window, or even at a wedding, I take a quick picture. Here is a gallery of some of my favorite clouds from recently.

This is Allison, and I was afraid this shoot might never happen. Due to a variety of circumstances (bad weather, transportation issues, family emergencies), this session kept getting rescheduled and rescheduled. And then, finally, it all came together, and we spent the evening shooting.

She brought several different outfits, and I had a couple different locations in mind. We started down by the Spokane River, where autumn is starting to show itself. Allison was relaxed and natural.

Then we rushed downtown (Allison on the back of her mom’s motorcycle, me in my old Saturn, so you tell me who’s cooler?) and got some images as the sunset. Lots of fun, and definitely worth the wait.