Gotta catch me a cab and head down to old Fairhaven town for a little Halloween fun.
Maybe I’ll grab a cup of Tony’s coffee and sit in the window watching all the fairies and goblins stroll by.
This holiday isn’t just for kids any more. Even older folks get into the spirit of dressing up, painting faces, and assuming an alter-ego for a day.
Loot bag? Check.
Best friend? Check.
Costume? Check.
A ride to Fairhaven from mom? Check.
Halloween trick-or-treating in Fairhaven Sunday afternoon was a mob scene with sidewalks crowded with hundreds of happy haunters. Check out more photos in the Fairhaven Halloween Gallery.
I felt a bit out of place wandering the streets with a camera but no costume. OK, so I was wearing clothes, but nothing special for the holiday. I hope you all had fun. I know I did.
Wow, where is the summer going? It seems like just yesterday that I joined with dozens of other Birchwood Garden Club members to visit three more unique and interesting Bellingham gardens on a warm summer evening in the golden sunset light. It’s actually been a couple of weeks, August 4 to be precise.
First up was Jennifer Wall’s garden, which is actually in the Birchwood neighborhood. She purchased the home, with an existing garden, a couple of years ago and has been on a journey of discovery to see what was there. Now she’s adding her own personal touches and style to the place. People were oohing and aahing over her plant choices and asking lots of “what’s this?” questions.
Then we caravaned down Chuckanut Drive to the edge of Mud Bay where we enjoyed Donna and Allen Buehler’s waterside garden and the view out over the bay at high tide. Lots of containers here, and outdoor entertaining spaces.
Finally, a few miles further down Chuckanut to a garden that backs up to Larrabee State Park. The Susan and Landry Corkery garden features an extensive collection of trees that blend with the native vegetation. Myriad paths twist, turn, and invite getting lost among the foliage. The Corkerys say they have 66 varieties of Maples, 50 Japanese Maples, 23 Magnolias, 8 Pines, 7 Oaks, and 275 Rhododendrons.
As usual on a garden tour, I just carried a pocket camera. This time is was my Canon S70, which provides more control and choices than the iPhone I carried on the July Birchwood tour. All of the images in the slideshow were processed through Adobe Lightroom and the show itself was produced in Animoto.
We finally got our first day of summer on July 7, right on schedule. It was the evening of the Birchwood Garden Club July members-only private garden tour, a delightful opportunity to visit four very nice Bellingham gardens. If you’re not a member of an active garden club, like Birchwood, you’re missing out on seeing gardens you otherwise wouldn’t get to see. Thank you, Sheri Lambert, for organizing the tour.
The four gardening families that welcomed us included Ira Penn and Dee Dee O’Connor, gardening on Alabama Hill; Lynette Jensen and Joan Wayne, each gardening on south hill; and garden designer Susann Schwiesow, gardening in Edgemore. Each garden is unique, appropriate to the site, representative of the personalities of the owners and designers, and a joy to explore. There were plant surprises and nice design elements in each garden.
As has become my custom on garden tours, I did all my photography with my iPhone 3G. This very sunny evening with strong contrast pointed out the limitations of the camera. Everything is completely automatic except for where you hold it to compose the image. Auto everything works pretty well in even light, but with bright highlights and deep shadows the camera tended to overexpose, washing out the bright spots and opening the shadows more than I like. Auto white balance doesn’t always know what to do with flowers and foliage, either. The tradeoff is that the camera is small, light, and already in my pocket.
I processed all the images in Adobe Lightroom 3, adjusting brightness and contrast, sometimes tweaking color balance, and applying a vignette to emphasize the center area. I spent less than a minute on each photo. I’ll be talking about the process and showing the technique in a program at the Garden Writers Association annual symposium in Dallas this September.
Coming up next weekend is the Whatcom Horticultural Society’s 2010 Tour of Private Gardens. There are five gardens on this year’s tour. They’re all different and worth a visit if you’re in the area and interested in gardening. Since I take care of the WHS website I was on the pre-tour for volunteers yesterday and shot a series of images for a video slideshow.
Yesterday was the first really warm and sunny day we’ve had this spring. Not exactly the best light for photographing gardens, but sometimes a photographer’s just gotta deal with the conditions. I shot all of these with my Canon S70 pocket camera and then ran them through Adobe Lightroom to dodge, burn, and generally adjust the contrast a bit. The video was created with Animoto.
Details about the tour, including pricing, directions, and ticket sources, is on the Whatcom Horticultural Society tour web page.
Dirty Dan Harris is credited with being the founder of Fairhaven, one of the four communities on Bellingham Bay that merged in the early 20th century to form Bellingham. The fine citizens of Fairhaven celebrate this bit of history each April with a two-day festival of seafood, music, and all-around fun on the Fairhaven Village Green. I spent the day photographing. Here’s a quick video slideshow, with music by The Gallus Brothers who were performing live during the event.
You can see a handful of photos at a more leisurely pace over on the Fairhaven website.
It’s always fun to hang out at an event like this. I ran into lots of people I knew, and even recognized some of them. I’m a bit conspicuous with a big heavy camera and lens hanging from my neck. I shot a lot with my 70-200mm, using a little on-camera fill flash to put highlights in eyes and brighten things up a tad under the overcast skies.
If you haven’t been to Dirty Dan Days, put it on your calendar for next April if you don’t see this in time to get down there this (Sunday) afternoon for the chowder cookoff and piano race.
Here’s a video from Sunday, with lots of happy people enjoying the chowder cookoff, dancing in the sun to the Gallus Brothers, and the world’s only piano race.
I’ve put the photos from the videos online in two galleries for viewing at your own pace: Saturday photos and Sunday photos.
Loot bag? Check.