The thimbleberries (Rubus parviflorus) are getting ready to burst into bloom throughout the Whatcom County lowlands in the next week or so. The first flowers opened on the plants in our garden last weekend. This robust shrub will soon be covered with large white blossoms, highlighting roadsides and woodland edges.
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Wednesday, April 30
It was a quiet weekend at the studio construction site as the crew from A-1 Builders works four 10-hour days Tuesday through Friday. The weather was good, which allowed the saturated soil to dry out a bit. The excavators dug trenches along the foundation walls to lay perforated drainage pipe. They’ve also painted a waterproofing compound on the foundation walls. This is an extra step to keep the underpinnings of the studio dry when the building is sealed up tight. For now, we’ve got piles of dirt everywhere and quite a mess. But our chickens have been having a great time picking through the dirt for fresh worms and grubs. Continue reading
The painters and the painted came down to Fairhaven on Sunday morning, April 26 to have their portrait made with the Fairhaven Village Green Mural.
Lanny Little originally painted the mural some 13 years ago, then refreshed and updated it in the summer of 2013. In the process he added eleven people who have played a role in modern Fairhaven over the last four decades or so.
Longtime “Mr. Fairhaven” and proprietor of the Fairhaven.com website, aka John Servais, invited all the people who had been painted into the mural, as well as those who helped Lanny with the painting in 2013, to come to the Village Green for a dedication and group portrait during Dirty Dan Day on April 27. This photo is the result. Continue reading
Saturday, April 26
Yesterday morning it rained pea gravel into the crawl space of our new studio. I was working in my office upstairs when I heard the sound of a big truck pulling up out front. I looked out the window to see a guy maneuvering a long conveyor belt toward the barn door on the front of the building. In a few minutes he powered up the conveyor and gravel started shooting toward the open door. When the truck pulled up I thought they were going to deliver the gravel slowly into a pile in the crawl space. But no, it was a remarkably well controlled high speed operation. In the photo above you can see the gravel raining down into the space. Continue reading
Friday, April 25
Yesterday around noon the A-1 Builders crew had pumped out the water from the previous night’s rain, finished building the forms for new footers, and were ready to pour concrete. Continue reading
Thursday, April 24.
It rained last night. Hard. The beginning of the new driveway and parking area is looking reasonably dry, certainly a lot drier than the soggy grass that was here before. It’s definitely going to be a wet day for the guys working inside. You can see clear through the building right now when both barn doors are open. Continue reading
Tuesday morning, April 23 the crew from A-1 Builders arrived to begin work on renovating the old feed store into my new photo studio. I’d already done a lot of the demolition work to remove wall and ceiling coverings, take out a lot of the old floor, and get rid of the debris. Doing that work myself saved us a fair chunk of change, built muscles in my arms and shoulders, and made it possible for the professionals to get most of the remaining demolition work completed the first day.
Earlier this month I had the pleasure of working with Josh, a Ferndale High School senior, to create his senior portraits. We met at Hovander Homestead Park, just outside Ferndale, for a couple of hours on a glorious April afternoon for his session.
The video slideshow shows my favorites from his session. He and his mom have since narrowed down the choices, picking favorite expressions and poses. Continue reading
I’ve been a big fan of trilliums since I was a kid in West Virginia. Out there you’ll find several species blooming in the woods. Here in northwest Washington we only have one native species, although there are others a bit further south or east in the Pacific Northwest. Our species, Trillium ovatum, is common, widespread, and showy.
Western white trillium, also known as wakerobin, is blooming in our woods right now. Recognize it by three showy white petals held just above three large triangular leaves. Did you pick up on the threes, which give the genus its name? Continue reading
With the advent of digital photography we have so much post-processing control in applications like Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop, or Photoshop Elements that many of the filters we once used are no longer needed. But there are two exceptions, filters that I still carry and use in my outdoor photography. This month I’ll remind you why a polarizing filter is still important.
Most people, when they think of a polarizing filter, associate it with darkening a blue sky. That’s certainly one of the most common uses of this filter. You can compare the effect of the polarizer in this photograph of our home made on a sunny afternoon with the sun roughly 90° to the left of my camera. Without the polarizer the grass is lighter green, the sky is a pale blue, and the brightness values of the yellow paint, the grass, and the sky are similar. Continue reading
