Blog Archives

35mm Black & White

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Black & White 35mm Film

Since I’ve decided to rekindle my interest in working with the older and slower medium of black and white film I came to the conclusion that I should practice with 35mm film before making the considerable investment in film for my 8×10 camera.

I spent a little time online researching which films are currently available as 8×10 sheets and then ordered a couple of rolls each of the same emulsion in 35mm size. Somehow I forgot to order one I wanted to try, Ilford FP-4, so I’ll pick up some of it later. One of the films in the photo, Ilford SFX200, is an outlier as it’s not available in sheets. I’ll say a bit more about it below. Continue reading →

Bigger, Slower, Harder

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8x10 view camera

During the end-of-the-year holidays I pulled my Burke & James 8×10 Commercial View camera out of storage, with the idea of putting it back into service. I originally purchased this camera back in the 1970s and exposed a few sheets of film with it in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I haven’t used it since December, 1981 when I attempted to photograph our wedding with it. That was a big mistake.

I don’t know exactly when my camera was made, but I found a 1967 Burke & James catalog which shows it as a current product at that time. Since these things don’t change much and it’s a classic design, I suspect my camera is a bit older than that but there’s no way to know for sure. Continue reading →

Bird’s Eye View

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Serviceberries blooming w/ Golden Currant, Great Camas

Are there times when you wish you were a bird or a butterfly, able to fly above your garden and look down on the view?

Most of the time we go through life contentedly looking at the world from whatever height our eyes are, in my case about five feet above the ground. But the world looks different from above. The photo at the top was made from my office deck, looking down on the native shrub and perennial bed out front. Continue reading →

Plug In to the Currant Bush

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Coast Black Gooseberry blossoms

Remember that camping trip with your college friends when someone asked where they could plug in their hair drier and the smart aleck in the group said, “Go plug it into the current bush.”? Then your hapless friend wandered around looking for a bush to plug into. Whether they found one is open to question.

If our friend happened to be visiting our garden this month I could point them to four different species of native currants or gooseberries. They’re all members of the genus Ribes, and there are 18 species (not counting varieties and subspecies) in Washington state. There’s some difference of opinion about the common names for these. Some we call currants and some are gooseberries, generally (but not always) based on the size of the fruit.

In the photo above we’re looking at the flowers of Coast Black Gooseberry, Ribes divaricatum. It’s also sometimes called Straggly Goosebery or Spreading Gooseberry or Wild Black Gooseberry. Continue reading →

Go Long or Go Wide? Variations on a Theme

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'Flore Pleno' Bloodroot, 300mm lens

As photographers, the lenses we choose can dramatically change the subject’s appearance in the finished photograph. I find that much of the time I fall back on my trusty 24-105mm zoom lens, which covers most of the subjects I photograph very well. But when I visited the patch of ‘Flore Pleno’ Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis ‘Flore Pleno’) in our woodland-edge garden yesterday evening I left “old trusty” in my bag and picked three different lenses as I explored this spring ephemeral. Continue reading →

Morning and Evening

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Fog in early spring perennial garden

The edges of the day — around sunrise and sunset — are the most interesting. Yes, we all enjoy warm sunny blue-sky days, but frankly, mid-day sunshine is visually boring.

A couple of weeks ago I looked out out kitchen window about 7:30 as I was finishing my breakfast and noticed the low morning sun shining through a little fog in the garden. It was about 30 minutes after official sunrise. I figured this little light show wouldn’t last long, so I grabbed the camera I keep in the house and rushed out to the garden to capture this bit of atmospheric light show. Continue reading →

Sweet Smell of Spring

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Purple-leaf Plum blossoms in red vase
We had guests over for dinner last Saturday evening and in preparation Brian went out to the garden and trimmed our big purple-leaf plum, along with a few sprigs of cornelian cherry, to make an arrangement for our dining room table. He chose an antique red vase that’s been in our family for decades. The plum blossoms were just starting to open on Saturday, but a couple of days later they’d opened fully.

The vase continues to sit where we can enjoy the flowers and the sweet fragrance of the blossoms. We’ll come close and stick our noses right up to the flowers and inhale deeply. It’s a pleasantly sweet aroma, but not overpowering.

Continue reading →

Clear Winter’s Night

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Birdfeeder & winter garden by moonlight
Birdfeeder and winter garden by moonlight

Last night when Brian and went to the kitchen for an evening snack we looked out the window to the garden and were surprised to see moonlight casting shadows. It was crisp and cold (mid 30s F), which is when we tend to get clear skies in the winter. I set up my tripod, mounted my camera, grabbed my puffy coat and a warm hat, and headed outside. The view above is from our patio, very much like what we saw from the kitchen window.

Continue reading →

Happy New Year!

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Snow-crusted Mountain Hemlocks overlooking Swift Creek valley
View from Artist Ridge to the Swift Creek valley and Baker Lake

I’ve long felt that what I choose to do on New Year’s Day will set the tone for the year to come.

This year Brian and I checked the weather forecast the decided it would be a great day for a snowshoe hike up to Artist Point. I’ve been going up there every winter since 1990-1991 and I never get tired of it. As Brian reminded me yesterday while we were hiking, it’s different every time. Continue reading →

Sheep Lake & Sourdough Gap Wildflowers

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This past weekend, July 20-22, 2018, I hiked up to Sheep Lake and Sourdough Gap with a bunch of friends on the Washington Native Plant Society annual backpack. It’s a short hike to the lake, just an easy 1.8 miles from the trailhead at Chinook Pass. Go for the flowers, not solitude, as it’s a popular place. My impression was that the flowers were a bit pre-peak, but still lots of things in full bloom. We checked plants off a list of some 170 species, although we didn’t find all of them.

This video slideshow features some of my favorite images from the trip. These were photographed with my Canon 5D Mark III, a Canon 100mm macro lens, a 16-35mm wide-angle lens, and a 24-105mm lens. It’s a short hike, so I carried a lot of gear.