Garden Wonderland

Wandering Downstairs

Mixed Bag

The Sun Falls From the Sky

And just a quick note: don't forget to check the archives. I've noticed that the blog has grown quite large and that there are a lot of pictures that don't pop up on the main screen. There are a lot more pictures in the archives.

Stone Alone

Stef's Umbrella

Frog Spirit

Portland: Just the Beginning

So, as some of you know, Cindi and I just recently traversed the land of Port, better known as Portland. We were taking up the invitation of one Tony Candelaria and one Stef Choi. We had an amazing time, ate some amazing food, and Cindi and I embarked on a journey across the city with no guide and no chance of retracing our steps (not because we couldn't but because we chose not to). But I'm getting ahead of myself. This is the first night and after Cindi and Stef had fallen asleep Tony and I stayed up for many an hour (until about 5am) talking of old times, of new times, and taking a few pictures of the present time.


This is a mask that Tony built for a theatre play. (It's one of several, including this awesome headpiece that he built while we were there. You can see more pictures of these things at Tony's blog which can be found here or in my links)


We passed by this building the first night. Tony and Stef pointed it out as creepy, but surprisingly they said it was creepier during the day and I agree.


This is Jamison Square, in the Pearl District, this was the first stop on mine and Cindi's cross town trek.


This is one of the last pictures of this trek, because strangely we didn't take that many pictures. We saw a lot of interesting things, but didn't really take too many pictures, because it was one of those adventures that you get almost halfway through (on the wrong side of the river), realize you can't turn back, start arguing, and everyone is pretty upset for a while. We blindly jumped on the MAX (the light rail system around town) took it back over the river and I insisted we get off when I heard the first stop on the right side of the river was Chinatown. I grabbed Cindi and we headed back out into the town. I wanted to take pictures there, but it just never happened. I think I thought we would come back. We never did. Anyways this picture is just before we walked over the Broadway Bridge to the wrong side of the river and this adventure really took off.


There will be many more Portland posts to come, and I think they get better as the trip progressed, culminating in an amazing afternoon in Washington Park....so I'll try to get through these quickly, but I think my photo attention will get pulled onto real work, since I'm photographing a wedding with Tim Hughes on Saturday.

For Scott:

It has been a while since I have put up a new post and I feel remiss everytime that I get on the internet just to check my email or any other thing that doesn't leave me enough time to do a post...maybe I should start a smaller, quicker posting policy, but this is beside the point today... This post is dedicated to Scott, who I hear has had some blogging troubles recently. Whenever I have looked at these two pictures they remind me of Scott and his interest in the desert. This is also to remind us that Scott is one prickly little dude when his blog riles him up...



I couldn't decide on black and white or color, so I took one of each.

Pink Elephants on Parade and other Little Things...

Yep, this post is pretty much just like the title says...



Ok, this next thing isn't really a little thing like everything else...but it looked pretty similar to the above picture...





If only all days off of work were this much fun.

More Montana in Montana (Lips Gonna Be A Mess Tomorrow)

Back to Montana... I don't think a lot of words are necessary...there was this yellow house and I took a picture of it...

Then there are always the Gallows Frames that are unavoidable in Butte...

This is a train trestle that we drove under and stopped so I could take a few pictures...this thing is pretty massive and it's hard to figure out how to shoot it... I guess I'm pretty happy with this one...

These next few pictures are of the Copper King Mansion, which I showed the exterior in a previous post.

This picture doesn't do this room justice. This is just one wall, but the whole room was full of these dolls. It gives me the creeps, but my sister who enjoys creepy dolls of this variety would have liked it.

Oh, and one day we went out for a drive with Cindi's family and we came across this place... The frozen stumps pictured above were near here. Cindi's dad wanted to camp here and said that if we weren't all with him he probably would have. It was a really nice area, but it was maybe 30 degrees and was starting to snow as we left...

Disneyland...

Alright now that we have the obligatory castle picture out of the way...let's talk briefly. I love taking pictures in Disneyland, because there are so many small details and such otherworldly architecture. This is one of the few places I usually always prefer to shoot in color, since there is such attention to color all around the park. There will probably be more posts of Disneyland stuff. There have already been a few that have already been posted. (Cindi in the windowsill, the dragons on the table, and Tony breaking into that door) But let's get started.
Tony is always a great person to go to Disneyland with, because he is usually running around saying "Hey, get a picture of this!" And then he jumps on something or crawls into something and sometimes you get a picture of Tony just being Tony, like the picture below, where he didn't know I would take a picture of him getting all pirate on the people on shore. How many places can you threaten people on shore from a sailing ship. That's the beauty of Disneyland.





The next two are the a couple of the rare exceptions where I thought black and white were a much better choice.

People in Places

I have mixed feelings about pictures of people. I find I'm not peoplecentric with my photography...in fact a lot of the time I don't like there to be any people in it at all. I think that lends the pictures to a better sense of timelessness, because you can usually roughly date a picture by the people...the clothes they wear, how their hair is done, etc... But there is always the exception. There are those times when you want to document who was where when... So, here are a few pictures of people. Let's allow Tony to start this thing off by breaking in...

One day I was walking around Ocean Beach and there was this dude completely dressed up in Scottish garb standing on the corner with his bagpipes...not playing them...just standing there with them. So, thanks guy.

Miss Choi all in green waving her hand at the mirror.

Cindi Lou smiling at something...you never know with her

So, over the summer I took pictures for a wedding that Cindi was the maid of honor for and I'm not big on wedding photography, but I'm starting to warm to it if it is done right. This first one is from about week before the wedding for the last minute fitting to make sure it was all good to go. The second one is from the wedding day.

And then here is 8 foot tall Matt passing through 5 foot something Tony ...or is Tony exhaling Matt , calling him into being like some sort of sci-fi/ fantasy? Or is Tony actually swallowing Matt whole?

This picture apparently makes Cindi feel like a spy or secret agent...wearing bright red in a black and white world is not exactly what I would call "blending in".

And man, you gotta love this guy. Standing out in the pounding surf playing his heart out, looking to the west, pausing only to watch the power of the waves.