surrounded by nothing

while we were in rhododendron, casey and i shot some video for a sweet little narrative we plan to set to the song 17 by youth lagoon. here are a few stills:

walk the old way

i came outside to find the covered spa covered in pieces of forest. in leaves and flowers and moss and branches and bark. then i watch as the pieces were reassembled. you probably can't improve on the way nature puts things together, but i don't think that's any reason not to spend a few sunny hours trying.

and we are far from home but we're so happy

thanks and the giving of thanks

i sat down and wrote out a list of things that i'm thankful for. a poem in the form of a list. but, for whatever reason, it just doesn't sit right. maybe i'm not done with it. that, of course, isn't to say that i'm not thankful for beautiful weekends like the one i just spent in a cabin in rhododendron full of truly great company and too much food and walks over fallen trees and movie making and lessons in dream-catcher weaving.

that is just to say that i'll leave it to a song that's stayed with me to finish this post:

i'm so blessed to 
have spent that time
with my family and the friends 
i love
with my short life i have met 
so many people i deeply care for.
-- red cave by yeasayer

to the end i'll never know

near kate's house, there is this ridge filled with palm trees that always pulls at me. it seems so right. it seems like i ought to live within walking distance. it reminds me of the way birds rest on telephone wires, all spaced out just so. anyhow, my diptyching continues, again with two softtone polaroids taken with a specrta system. if you look really hard, you can find kate, somewhere in here.

it's always good to see you again

i'm not sure if it was the steely sky and the light it threw on everything, or if it was just the tug of nostalgia for a place the reminds a little bit of home, but last weekend, as i walked down echo park avenue in los angeles, i felt this need to take pictures of nearly everything.

pictures of palm trees and telephone poles, of mission-style homes and sloping streets full of bouganvilla. and also, apparently, of unicorns stuck to store fronts. (i spent the weekend wondering what sort of store pastes an angry unicorn head above its entrance. my last night there, i found out: a store selling 80s and 90s work out clothing. obviously?)

amanda's work with diptychs has been rolling around my head lately. both of these images were shot on softtone polaroid film with my spectra system.

i watched all afternoon

a few weekends ago, while we were driving to st. johns under a blue fall sky, casey and i decided it didn't make much sense to do anything else besides keep driving until we hit sauvie island. we needed a couple pumpkins, anyhow. i made a quick stop for a roll of medium format film on the way. here's some of what was waiting for me at blue moon camera last week, pulled together in three diptychs:






(the right-hand photo of the first diptych will be in blue moon's december show. credit to casey for right-hand photo in second diptych.)

in the mornings i rest here

portraits on softtone spectra film. (the last two are by kate and james, in that order.)

     

i have no idea what's going on lately

early this morning, after my plane cut through three layers of cloud cover on it's final dive into portland, a lush green landscape specked with bits of red and orange and yellow revealed itself. it's fall. i mean, i've known this to be true for while now, but it wasn't until this morning that i fully felt it. and now it's almost gone. how'd that happen?

some pictures, then, for the season:

and we're standing side by side

i made casey and amanda help me finish up the last of my 'image' film for the spectra camera.

your wisdom is older than me

The people who were here before, they knew all this, too.

The silhouettes of motionless bikes and beer bottles being tilted toward mouths.

The smiles for the camera -- this really did happen, you know?

The blankets being laid down to separate us from the earth.

(As if we aren't separate enough as it is.)

the sky wasn't big enough for all of them

they did the monster mash

buckle up, we're wayward bound

two sweet images from the last sweet washougal trip of 2011. the top image is actually going to be in blue moon camera's customer show this december, so that's fun.