For Rob

Happy birthday, my friend. Come to Seattle and capture this palette right, with YOUR camera

last night

Peaches

I'm conceding to Annie and Justin on the above image. I like the one below. But yeah, in the end, it's just a picture of a dog, named Peaches, sitting on a pink bed in a really PINK room.

WAKE(ing) UP!

I just realized that's a rather misleading title for this post as this is a sunset, not a sunrise. What I meant by waking up is to 'wake up' my senses to what is right behind me at any given moment.
These photos were taken during a very specific assignment to shoot the above sign to fit in a tiny one inch box as part of a larger package for Presidents' Day. Just go take a picture of the sign. Make it a square.
What began as an example of the worst part of the job quickly turned into an example of what's best about it. The fact that I get to go out into this world with a camera everyday. There are no limits except those I put on myself. All I had to do was turn around, look past the droll, and see the sunset, the cows, perhaps a cliche, but a warming, beautiful moment, at least for me personally, all the same.
I often think of this blog as more of a visual diary than anything else. It's full of pictures like these which will never have a life beyond this page, but serve as a reminder to me of where I was or how I felt.
This day was one of the first in months where I felt the sun break through the clouds and the fog and the rain. I'm ready to shake off my winter coat.

catching up

A couple weekends ago. A couple shots of the periphery of a memorial for a fallen firefighter. Shots that would not run with the story.
The boys on skateboards rolled up and stopped to watch. A firefighter asked them to move to another spot more out of the way. They complied, and watched silently with other neighbors. After the casket passed by, I asked them what they'd been up to. They'd been skating boarding at the skate park down the street, but "had to leave when this big kid started saying too many bad words," the youngest one looked up and told me.

A couple from Baker

On a hunting trip with two amazing people, members of the Upper Skagit tribe. We didn't shoot anything, which was honestly fine by me. Totally worth it to hear the stories and feel the connection to a land and river that their ancestors have inhabited for generations.

Coho Derby

I'm doing some archiving onto DVDs from one of my external harddrives today. Annie had one of her's crash last week. Everything gone in a split second. Luckily she's a good dvd-burner. I am not. So I'm slowly trying to catch up. Here are a couple frames from a morning Annie and I spent with some salmon fishermen last fall. There's also a link to the video we made for the paper. Erg, scratch that. Paper changed video services and it's no longer available. I'll just let you imagine it.

Snuggle Up and Read

Annie put together an event for 4or500 kids and parents last Thursday evening at her school. I was recruited to take pictures. It was great. Lots of snuggling, lots of reading, lots of funny little kids.