Stanwood Surprise

Good news... I think this is my last post of pictures from July. Time for August! yay-yers.

Well, this little spot is located just outside the town of Stanwood, I think it is along the Pioneer Highway. I have seen it quite a few times, and knew that dma would love to explore its crumbly structure. So, while we were up north for the Silvana Fair, we stopped by for a little shoot...

The whole time I was taking pictures, I had visions of how awesome they would be in black & white. Imagine my surprise when, as I was editing them, they just seemed better in color. Interesting. There was one of the entry way did look pretty cool in black & white, and it turned out to be my only black & white from the day. Interesting.

Not a bad summer evening, eh?

Purple Muse

Is it Friday yet??

More importantly, are these pictures really from July?

yep.

I just had *too* much fun this summer, including this little evening stroll around the Seattle Center. DMA and I went there because I heard they were going to re-do the Fun Forest rides... but we were too late! The log ride, the viking ship, the horrible orbitron are GONE!

There were still interesting sights to be seen! Reflections & flowers... my favorites!

Reflections
These are a few variations of the reflection of the Space Needle in the EMP. I love the swirls and twisted patterns.

Purple Muse

aaah, my favorite.

Of all the flowers in the world, something about the hydrangea deeply resonates with me; they are my favorite. They remind me of my great-grandmother and my very early years of childhood. To the six year old me, my great-grandmother's little backyard was a little bit magical. She had hydrangeas, snowballs, bluebells, crumbly old cement sidewalks and money plants (my other favorite... actually, I don't even know if they are called money plants... ok, I just googled it... they are actually called Annual Honesty, and HERE is a link to a fabulous photo on someone's flikr page) (hehe.. maybe I'll use Annual Honesty as the name of my photography company?)

Anyway, my muse for the day was a random lacetop hydrangea plant. This is what it looks like:

And here are my suped up edited, veryvery pretty variations...

Hey, thanks for taking a look at my blog!

In peace,

Lori

Sequim Sunrise

Oh yeah.... more pics from July!

A little bit after dma and I enjoyed the radiant sunset in Sequim, we headed back to the same spot to catch the sunrise. It was a pretty crazy trip... we took a midnight ferry, followed a random road looking for a lake, eventually catching a little bit of sleep in the parking lot of a veterinarian's office. Gotta do what you gotta do!

First Frame

Back in 2008, my friend Cole & I took a photography lesson up on Mt. Ranier with Randall Hodges. One of the insights from that day was to use your first picture of the day as a benchmark. He figures that you can only improve on your first image. I often forget this helpful tip while I am out in the field, but it resonates with me all the time while I am editing. For this post, I figured I would show my "first frame" from the Sequim Sunrise. Its messy, but you can see the simple, natural beauty of the area.

Lens Babe-ya

I really couldn't get a good grasp on the landscape this morning. Not sure why; just wasn't really clicking with me. I completely enjoyed the shoot, and dropped a bunch of frames, but, like my "first frame" they all seemed messy & disorganized to me. disorganized in a blah way. so, I figured I would just bump up the chaos & shoot with my lensbaby. I kinda dig it.

With all those wildflowers in easy proximity, I HAD to take some close-ups!

Doesn't the picture below look a little bit like a monster? It looks like it is taunting you, in French, to try to mess with it! almost like it is saying... I will keeeel you.

So, with only a few winks of sleep what did we do next... head to the Olympic National Park!! The wildflowers were insane here.

I

was

in

heaven.

It didn't take long for us to mutually agree that we were crazy. no sleep. very little food. very, very little water & a hike in the hot summer sun? So, this last pic is one for inspiration... a future hike! (um, once the snow melts, eh?)

Thanks for stopping by & for humoring me with my super old pictures!

Sequim Sunset

This is another round of pictures from last summer. Will I ever catch up on my editing? I *almost* gave up my effort to keep them (mostly) in order, opting instead to concentrate on 2011 pictures. DMA and I are out ALL THE TIME taking pictures (ok, ok, just about every weekend for me!!) and I have adopted a mental "jpeg diet." I try to only take a few pictures while we are out, and have a very discriminating eye. I don't like it. I want the freedom of snapsnap snapsnapsnap "Ooo pretty!" snapsnap "wow" snapsnap snap "sweet." Instead, I am scanning, scanning, scanning, always looking for the "perfect" frame, in order to weed out the junk frames and stay true to my "jpeg diet." The spark is gone. And, when combined with the damp, bitter cold of winter, photography lately has been exhausting for me.

Today, I wondered if it would be better to skip past these old frames? I wondered if I should just start with my glorious New Years Day photos from the Oregon Coast??? I dunno, I just couldn't do it. Is the Virgo in me? The First-Born tendencies? My darned stubborn inner stive for order?

Who knows?

All I know is that these pics were taken in Sequim back in July. I **finally** made the trek out there to see the lavendar fields only to have my dreamy illusions of wide, open rolling fields of purple shattered. Maybe we went to the wrong area of town, but the parts we saw were small & they had a bunch of stupid white tents. oh grr. Oh well... per usual, dma and I made up our own agenda and just wandered. We found a true gem though: a park overlooking the peaceful warm summer sunset.

I selected just a few of my very favorite pictures from this day to edit. The two of the path below are a toss up... I can't decide if I like the wide angle, or the zoomed & cropped version better. its a puzzlement.



I love waves, well, actually just about any moving water. I set up my tripod & took quite a few frames of the wooshing waves below (oh btw, the park was on cliff!). I cropped in & warmed up this frame an itsy bitsy teeny tiny bit.

And, at last, the blazing sun.

What a beautiful day! I can't wait for summer... how 'bout you?

Mountane 1 of 3

Ok, here we go... another round of super old pictures! Last July, DMA & I had a great time cruising along the Mountain Loop Highway. We started our trek in a great spot... A-town! Our first stop was at the Trafton School just off Jim Creek. It turns out that it was a great time to visit: they have recently closed the school! Given this information, it was bitter sweet to walk the grounds of the school.

I took a ton of pictures this day! We continued from Trafton to Darrington, then took a right at *the* stop sign onto the Mtn Loop Hwy. We stopped by the ice caves, too, but my pictures from there were kind of so-so. I broke the pics into three posts to keep the scrolling to a minimium ;) This one is focused on the Trafton School, #2 is a tribute to some little petals of sunshine & #3 wraps up the day with random pics from the road. Thanks so much for looking at my pics!

Mountane 2 of 3

This is the second round of pics from along the Mountain Loop Highway. I actually have had this set on my mind for awhile... they have been my incentive to finish up the earlier pics from June & July. Kind of like photographic candy.

Somewhere (I can't remember where now...) we pulled off the main road & found a side road with a bridge over a river (probably the Stilly?). There were a TON of wildflowers in this area. I searched for the perfect clump of daisies & spent about a half hour here! These are a few of my favorites...

Thanks for taking a little look!

Mountane 3 of 3

This is the third set of pics from the drive DMA & I took last July via the Mountain Loop Highway. The first two are viewpoints from the road, the bottom three are from good ol downtown Darrington.

Thanks for taking a looksie!

Snow Lake

oooh sniffles. fever is gone, thankfully, but ugh. I still don't have enough energy to quite muster up a thoughtful blog entry. So, I'll be keeping it simple, thank you very much.

Waaay back in July (yes... eyes rolling... July) dma& I hiked up to Snow Lake. It was awesome, and looking at these pics now makes me want to hit the trail again soon!

So, here are some pics from the trail. Oh how I love stopping water!




And a couple views from the trail...

And Snow Lake itself! I lack the POWERS to make this photograph dazzle as much as the real thing, so I just kept my edits to a minimum.

Check out the cool design of the ice!!

Thanks for taking a look, hope all is well!

Yakima

I was supposed to be in Yakima today. Or Seattle. Or anywhere else that had an ounce of photographic inspiration. Instead...I was home. With my cat (awww, euka!). and a 100.2 degree temp.


oh well... gave me a chance to edit these pics from July while re-watching When In Rome.

In all my years as a Washingtonian, I never knew there were canyons in Yakima. What a lovely surprise! And a drive home via Chinook Pass? Could a summer day get any better?

And that, dear friends, wraps up my lovely summer road trip. And now... time for Theraflu...zzzzz