tired

This poor building on the Port Angeles waterfront is probably even more tired now, after all my digital darkroom manipulations.*

* Said manipulations consisted mostly of solarizing: a digital equivalent of exposing the developing print to a brief flash of white light, thereby causing part of the image to reverse in tone and appear as negative.

fence planting

This strange garden scene is along a fence in uptown Port Townsend.

garden table

We set this table up as a painting prop.

shade

Just the thing for a sunny summer day.

royal creek

A pool in the stream, on the way to Royal Basin in Olympic National Park.

(I re-cropped this photo on July 29 to make it a stronger image.)

willow pond

This morning was another plein air painting opportunity- this time at Vision Nursery just west of Sequim.  The willow and pond were actually next door.  Oil on panel, 6"x8."

riverbend

Summer in Eastern Washington's channeled scablands.

port hadlock

Here is another 6"x8" monochrome value study, done in plein air and awaiting color.  It is a low-tide view of Skunk Island, Port Hadlock and distant Port Townsend from the Port Hadlock Marina.

northwest maritime center

Today was another plein air painting Monday, and it wasn't actually raining, so off we went to the Northwest Maritime Center in Port Townsend.

The center is yellow and so was the boat, so I thought I'd put some yellow in the sky as well.

poppies and lavender

Here is a sun-filled image from ten days ago, offered as an antidote to the soggy state of this Lavender Festival and farm tour weekend.

woods

We shunned the lavender farms today and, instead, participated in a morning plein air paintout with oil painter Scott Gellatly, at a small park behind a Port Townsend art store.  Here is my effort for the morning.

"Woods"

oil on canvas, 6"x8"

another lavender farm

Today is the start of the big lavender weekend, with a festival and farm tours, and it is all socked in and rainy.  But this is Sequim, so no doubt the weather will change before long.

This image is from the beautiful Jardin du Soleil lavender farm just north of Sequim.

point wilson trees...

...highlight the exposed, windswept character of their location.

point wilson

The view of Point Wilson from a bluff trail at Fort Worden, on a sunny day.

fish out of water

Yesterday's photo is the one I was after artistically, but I offer these to complete the visual story of the tug "Earnest's" unusual ride.

In this side view, the tug seems much bigger than the hoist.

Now suspended in the air, the tug seems dwarfed by the Travelift when seen from the front.

As "Earnest" settles onto her blocks, we can see that she really needs some work.

tug "earnest"

Workers prepare to lift the tug "Earnest" out of the water on a gray morning in the Port Angeles harbor.

undergrowth

Here is another pinhole image from Monday's visit to the national forest.

My pinhole camera is my normal digital camera with the lens removed.  In its place is a body cap (covering the opening left by the lens) with a tiny pinhole in the center.

The pinhole is a sort of proto-lens.  Its use dates back at least to the 11th century AD.  Long exposures dictate the use of a tripod and composing the shot is a guess, since my through-the-lens viewfinder shows only darkness with the pinhole attached.  At least there is no worry about focusing, as everything in the photo will be uniformly semi-sharp.

camper van

This camper van, complete with bicycles, was parked at the lavender farm on Thursday when we were there sketching and painting.  I was lucky- it drove off just after I finished this sketch.

graphite pencil and digital color

lavender farm

It's getting to be that time of year again around Sequim.  The Lavender Festival is just a week away.

Three of us went to the Purple Haze lavender farm yesterday to paint and sketch.  Here is my sketch of the farm store.

graphite pencil and digital color

sun pillar

We had an unusual sunset yesterday, involving a sun pillar and a curving, gold-lined pathway in the sky leading to the horizon.  Additional color provided by haze from the massive Siberian forest fire.

rock in the rapids

Here's another pinhole photograph from Monday's visit to Dungeness Forks, in the Olympic National Forest.

With just a pinhole admitting light to the camera, exposures are much longer than normal.  Mine were anywhere from two to fifteen seconds long.  So, not only does the pinhole soften the image, but the long exposure turns the river rapids into smooth waves of mist.

forest road

I made this digital pinhole photograph yesterday in the Dungeness Forks area of Olympic National Forest.  It is my first foray into pinhole photography.

The pinhole produces a uniformly soft image (nothing is in sharp focus) with infinite depth of field (all parts near and far are equally in focus).

snowplow

More painted-out-graffiti art from the batteries at Fort Worden.

orange castle, blue castle

This is my photo of someone else's unintentional art.

When the concrete battery structures at Fort Worden get tagged with graffiti, state park personnel come around and paint over it.  Then more graffiti shows up and gets painted out in turn- each time with whatever color of paint is on hand.  Over time, fun shapes emerge.

The original color here is orange.  I made four copies of my photo and turned two of them blue.

fog island

Here's a quintessential northwest scene:  An island looms out of the fog off West Point on Whidbey Island, near Deception Pass.

hurricane hill

A deer admires the view from atop Hurricane Hill, near Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park.

fireworks near and far

There was no crescent moon last night (it was just past full and still rising in the east).  Plus, the anticipated display from Hardwick Point was not forthcoming.  But there were a few bursts, including this one.  And I caught a distant one somewhere north of Sequim.

fireworks moon

This photo is from July 4th last year, with fireworks seen from across Sequim Bay while the crescent moon was setting in the background.

Of technical interest:  I was able to get this telephoto digital image with the camera handheld (!), thanks to a high ISO speed setting and image stabilization.  That wouldn't have happened in the old days.

Happy 4th of July!

sequim bay clouds

Here is another image of clouds over Sequim Bay.  This time, they look a little more ominous than those I posted on June 24.

painting onions

Looking at a painting in progress at a weekend paintout.  The onions were on a shelf inside the open window of a small stand.

morning madrona

...or Madrone, as they say in California.

This morning view form a vacant lot on East Sequim Bay Road also served as a reference and take-off point for M's excellent painting, "Morning on East Sequim Bay."