Just Jacque – Page 105 – How do you concisely explain the evolution from witness to artist? I spent 35 years as a photographer, faithfully trying to replicate reality through the medium of a camera. Now I strive to create images that evoke an emotional response primarily using color and movement, painting without a canvas or brush. Inspiring subject matter is everywhere and I often do my best work in my own back yard.

July 21, 2013

Zen and Now

I’m guessing Snoqualmie Falls was supposed to be the highlight of our little one day photo tour in Seattle. But for me it was the Japanese Garden. Maybe it was because the sun went back behind the clouds and the light was soft and beautiful. Maybe it was because of the mama raccoon and her three babies. I could have stayed for hours, but we only had 30 minutes.

How can you not just love this? I only wish I had put on my 1.4 teleconverter to get even closer. But I thought we were going to be photographing a garden, not wildlife. I should be grateful I got the photos I did, because the raccoons got pretty skittish as soon as they realized there were people around. People with cameras, no less.

The raccoons weren’t the only wildlife in the garden. This mother duck and her brood were also in residence. Along with a whole lot of koi. I took many photos of the koi, but I don’t feel like any of them turned out very well. It’s not exactly easy to photograph fast moving fish in a muddy pond. Give me some baby ducks any day.

Of course, the garden itself was beautiful as well. Not much was blooming, but Japanese gardens aren’t really about the flowers anyway. There was this tree with orange leaves that added a nice spot of color, so of course I shot it from every possible angle. I also hit the lily pads from every direction. Wish I could have gotten a little closer.

But that’s a standard lament in photography – “if your photos aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.”*

*Some famous photographer, whose name I’m too lazy to google.

July 20, 2013

Money’s Worth

Remind me not to schedule so much stuff when we are only home for a few days. Since we returned from Seattle on Tuesday evening, I’ve managed to cram in a haircut, massage, facial, acupuncture treatment, two sessions with my personal trainer, a happy hour, lunch with a friend, lunch with my mom and a dinner cruise. That’s in four days. Ridiculous.

The problem is, I now have this incredibly high maintenance body. I work out with my trainer three mornings a week, I have acupuncture once a week, I get my hair cut every two to three weeks and I get a massage every other week. Plus I get a facial once a month. It’s obscene, but I love it. The only thing better about being retired is the ridiculous amount of sleep I get. You can go ahead and hate me now.

But first, I promised more photos from Seattle.

This was taken from the bus window on our cheapie little photo tour. Which turned out to be a real highlight of the trip. Yes, I was a little frustrated that we didn’t have more time at some of the stops. And I found it irritating that the tour guide didn’t give us the option to get off the bus before he gave rudimentary little photo tips at every stop. (Rule of thirds, really? Leading lines, fascinating if you’ve only been using a camera for a few months instead of 30 years) But given the rock bottom price of $59 for the day, I can’t really complain that much. This is sort of a throwaway shot, but it appeals to me for some reason. I originally posted it in color and then I realized the color doesn’t add anything to the image.

This is another bus window shot. We did not stop at the train museum, which is a bummer because it looked really cool. Many of the trains were waiting for restoration and they were super rusty and very interesting. But that’s what you get when you don’t pick the itinerary. We might have to rent a car for a day the next time we’re in Seattle. Now that we know where to go.

I can’t say I was really happy with any of my waterfall photos. If only the cloud cover had held until we got there. Waterfalls are always tricky, even under the best of lighting conditions. I just couldn’t get the right composition that included the whole waterfall plus some foreground to give it depth. I tried both a fast shutter speed to freeze the motion of the water and a slow one one to give it a smoother look. This is sort of of in-between. Nothing really grabbed me. Maybe a waterfall is just too cliche. Maybe this one just didn’t inspire me, even though it is taller than Niagra. Size isn’t everything you know.

July 17, 2013July 16, 2013

Back to Reality

Yesterday we flew back to Minneapolis. It was a relatively quick ride to the airport until we made the turnoff for departures. Then, everything ground to a near halt. I’ve never seen that much traffic just outside of an airport. We went to check our bags and found a long line at the Sky Priority check-in. One family of five was having some problem that occupied two agents. Another family of twelve got into line just ahead of us. I’ve never had that long a wait to check in for first class.

We went to the queue for the security checkpoint and were separated because for some bizarre reason the TSA has put me into the pre-approved traveler program but not my husband, even though we always travel together. Right before I was about to hand over my boarding pass and ID, they called a Code Bravo. Which meant someone breached security. So everything in the airport shut down until the person was located. It wasn’t a terrorist, just some confused person who went through the wrong door. I’m sure the rest of his day sucked.

Fortunately it was only about a 10-15 minute wait. Then I had to wait another 10 minutes while my husband went through the longer priority line. SEA-TAC is nuts, you definitely can’t cut it close on a flight through there. It took an hour from the time we exited the highway for the airport until we got to the Delta lounge by our gate.

It was a beautiful and interesting week in Seattle. I’ve been whipping out these posts pretty fast just to get something online, but I have lots more photos and lots more thoughts about our workshop. So it should keep me in blog material for a while.

July 16, 2013

Blue Skies and Cold Water

After we left the Chihuly Garden yesterday morning, we stopped for a terrific Thai lunch at a nearby restaurant before hopping on the monorail to get back downtown. Our second must do activity for the day was a ferry ride to Bainbridge Island. You can’t stay in a city on the water without taking some kind of boat trip. There’s a fancy harbor cruise you can take to the island, but we just went on the standard commuter ferry. The view is the same.

Monday was the hottest day during our week stay in Seattle, but the ferry ride was pretty chilly. Puget Sound is cold year round. But it was totally worth it for the spectacular views of downtown Seattle from the ferry. Since we were on foot, we didn’t get past the main part of downtown Winslow on Bainbridge. It’s cute and compact, with lots of little shops and restaurants. Since I went kind of crazy buying art in Seattle, I wasn’t really planning on serious shopping but I did pick up a cute necklace. It’s not a vacation without a little souvenir jewelry.

At 4:00 we stopped at a little Mexican restaurant that was clearly a local hangout. It was full of characters and if I wanted to hang around and buy a few rounds of beer, I’m sure I could have put together a series of photos that would have made the National Geographic instructor proud. But I was happy just to have a monster margarita and split an appetizer platter with my husband. We were planning to make this a snack, but the food was so good and there was so much of it that it turned out to be dinner. Then we just had time to do a quick wine tasting/purchase and pick up some berries at a local market before heading back to the ferry.

This is a totally boring photo of Mount Rainier that will never be featured in a magazine. I like it anyway. Most of the time Rainier is just a ghostly outline, this was an incredibly clear day. The ferry ride back was somewhat spoiled when a passing gull took a massive dump on my husband. They say it’s good luck to have a bird poop on you. I’ve had it happen 3 or 4 times in my life and I would have to say that my luck’s been pretty good. So we bought some lottery tickets before we left Seattle. I would hate to waste any good luck.

July 15, 2013July 16, 2013

Chihuly Magnificent

Today was our last full day in Seattle and I still had two big items on my must see list. The first was the Chihuly Garden and Glass. It’s so new that my Seattle guidebook doesn’t even list it, but it’s already one of the top rated attractions on Trip Advisor. After the disappointment of the teeny tiny Chihuly museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, I was really looking forward to seeing his work on a truly grand scale.

I was not disappointed. After the MIM, I would easily rate this as one of the best museums I’ve ever visited. Certainly the most photogenic. There are a series of galleries featuring work from different collections, each one more spectacular than the previous. I was in glass junkie heaven. When we went to see his glass in the garden exhibit at the Phoenix Desert Botanical Garden, I made the mistake of trying to photograph whole installations and everything turned out flat. This time I focused on colors and shapes, just looking for interesting compositions.

A lot of the larger installations were on shiny black platforms, making for interesting reflections. There were no guard rails blocking any of the artwork, so it was easy to get good photos. My husband gave me a huge tip by recommending that I try a slower shutter speed to create patterns and motion, instead of trying to get things in sharp focus. It was totally experimental and yielded some amazing results. A lot of it was just bizarre, but some of the images were truly striking. A big shout out to my better half for sharing his insight.

I used two different techniques. These two images were achieved by moving the camera in a small circle during an exposure of about 10 seconds. The white circles are the highlights of the lights reflecting off of the glass. I have dozens of these, all sort of fascinating. I like the multi-color ones best.

The second effect was done by slowly zooming the lens during the long exposure. I used my 70-200mm, but I probably should have tried some with my wider zoom as well.

After passing through all of the galleries, you end up in a garden that looks up at the Space Needle, I snuck one photo through the fence when we passed by on Saturday while it was closed, which turned out to be a good thing because that particular piece was backlit from inside the garden. I managed to get some interesting, distorted reflections of the Needle in some of the glass pieces. We ended up spending an hour and a half at the museum, which is incredible when you consider its relatively compact size. Truly a breathtaking and inspiring morning. I’ll post more photos after I get through processing them.

July 14, 2013July 16, 2013

Yesterday Was a Long Day

After our exhausting morning of traipsing around Seattle, we had a break to rest and get lunch before returning to the classroom in the afternoon. The whole edit and critique part goes so slowly that I’ve had a lot of time to work on images outside of what I was “submitting” to the instructor. So at least I’m not getting behind with workflow.

We had a scheduled break from 4:30 to 6:00 and then headed out on an assignment in one of Seattle’s more colorful neighborhoods – Capitol Hill. I have to say that Seattle is one of the friendliest cities I’ve ever visited. People constantly offered to help and recommended spots that they thought would be good for photographs.

The neighborhood has a lot of interesting graffiti and colorful characters. There were a number of people I could have photographed but I just didn’t feel like approaching them. I did have a few approach me, though. The funniest was a group of five women.

I took some cute photos of them, but I don’t think they were serious enough for the instructor. The whole emphasis was taking photos that would be appropriate for magazine stories. I just want to take interesting travel photos. Is that so wrong?

The neighborhood was loaded with really cool signs. This is one of my favorites. The whole group went out for dinner at 8:00. It was way too late for me and the evening really dragged on when we had to wait over 45 minutes on the sidewalk for a cab. The restaurant called and ordered four, but only one showed up. Another group grabbed a random passing cab. The restaurant called again and we finally got a ride back to the hotel. It would have been quicker to walk.

This morning was our final critique session and everyone was supposed to bring 20 images from the previous afternoon to submit for review by the entire group. I think less than half of the people showed up ready to go. So I got another hour to work on photos. We were officially released at noon and had the rest of the day to ourselves. Amazingly, we actually did a little more walking and ended up having an awesome early dinner at a local Thai restaurant.

July 13, 2013July 16, 2013

Saturday in the Park

The Olympic Sculpture park, to be precise. That’s where our day started. The official start time was 8:00, but we arrived an hour early. The light wasn’t the greatest – it would have been a better spot in the afternoon. I knew I wasn’t going to feel comfortable approaching strangers, so this time I brought my telephoto zoom lens, a 70-200mm. Our instructor likes to call these trick lenses. I think he considers anything but a prime lens in the range of 24 to 50mm a trick lens.

Well, too bad. I like trick lenses and I like the compression effect you get from a telephoto. I don’t like getting in my subject’s face. And I don’t like having assignments when it comes to photography. I want to photograph things that interest and inspire me. I went back and read the workshop’s description and it is much more generic than what the instructor chose to emphasize. This is the first National Geographic workshop set in Seattle and I think it needs a lot of tweaking. Plus an instructor that knows something about the city. Just because someone lives in a place doesn’t mean they know it, something our instructor confessed to early on.

After we tapped out in the sculpture park, we walked along the waterfront for a ways and finally ended up in Seattle Center, where the Space Needle is located. So I tried my hand at some non-traditional images of this iconic Seattle structure. The building at the left in the right photo is the Experience Music Project museum. It’s a trippy building.

I was disappointed that the Chihuly museum hadn’t opened for the day, I could have spent a lot of time there. After all of our trekking, we decided to take the monorail back to downtown and took another pass through Pike Place Market. It was just before 10:00 AM and the vendors were just started to set up. So, not too many photo ops there. It’s a good thing I’m not taking this class for a grade because I’m pretty sure I would barely rate a C so far.

July 12, 2013

Shoot, Edit, Critique

Today was the second official day of our workshop and the first actual opportunity to take photographs. But first, let’s have three hours of slideshows and talking. I was a little disappointed that the whole emphasis of the workshop seems to be getting intimate portraits of strangers that “tell a story.” I’ll have to go back and read the online write-up but I don’t remember that being the sole focus of the weekend.

So after going out and spending close to four hours doing street photography I have come to the not-so-startling conclusion that I really don’t love photographing people. I especially dislike photographing people I don’t know. Oh, I took enough of the “right” kind of photos to get by, but I also shot a whole lot of images for me. Turns out, the only story I really want to tell is my own. I suppose that’s because I’m a rich westerner.

These are two of the four images from today that made my final edit. This woman was a busker in one of the parks and she was actually a fascinating person and very nice to talk to. It was well worth giving her a few dollars and talking with her for a few minutes. I guess I’m more comfortable interacting with performers.

Well, it’s been a long day and we have an early start tomorrow, so that’s all for now.

July 11, 2013July 12, 2013

Where’s the Free Wi-Fi?

So, I’m willing to pay $300 a night for a hotel but not $40 a night to park a car or $12.95 a day to use the wi-fi. I’d rather sit in the lobby or go across the street to the Starbuck’s where it’s free. This is Seattle, the damn wi-fi should be free. I’ve mostly been getting by with checking email on my phone, but this morning we camped out in the lobby for a while so I could catch up on some blog posts. I hate getting too far behind.

After our morning of free wi-fi we ventured out to walk and do a little shopping. Okay, make that a lot of shopping. We made a significant contribution to the Seattle economy and expanded our art collection. We ended the afternoon with a wine tasting before our workshop officially started at 4:30. After registering and having a drink in the hotel bar, the group went to dinner.

The dinner was fabulous. It was served family style at a restaurant specializing in local sourcing of food. Then there was a slideshow by the National Geographic photographer. I can’t say I was wildly impressed. The type of photography in National Geographic Magazine is 180 degrees different from what I usually do. They are focused on story telling and capturing moments. The quality of the images is not always consistently great. It’s photojournalism vs. art.

I’m not a photojournalist and I have no desire to be one. I also didn’t like the photographer making multiple references to “rich westerners” when he talked about a trip to Everest. Who do you think is paying your salary, dude? Still trying to keep an open mind about this whole experience.

I still haven’t had much time to go through my images so far, but here’s another one from Pike Place Market. Look, no people. Shocking.

July 10, 2013July 11, 2013

Get on the Bus

After going to bed ridiculously early and sleeping for a ridiculously long time, we were ready to start our first full day in Seattle. I had booked us on a (sort of) photo tour that included a trip to Snoqualmie Falls, one of the few sights I wanted to see that required a vehicle. It started out a little rough – the tour guide was late getting to our hotel due to traffic and we got stuck waiting for a very long train just a few blocks from the hotel. He stopped at another hotel for 2 more passengers and then at Pike Place Market to pick up 7 more.

It was overcast almost the entire drive to the falls and we were excited that the lighting conditions would be perfect. Photographing a waterfall in bright sunlight is usually a disaster – the water is blown out and the rocks are lost in the shadow. Of course the sun decided to make an appearance about 15 minutes before we arrived and the lighting was terrible. Hopefully a little Lightroom/Photoshop magic can save my images. Meanwhile, one of my favorites is this photo of wild daisies with the river in the background.

Our next stop was a Japanese garden that’s rated as one of the top ten outside of Japan. It was incredibly beautiful and I could have spent hours there. We had 30 minutes. Can you guess what my biggest frustration with the tour was? I have lots of beautiful images that I will be posting in the near future, but the biggest treat and the highlight of our entire day was a mother raccoon and her four babies playing in the garden’s stream.

This photo alone was worth the price of the whole day’s tour. I am so happy I kept my 70-200mm on the camera when we got to the garden. I missed a few wide shots, but I can live with that. It would have killed me to miss this shot.