Eastern Washington in early Fall: From wet mountain slopes to arid canyons

Driving east on Interstate 90 past Snoqualmie Pass brings you to the “other side” of Washington I find relatively prettier than the rainforests and the evergreens to the west. Home is where the heart is but home - western Washington, being more accessible round the year presents less interesting and less exotic subjects to me for creating photographs. The Fall season is about to peak in Washington but the foliage was starting to turn yellow and orange around high elevations, so I embarked on a solo road trip last weekend to capture the early season on film as well as digital photographs.

The terrain changes very quickly after driving down the east slopes of the Cascades, from mountain side consisting of densely distributed streams and creeks flanked by perennial trees to gentle hills covered with sagebrush and farm animals. Signs of fall quickly changes to either late summer or early winter, for there is no distinct fall season in these parts.

Many hours fast forward - a sunset and a moonless night sky. The wind stopped briefly for the sunset before changing direction and get colder in absence of the sun.

This was not the first time I have been to these locations and likely not going to be my last trip. With every year adding more photographs of familiar locations the timeline starts to blur and makes it difficult to place a timestamp on a photograph. But there will always be a special place in my heart for these mountains and the wide open land beyond them, not too far from my home.

Winthrop in the dead of the night

Later in the evening after the restaurants and shops have closed, the serene night scenery of a western themed town far east of the Cascade.

East of the Cascades

Tulips

Every year I tell myself to not go back to the tulips farm and every year I go back.

Snohomish in Spring Sun

It’s really beautiful here in the Pacific Northwest when it is not raining.

Shot on Kentmere Pan 100 film.

Weekday in Marymoor

The Funeral

I cannot articulate in words the feeling that brewed inside me as I was setting up this shot. First, there was no sun until the last few seconds when it peeked through the clouds and lit up the trees in the background. Then it was a difficult composition with the “Wide” lens.

It appeared to me as if the trees were mourning the death of the fallen one.

Museum of Vancouver

Last night I was looking for a place with classic cars and neon signs to photograph in the CineStill 800T film stock, and came across Museum of Vancouver that has a classic car and a handful of neon signs. I wanted to spend only a few minutes here today but we ended up spending several hours going through the exhibits and educating ourselves with the rich history of this beautiful city on the west coast of Canada.

I look forward to developing the film roll I shot today!

Yellow streetcar (Seattle)

Port Townsend (Kentmere 400)

I took these photographs on the same day as my previous blog post with images taken with the Hasselblad X2D but took a while to send the roll to the lab. Got the negatives back today and scanned with V600.

Very happy with the deep contrast - this was the first time I used Kentmere 400 film stock.

Shot with Fuji GS645W

The other side

I wanted to shoot neon signs on CineStill 800 but couldn’t really find much around Seattle. The desire faded over time, mostly because of the length of time I researched and then abandoned the project. While looking up interesting places around Seattle, noticed the south side of the city - potentially dangerous to wander late at night, present an array of very interesting old-city looks and “some” neon in it.

There was only one way to confirm or deny this…

I arranged for a scouting trip one of the December weekends and was thrilled to find amazing old buildings and history (I wasn’t aware until then UPS started here in Seattle). The area looked a lot less sketchy than it did ten years ago but, I was still hesitant to venture into the darkness, unarmed. But I knew I had to return at night - these scenes were too good to pass.

I teamed up with two friends (Kiran & Ashok) who were interested in shooting this part of town at night, and we drove over last Sunday evening. The weather was very cooperative: rain clouds were blown east and away from the city around 8 PM and we could even see a few stars along with the Big Dipper in the sky.

It was uncanny how calm, quiet the city was, considering it was a weekend night. Besides few “interesting” human beings (for lack of better definition) on the streets, the restaurants had diners but, from outside under a clear night sky there were not many sounds nor voices.

Once I acclimated to the surrounding I walked into a back alley to shoot the wet bricks catching the lights from the street on the other side.

There is nothing in this wide world that would ever make me comfortable photographing in the city at night. But I guess sometimes it is worth testing the limits, and these rare adventures always yield good photographs.

I’m happy.

UW Seattle Campus

Shot on Kodak Ektar 100 with Kowa Six

Americana

Winter day in the sun (Seattle)

An unusually bright sunny day in the first Saturday of December, 2022 - I could have driven to the mountains away from the city. But instead took a short trip to the city.

Mt. Baker and the North Cascades (from the air)

It was the last day of sun in a span of a week that was ending with overcast weather and then rain in the following days. This crisp fall weather in the Pacific Northwest has always been my favorite time of the year to go shooting in the mountains for reasons including early golden hour and the wilderness generally lacking people.

Photographing the ground from airplanes, helicopters and even unmanned aircrafts over the past 15+ years has been not quite satisfactory for reasons such as (but not limited to) resolution, image quality (filming through perspex or glass windows) and image stabilization. Switching to a larger sensor addressed problems around resolution however, there were miles to go before it could be deemed satisfactory. Enter into the area the new Hasselblad X2D with a gargantuan 100 MP sensor and 7 stop IBIS: A camera worthy of arial photoshoot with the issues I mentioned in the first two sentences of this paragraph. There are two main benefits of shooting with this camera: Fist the obvious advantage of 7-stops IBIS that is key to appropriately eliminating vibrations while shooting from inside a small aircraft, and second but not least is the vast 100 megapixel canvas to crop the desired composition, and remove things such as the aircraft wings or sun glare on the perspex window from the shot.

Front of the Camera

It doesn’t feel good not comfortable to be in front of the camera hence why I am a photographer.

Photograph by Emily:

Day after the storm

Beautiful winter day in the sun

Day Zero

These rocks might have lost the green skin of summer but the barnacles are determined to stand the augmenting cold weather.

Hasselblad X2D day zero

The Milky Way over Mt. Baker

Late summer is probably the best time to shoot astro - early nightfall, the temperatures are not below freezing and the skies are void of fall and winter clouds.

Smoky sunset in the woods

Dense forest fire smoke from Bolt Creek fire started pouring over Western Washington on September 10th, 2022 but the air quality wasn’t great for a while - possibly due to smoke traveling from other fires in the region. These photographs were taken on the 9th during an evening walk in the forest - I was not expecting to find smoke trapped in the trees and in the sky above, rendering fog-like scene especially at sunset.