One dead leaf on a branch

A dead leaf from a tree in the maple family caught on a branch of a crab apple tree.

A tale of 5 days: Shooting BW film in PNW fall weather

I have never documented the behind the scenes narrative of a full roll of film before so thought I’d give it a try…

November although started off dry has been really wet and stormy over the past two weeks. This is a story of five days spread across the weeks of stormy weather and my attempt at finding new things to shoot.

Day One: Six mile walk

Hugging on the north side of the lake, a ~6 miles walk under moving rain clouds. The first half of the walk was in dry weather but to my surprise, I took more keeper shots in the walk back when it had started raining and presented with limited opportunities to think/compose or even slow down.

Day Two: A coffee shop

Dropped my truck at the shop for oil change, had an hour to kill. We walked around the neighborhood and found a bullet-ridden RV parked in the ditch next to the arterial road where the truck shop is. Yes, I took 2-3 photographs of the seemingly abandoned RV but I didn’t like any of them. Then found a new coffee shop where we sat for the next hour in wait, this red British public call booth was placed outside its entrance.

Day Three: The Puget Sound

November sunsets in Western Washington are before 5 pm and add overcast weather to it, gets dark fairly quickly after 3 pm. This means one could take long exposures early on in the evening, therefore I took the opportunity to take a few photographs of the waves, with a tripod to allow longer exposures.

Day Four: Night Photography

Taking the long exposures fun further, ventured into Anacortes, Washington late night when the streets are free of cars and people.

Day Five: Whidbey Island

For the final images in the roll, we drove out to Whidbey Island. Although the day started with bitter cold and sideway blowing rain in the wind, the weather started to clear out near sunset. It was getting dark fast but I was able to shoot handheld for at least 30 minutes before having the need to pull out the tripod.

Fall colors of Denmark & South Sweden (Kodak E100)

The second roll of slide film I’ve ever shot and this time I added a Tiffen 812 warming filter.

The Upper Cascades

A familiar route for a sunny Saturday roadtrip…

Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only real cure is to load up some film in your best camera and shoot like a bastard - a slightly modified quote but relevant to the mood in these photographs.

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.

Smoke in the Mountains

The new “normal” late summer/early fall.

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.

West Montana

Middle of the continent, new earth.