Not Green

Almost everything is a shade of green along the Wildwood Trail in Portland's Forest Park. Here, for a change, are a couple of scenes that aren't.

Ferns

I like to photograph ferns. Their individual shapes and structures, the way they are arrayed in clusters, their backgrounds, their intense green colors are all attractive. Here's a scene from last July in Forest Park.

Optimistic Portland Parking Lot

You Can't Get There from Here

It's construction season in Portland, leading to conundrums like this:

Colorful Puzzles

Photographers are often advised to make the subject of a photo clear: There should be a point or region in the image to which the viewer's eye is first drawn and to which it returns. But sometimes I like to take photos where the point is the overall vividness of the scene, and where it may not be quite clear what's happening.

Texture

Portland can get rough at times.

Colorful Verticals

Three scenes in Portland, Oregon: All quite different, but aesthetically related.

Demolition

There's a lot of building in the Pearl these days, but to build a high-rise in an established neighborhood means you need to tear down a low-rise. Jay Maisel's trinity of photographic virtues— light, gesture, color—are reasonably present.

Along the Trail

As we walked the Hamilton Mountain trail, these were a few of the details that caught my eye.

The in-camera HDR setting that takes and merges three exposures at different ISOs, fractions of a second apart, can also be used to blur running water, as at the base of this little waterfall.

Forest Views on Hamilton Mountain

The trail climbing Hamilton Mountain in Beacon Rock State Park affords wonderful views of the trees and forests, especially on a sunny spring day when the foliage is such a bright green. (I imagine that an overcast, foggy day would also yield great, moody images.)

A photographic problem that arises in these circumstances is that the contrast can be too great. These photos were all taken with the HDR setting on my Lumix ZS100, in which three bracketed exposures are taken in rapid succession, then blended in camera. It all happens so quickly that a tripod is not necessary if the camera is held steady. Even then, however, some raising of shadow exposures in Lightroom proved useful.

Hamilton Mountain

Yesterday we drove with friends to Beacon Rock State Park, on the Washington side of the Columbia River, to climb the Hamilton Mountain trail. We didn't go all the way to the peak, because the footing gets unpleasant and the view from the top is not so wonderful. But the forests we did pass through, and the lookout where we ate lunch, were quite beautiful—as was the weather. Here are a few views, with more to come in the next day or two.

Aging in Place

The Jean Vollum Natural Capital Center building in the Pearl District of Portland is surrounded by aged walls that have, in places, rusted or crumbled in picturesque ways. I am grateful for the gift.

Out of the Shadows

Various scenes wandering around Portland.

Farmers Market Glimpses

At the Portland Farmers Market on the PSU campus. 

I didn't think to ask what this instrument is. It's sort of an upside-down steel drum, that is both beaten and stroked, to produce a wailing, glass harmonica kind of sound. Pleasant in a new-age kind of way.

Seen in Passing

A couple of scenes from our walk to and from the Farmers Market on the Portland State University campus in SW Portland

Formerly the box office of a theater, now boarded up

Looking north toward downtown along the South Park Blocks

Flakes of Gold

From last December, near our home in the Pearl District of Portland. A few yellow leaves were resolutely hanging on to the trees, reluctant to yield to winter.

Portland Swirls

A couple of scenes from Portland that have little in common, except a gestural swirl of energy.

Grain-loading cars behind the elevators that load ships on the east bank of the Willamette River

View toward downtown from the front of the Portland Art Museum

Tanner Springs Park

Tanner Springs Park in Portland's Pearl District is an interesting mix of water, grasses, irregular geometries, and reused railroad rails, all reflecting the surrounding, recently erected high-rises. It works well in monochrome.

The Dark of Forest Park

Two photos from February, emphasizing the wintry darkness and special light of the Macleay Park section of Forest Park.