Portland Pearl Photos: Buildings (Part 7)

The nitty-gritty of utility meters and padlocks for realtor showings.

Portland Pearl Photos: Buildings (Part 6)

Condos by the Willamette River, with a water feature between. And outside furniture, in the Portland rain.

Portland Pearl Photos: Buildings (Part 5)

Once completed, the new buildings are sometimes quite attractive.

Portland Pearl Photos: Buildings (Part 4)

The workers on these tall new buildings work hard in remarkably complex environments.

Portland Pearl Photos: Buildings (Part 3)

The lots where new buildings will be erected are surrounded by fencing that (along with the gray skies) gives a rather ominous cast to the scene.

Portland Pearl Photos: Buildings (Part 2)

The building process has a lot of complexity and drama.

Portland Pearl Photos: Buildings (Part 1)

There's a lot of new building construction - mainly apartments and condos - in the Pearl, which means that old buildings are being torn down to reuse the land.

Portland Pearl Photographs

I recently completed a project of photographing on every one of the approximately 120 blocks of Portland, Oregon's Pearl District. I was inspired by the examples of Walker Evan's American Photographs and Robert Frank's The Americans, both of which (in very different ways) presented visual surveys of particular places and times in the USA.

Evan's book had 87 photos, and Frank's had 83, so I decided that my book would have 85. I copied these models in format, with photos taken at ISO 400 (to digitally mimic Tri-X) and printed (by Blurb) in black and white in an 8x10 landscape orientation. The main difference is that in the books by Evans and Frank, each two-page spread had only one photo, on the right-hand page. I placed pairs of photos on facing pages, hoping to have them relate to each other, and grouped photos by broad topics.

Over the next several weeks, I'll be posting the pairs of photos on this blog. I start with the front and back covers.

Japanese Garden: Zen Gardens

The first of these photos shows a detail of the old Zen Garden, where the careful raking of the pebbles is contrasted with a few random fallen leaves.

The second photo shows what we think is a new rock garden, presumably part of the expansion project now underway.

Japanese Garden: Water

The ponds and waterfall in Portland's Japanese Garden are exquisitely landscaped. The covering of fallen autumn leaves, and the elegantly colored koi, add special touches.

Japanese Garden: Trees

From Portland's Chinese Garden to its Japanese Garden. I hadn't been there for quite a while, but on a nice day recently my wife and I decided to walk there. It's undergoing some expansion so the entrance is somewhat perturbed, but once inside it's as calm and beautiful as ever. As always, the twisting branches of the trees are a special photo subject, with fall colors an extra bonus.

Fall Colors in the Chinese Garden

Autumn is coming to an end, but some of the trees are still vibrant.

Small Lake in the Chinese Garden

The lake appears in many guises.

Rocks in the Chinese Garden

Eroded limestone is a Chinese landscape specialty, even in small gardens. Fallen autumn leaves add a touch of aesthetic randomness.

Flowers in the Chinese Garden

About two weeks ago I paid another visit to the Lan Su Chinese Garden in Portland. The flowers were beautiful, as always.

Meditation

Looking over the Willamette River in southwest Portland.

Abstract Expressionism

The brick wall of a parking lot in downtown Portland, covered in scumbled paint like Abstract Expressionist paintings.

Bright Paint

A couple of scenes in southwest Portland near the Willamette River, brought together here solely because of the vivid colors.

Grasses

Just south of Governor Tom McCall Waterfront Park in southwest Portland.

Fall Colors along the South Waterfront

About two weeks ago we walked to the South Waterfront district in Portland. It's a district of new skyscraper condos, medical and dental facilities, and the base of the tram to OHSU. I didn't expect to see much in the way of vegetation, but there were some nice colors along the Portland Streetcar line.