Sunny, Colorful Portland

It's a gray, drizzly day today. So I thought I would show a couple of bright and sunny photos from a few months ago.

Mushroomery

The first farmer-producers that I photographed for my People's Food Co-op project were The Mushroomery: Jen (black jacket) and Dustin (plaid shirt) Olsen, and their interns Brittany (red sweater) and Paul (red suspenders), on a small farm about 90 minutes drive southeast of Portland. It's quite a scientific operation; these folks are serious about mycology, genetics, sterile technique, and environmental issues.

The end product beginning to appear.

Fall Foliage at the Zoo

Zoos are not just about animals, they're also about landscaping. (I read once that the plantings at the San Diego Zoo, one of the world's greatest, were worth more than the animals.) The leaves are beginning to assume their fall colors here in Portland; here are some examples.

Oregon Zoo Portraits

I spent several hours at the Oregon Zoo in Portland today, taking pictures to test cameras and lenses for an upcoming trip. I got a few "portraits" that I find appealing.

Forest Park Growth and Decay

I'm looking through some of my photos from Forest Park in Portland from earlier this year. Here are a couple of close-ups from February that speak to the complex cycles of decay and regrowth in a relatively untouched forest.

Silverback Redhead

I usually bring a small camera with me when I'm walking around Portland, just in case something looks intriguing. Yesterday, October 1, was First Thursday, when most of the Portland galleries display new shows and people fill the streets in an "art crawl". This display showed up through the corner window of the Museum of Contemporary Craft in the Pearl District. It's part of the Alien She exhibit at the museum. It appealed to me not just for its humorous outrageousness, but also because my wife and I are planning to go to Rwanda in January to look at mountain gorillas. So it just seemed like destiny.

Food Co-op

I'm starting a new project: photographing the producer members of the People's Food Co-op in SE Portland. It stems from the recently-completed projects of environmental portraits of three artists' co-ops (two in the Twin Cities, one in Portland). These have been turned into Blurb books

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/search?search=victorb&commit=Search

which is my goal for the Food Co-op as well. I intend to take photographic portraits of the members both selling their products and growing or making them. A side benefit is that it will force me to get acquainted with places in Portland and environs that I haven't explored until now.

Here are three photos that I took yesterday.