Day 12 Sunset ... and change

I don't get many sunset opportunities where I now live. With trees, buildings blocking my view I don't see much western sky, just straight up sky. Today, however, there wasn't any appreciable sunset. It seemed to go directly from freezing dismal afternoon to freezing dismal dusk.

I referenced my inventory of sunsets, looking for a sunset taken on this date, December 6, and the only one taken on this date was back in Birch Bay in 2010. Coincidentally, that was the month and year that I made my decision to eventually leave Birch Bay, a bittersweet decision. Not sure where I was headed next, just knew it was time.

Moving from Birch Bay to eventually Spokane meant major change. I've learned a lot about myself since then. One of the unfortunate trade-offs was no more stupendously glorious sunsets over the bay. The photo I've uploaded today was chosen only because of the same date as today.  I could publish a book with the incredible sunsets I was blessed to see in Birch Bay.

So, I hope you don't mind my travel back through time and substituting a photo I had taken then for today's challenge. A wonderfully unanticipated benefit has been to be reminded that change can be good. Attitude makes or breaks a situation, so why not embrace a positive attitude?

December 6, 2010 Birch Bay WA Sunset

Photo Albums of Yesteryear ...

This afternoon the collective family in Spokane held its birthday bash for February-born members. It snowed, we were all bundled inside a small abode, photographs were being snapped by proud grannies amid the chaos and conversations. To which, someone quipped that the photographs would simply end up in some dog-eared old photo album.

It brought to my mind an interesting question. With digital photography and social networking as prevalent as they are, how many people still actually print out their family snapshots and stick them in a photo album, or even a shoe box? And generations from now, who and how will our progeny stumble across these old family photographs?

The times they are a-changin'

Today I was tinkering around with some shell photographs I had taken a couple of years ago. I wanted to see how various effects changed the visual impact of the image.



Watercolor Effect




Dry Brush Effect




Watercolor Effect




Contrast, No Effect Filter Used



Influence of Surroundings



Birch Bay Sunset



Birch Bay shells, beach glass and pebbles

Like a lot of artists, I'm heavily influenced by my natural surroundings. Having lived in Birch Bay on the west coast of WA for seven years, I still feel the water sloshing around in m'brain!

A number of years ago I read a Barbara Kingsolver non-fiction "High Tide in Tucson" about transitioning from ocean to desert. If I remember correctly, she wrote of her hermit crab still moving through its cage in time to the tides.  (Her insights about nature and the desert are almost lyrical. I highly recommend this as a good read!)

However, I am planted here in Spokane for the present and this is where I have to find a new ebb and flow. It'll happen ... with patience.

It will be fun to see what new jewelry will result from this new environment!

Pine cone by Spokane River



Pine trees in Spokane woods



From west side of the state to the east side ...

I was editing some shots I still had in my camera; a couple from Birch Bay, and a few from Fairhaven. I'm uploading them to catch up with my Project 365.

Tomorrow I start with Spokane, WA daily photographs.

July 25, 2011




Barb Shepard's random street Hollyhocks in Fairhaven




Boat moored on beach in Birch Bay
(Dry Brush Filter)




Can't seem to get away from trash
but I made this one into a Beach Blossom
loved the rings of seaweed that washed ashore




Beach weeds growing in driftwood




Discovered a entire vacant lot
filled with rogue poppies in pinks, oranges, reds
a riot of colors!



(Dry Brush Filter)



Along the beach in Birch Bay




Loved this!
Street Art Series -- Blau S
Fairhaven




Thought I had been stood up
Skylark in Fairhaven



In Birch Bay abit ...

But not for too much longer. Had to get at least one more shell and seaweed fix, I mean pix, before I head back to Spokane tomorrow. Be it ever so humble ...

July 22, 2011

Day 121 is the Last Day ...

The last day I'll be uploading photographs of Birch Bay, WA. Tomorrow morning at 8:30 a.m. I'll be hitting the road and new images will start appearing on this blogsite. But here are today's impending rain photographs. 'Bye Birch Bay!

May 31, 2011

Today Let There Be Photographs ...

Getting caught up for the last couple of non-photo-upload days. Here we go. I really had fun shooting a number of angles of the empty metal drums, enjoying not only the repetition of the circles, but the individual deterioration and dents and dings that made each drum unique.  It was hard to narrow the selection down to just these five, but I feel they represent the variety.

I also came across this derelict yellow taxi on one of my trips down side roads here and there throughout Whatcom County. These images will be added to my ongoing Bondo Series.

I'm having technical issues with my laptop, which are making editing very difficult until I can get it fixed, or replaced. I'm concerned about quality being compromised, but such is life right now ... a series of compromises.

Onward!

Day 108 of 365

I am feeling the pressure of leaving Birch Bay; things capturing my eye perhaps for the last time. When will I again wander the shoreline, stooping to pick up a shell or a piece of beach glass? My entire environment will soon alter. Colorado. Red Earth. The sun will set upon mesas instead of San Juan islands.

I'll just have to think of it as stretching a new blank canvas. Don't look back. Eyes forward.

Today's photograph is of mossy driftwood.

05-18-2011

A Sunny Day 107 ...

Today's photograph is in keeping with sunshine. As is the nature of this area at this time of the year, boats of all kinds are being taken out of storage and readied for use. Mooring floats are dotting the tideflats. Memorial Day weekend is coming and Birch Bay is waking up after a long winter. Oh, right. Back to today's photograph. It's a close up of two kayaks; bright sunshine yellow.

It is a regret of mine that I never got into and paddled a kayak in all of the 7 years I've been here. It was on my list of "wanna dews."

05-17-2011


Kayak Yellows




I took this one today, too. Rhoddies on the livingtroom table.



Monday and 16th Day and Day 106

Which are the same, except there's a zero between the 1 and the 6. Details! Details!

We are celebrating the first sale made by Kwest Studio 8 on Etsy! Hip Hip Hooray! No, it wasn't one of the m-a-n-y photographic images available for purchase, but was an 8" x 8" acrylic painting, Red Hot Chilis. I loved the "ghost" I was inspired to paint ... that hot taste that lingers long after the chilis have been eaten. Apparently a gentleman in The Netherlands was also taken with the image. May the painting be the first of many sales!

But, back to the day to day. Today's photographs have a lot of little details ... blossoms and  lots of beautiful rain drops.

05-16-2011

Day 96 of 365 and 26 Days Left Until ...

I have loved living by the water from Day 1; all of these days in the life. Each day the water seems to take on a different appearance. A sunset is not a sunset and a sunset and a sunset. Nor is a rainstorm a storm and a storm and a storm. Are you still with me?

Today's photograph is of a curtain of rain out in the Strait. It never looks exactly the same; fascinating. I love how the wind, or lack thereof, make lines in the water!

05-06-2011

I ordered my Triptik today; pick it up in Bellingham on 16th. Oh my! What marvelous things will I encounter to photograph on my journey to Grand Junction? I can hardly wait! I won't have the equipment to upload my photo du jour while traveling. But I'll make up for those days I miss, you can be certain. 

I'm also certain I won't have many water photographs. I'll miss my kinship with the tide ebb and flow, and sunsets and squalls, and kayaks and sailboats and crab boats ... oh, and DUNGENESS CRAB!

Day 95 of 365 and Palominos and Smiley Faces ...

The last couple of days I've had to doff my photographer hat and don my Realtor chapeau. That's not to say that photographs weren't taken. Another agent in my office needed photographs of her new listing ... I do GREAT real estate photos.

But on the way back to the office, I drove through a construction site. Man, oh man! I love construction sites! I found a beat up tractor shovel kind of implement, for scooping up dirt and rocks, boulders from the looks of it, etc., etc. I found all manner of cool scratches and markings and lettering peeling off.

So, making up for yesterday and today:

05/04/2011

05/05/2011

Day 91

Another nice, very nice day in Birch Bay today. People in sleeveless shirts and shorts. I think it was about 62-degrees. Wonderful! And me without my camera. So, I whipped out my iPhone and took a shot of this weed. I loved the background colors/grain, and the prickly spikes, almost silhouette of the dead foliage.

05-01-11

Treasures and Day 88 of 365

My photograph "Merlin's Parlour" is featured in another Etsy Treasury:

http://www.etsy.com/treasury/4db9064c36608eeff248fa32/enchanted-woodland-fairytale

Although it rained this morning, today turned out to be a lovely, sunny day here in Birch Bay. It would have been a splendid day for beachcombing. Alas, I couldn't get out to play.  For some reason there has been a lot of traffic up and down Birch Bay Drive. There's no race or event going on in the community, maybe just the sun drawing out folks.

Today's photograph is of some tiny little blossoms that have taken residence in the same pot as is my dwarf Japanese maple that I now have at my studio. They just appeared a year ago, and bloomed again this spring. The flowers each are about the size of my fingernail; so dainty. I don't know what they are. They may well be some friendly weed, but I was taken with their cheerfulness.

04-28-2011

See Gulls at the Seashore ...

It was forecast to be raining today; so glad the meteorologists were wrong! The sun shineth! I took this shot of the seagulls as the tide is coming in. I threw on a film grain effect, which gives the image a brighter, stylized appearance. The shore colors here often tend toward drab and monochromatic.

As I drove around Birch Bay, I thought again of this or that being the last time I do this or that. I won't be here in August to pick the free blackberries that grow wild and rampant along the sides of the roads.  It will be the last time I'll see spring exploding in the diversity of colors of blooms and blossoms. The blooming trees here are stupendous. It'll be a totally different sensory experience in Colorado. Instead of crabs, I'll encounter scorpions ... so I'm told.

I'll miss the seagulls and all things beachy. As I walked along the shore I saw the annual evidence of the lovely white bent-lipped clams and the pretty designs on the young manila clams.

Yup. Change is life. But I'll always have a camera in hand to bear witness to wherever I am!

Here's today's photograph:

04-26-2011


See Gulls at the Seashore



Days 84 and 85 of Project 365

I enjoyed a lovely Easter dinner with friends yesterday, but still took time to snap a shot du jour. I just wasn't able to upload it yesterday.

In view that it was Easter, I snapped this whimsical adornment of a stone sculpture along my road. For those of you familiar with the Vancouver 2010 Olympics logo, Inukshuk (in-ook-shook), this neighbor was obviously proud enough to install his own  Inukshuk at the entrance of his driveway. The owner decorates his little stone statue for the various holidays. When I lived in Redlands, CA there was someone just outside of town who decorated their statue of a rabbit (?) with holiday attire! South, North, East or West, you find people who dress up inanimate objects just for the fun of it, don't you! This Easter bunny was complete with a fuzzy tail!

This morning, I had to go to Birch Bay Square and the star magnolia trees are abloom. Couldn't resist using that for today's photograph.

04-24-2011

04-25-2011