[These images were shot in under-exposed conditions and required more post-processing than usual. I took some artistic liberty with selective desaturation to deemphasize the contrasts, etc.] Just a few days into my Seattle relocation, the friends who generously housed us, pointed to some ruckus in a tree. Since ruckus in a tree often signals animal activity, I grabbed my camera…
Meadowhawk Cleared for Landing
I’m taking a summer break from my writing here at the blog, to finish some creative projects. I’ll be back in the fall — maybe a bit sooner. Until then … I’ll be posting some of my favorite photos and photo-tunes in this spot. (Ziggy Marley, today). Thanks, my friends, for sticking around and for…
Postcards from a Freegan Raccoon
If I had a photography motto it might be “follow the crows.” As sentries of the canopy, crows know what’s going on. So I pay attention. If it mattered at all to crows, they could tell me who shattered my car window last month and who stole our Christmas tree (with decorations) back in 1995….
Eating Lily Pads Like Enchiladas
It’s like waiting for a geyser to erupt … or an eclipse. There’s a start time to this endeavor. At 6:45p, we’re told, a North American beaver or two (or more) will swim into this stew of lily pads and systematically take them down for dinner. They have a lodge not far away, this family of…
Rorschach Heron
Great Blue in a single-wing stretch … reflected in Elliott Bay like an ink blot.
Living in Your Own Private Cryosphere
Albedo is the reflectivity of the earth’s surface. Ice, white and bright, has a high albedo, reflecting back the sun on itself, whereas water draws the solar radiation deep into its hues. Water is always in flux, mutable — liquid, vaporous, frozen — evaporating, condensing and expanding. This fluidity of form and purpose fuels life…
Rilke in a Seattle Autumn
I first read Rainer Maria Rilke one autumn in “Letters to a Young Poet” — a book handed off to me with pages stained by office carbons. Rilke’s letters to Franz Kappus, published by Kappus after Rilke’s death, are sympathetic and inspired. There’s a reason this collection finds its way to the paws of young…
Welcome Home, Seattle Ducks!
I spotted my first migratory ducks on the urban shores of Elliott Bay last week. The new arrivals are on edge — wary and easy to flush. Lifting my lens is enough to send them skittering to the middle of the bay, and I can only imagine what sights and sounds have jarred them into…
Gull Chicks and Gateway Birds
“When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to…
Faces of the 18th Weir
They sit suspended at the 18th weir, these scaled faces in the sockeye crowd. It’s the window to their water world, the portal from ocean to stream to lake, where their gills remember the taste of fresh after years in the salty sea — and where they lead — at least in part — by…
