Americana

Reading

My mom and I both read before going off to bed but, especially on this occasion, I stayed up reading late into the night to finish a book I was completely engrossed in.

Ironton Ferry

At one point in our journey, we had to take the world's shortest car ferry (I don't know if that's true) across a very narrow section of Lake Charlevoix, The Ironton Ferry. It holds 4 cars and doesn't need to run on a schedule since the operator can simply see cars waiting for it on the other side. You know it's a short ferry ride when I could easily swim the distance.

Leelanau Peninsula I

A day of yellow trees, country roads, roadside apple stands, red barns and horses.

Mackinac Island

Pinholes of Mackinac Island

Mackinac Island is a really special place that I am really glad we didn't miss. There are no motor vehicles on the island so everything happens with horses or bicycles. It seemed really a fitting place to use the pinhole camera then.

Fall

My mom and I are on a fall color tour of Northwest Michigan. I have always wanted to go there and this seemed like a perfect time. There were so many great photographs from today. All the locals were complaining about what a terrible fall it was, with no spectacular colors, etc. but we thought it was lovely.

Drive to Petoskey

I picked my mom up at the airport last night and this morning we started our little road trip up to Northern Michigan. Miss Molly's Drive In was one of those pass by, stop the car, turn around and go back kind of photo ops. Here you have a digital and a digital-pinhole side by side.

Carousel

Finally, who doesn't love an old wood carousel that costs $1 to ride? There are not many of these left in the country and Grand Rapids has built a beautiful custom room for theirs, overlooking the Grand River. I think the figure that sticks out most in my mind was that it took something like 150 man-hours per animal to restore this carousel. (The menagerie animals were my favorite!)

General Store Impressions

We need some wooden flour and grain bins like these, that would be awesome. I have the wooden change "drawer" that my grandfather used in his store but I haven't found a great use for it yet. I must think of something...

Railroad Depot Impressions

Public Museum of Grand Rapids

This is a fantastic little museum. Wonderful. Worth the trip to Grand Rapids and the $8 admission fee. I enjoyed exploring it alone but I wish my Dad could have seen it, and my Mom too, and J, and everyone really because there was too much cool stuff not to love it. It had a furniture exhibit (which is currently close to my heart as I await my desk being made not 30 miles from here at Herman Miller), a carousel, a glass exhibit my mom would have liked (in fact, she owns one of the pieces they had on display), an old-school-style display of giant dioramas with animals in their habitats, and a 3/4 scale version of Grand Rapids in the 1890s that included a printing press with a volunteer setting type and printing bookmarks, an old general store that I wish my mom could have seen (since she grew up in a general store in the 1940s), and a replica train depot that my Dad would have just adored...in fact it included a lot of railroad items that my parents have in their home.

(Love these colors together!)

La Grande Vitesse (Pinhole Style)

Grand Rapids, MI

I am off on a trip to Michigan with my mom. To see Lake Michigan, fall colors, Mackinac Island....But first, I get a whole day alone in Grand Rapids where I want to see Alexander Calder's sculpture La Grande Vitesse. It has become a symbol of the city since it was installed 40 years ago. Another of his sculptures, Eagle, is rapidly becoming part of Seattle history as well since it was installed in our Sculpture Garden. It was a bit colder than I expected but I still spent 20 minutes mostly alone in this courtyard photographing the sculpture with both my regular camera and my new digital pinhole.

Pinhole

In the interests of always trying something new, always trying to find ways to shoot less sharp, less in focus pictures (ha!), I finally got around to turning my old D70 into a digital pinhole camera. It has been sitting on the shelf since its retirement around March 2008 and I thought it could use a last hurrah! This particular pinhole isn't perfect (still a bit to blurry even for my tastes) but there's a lot of trial and error involved.

Obsession Ale

Tonight we tried the very first bottle from our very first batch of home-brewed beer. We were both completely (and pleasantly) surprised that it came out really good! It tastes like beer! Pretty good beer! Like beer you can buy at a store! I supposed this means more brewing will be in our future...

New Office - Step 6

Organize the closet! I can hardly believe this is my office closet. It's so neat and orderly. We moved the printer into the closet so it will work on wireless now and is no longer out, being ugly. In fact, there is almost nothing left in the room at all, which will be good once the furniture arrives and the pictures go on the wall. In other big office news, after much deliberation, I decided to buy the desk I've had my eye on. It will arrive in 4-6 weeks!

Pumpkin

Apparently, this pumpkin can write notes. It is telling me to not carve it or compost it. Although, $10 bucks says at least some of it will end up in the compost bin...

Fatty Fatty George II

A long day of shopping at the outlet mall (we took the boys along and it was a madhouse so not as fun as it could have been) so no time for photos. Took a picture of George while Michelle cooked a delicious dinner of roast chicken, green beans, and mashed potatoes.

Fatty Fatty George I

Seattle, WA

This photograph is inspired by a wonderful book I just got from the library called Fifty Houses: Images from the American Road by Sandy Sorlien. It's a lovely book of photographs with some words by the photographer to go along with them. For this shot, I was just returning to my car which was parked out front. I looked up and something about the window caught my eye. I didn't have a tripod and it was late and night so I braced myself on the roof of the car for about a 10 second exposure. I think the motion blur adds to the feeling.

New Home

My friend Debbie is a first-time-home-buyer and she closed on her new townhouse today. We all went over to check it out and then on to dinner to celebrate!

Sunset

We had an absolutely gorgeous sunset tonight. I ran out into the street with my bedroom slippers on to catch the colors just before they faded. And this is almost straight out of the camera.