foggy night

foggy night

Seattle
January 30, 2015

Fog is common in the winter in the Pacific Northwest. Often I like taking a walk with a camera on evenings when it is low and thick. This small series of photographs come from one evening in late winter, 2015 on a walk I took from home.

       i.         streetlight fog
   ii.         suburban trees
     iii.         vanishing taillight
     iv.         Kerry Hall
      v.         Broadway
     vi.         taillight spotlight

#jan30 #january #2015 #capitolhill #seattle #pacificnorthwest

winter light pasts on a frozen January morning...

It’s a mostly clear day in Seattle. But, usually around here, a clear day in mid-winter means a cold day, and at 9:30 AM, it’s a little extra cold: 18˚ F. (-8˚ C). That’s up from 15˚ F before the sun rose. It’s very rare that it gets this cold in Western Washington, which usually has a mild Pacific coastal climate. Cooler and darker winters than California, but usually not too bad.

I doubt I’ll be out with the camera today. I haven’t been for a week or two, and then only looking for birds (not many, though I spotted 10 eagles the other day, a record of sorts for me). Here’s a small selection from the archives with a sort of clear, midwinter theme, all taken on January 13.

       i.         midwinter Cascades sunset, 2012
      ii.         park lawn, 2019
     iii.         where the vanagons are reborn, 2019
     iv.         green lawn with Space Needle, 2019
      v.         downtown winter marina, 2019
     vi.         24 luxury residences in midwinter sun, 2021
    vii.         red boat, 2021
   viii.         alley of box architecture, 2021
     ix.         park bike path, late afternoon, 2022
      x.         heavy facelift, 2022
 

#january13 #midwintersun #winterlight #seattle #pacificnorthwest #pnw

the open road, Series 1

I don’t spend a lot of time on social media, but I spend a few moments of most days on two photography-related sites: Instagram and Flickr. I’ve posted elsewhere what I think of these two sites, so I won’t repeat that here.

One of the things I do like about Instagram is that it exposes me to certain well-known and established photographers that I like to follow. One of those is Joel Meyerowitz who posted a series of  “The Open Road” photographs and a somber description of the road metaphor, the new year, and aging around New Year’s Day (2024).

Photographs from the road are one of my favorite subjects, both from others’ road pictures and my own archives. When I’m out on long trips, I almost always make photographs of the open road. And have for years. Recently, those trips have been fewer and farther between, mostly due to the pandemic and some health issues I think I’m past.

This time of year, when it is often dark, cold, and wet in my home of Seattle, I get out a lot less with my camera. If it’s dark, cold, and snowy, that’s another matter. My back-up source for posting photographs – my archives – can be almost empty and bleak on these days. This is especially true for January and even more so for the first weeks of January. I often post from the archives in a “this date from the archives” theme.

So, in homage to Mr. Meyerowitz, and finding another theme to organize around, I’ve put together a few series of the open road.

various dates and locales

i. modern motel, Yachats, 2012
ii. Point Reyes, 2017
iii. U.S. 2, Washington, 2008
iv. Kangaroo Ridge, 2007
v. wind farm morning, Indiana, 2009
vi. coastal sundown, Olema, 2012
vii. coastal bridge, Florence, 2014
viii. orchards, Yakima, 2013
ix. Columbia River Gorge, 2013
x. coastal morning summer storm, Oregon, 2015

scenes from a winter morning's walk

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scenes from a winter morning walk
Seattle, 2023

I went on a walk early this morning after a couple of cups of coffee and a bowl of cold cereal and put the shower off until after I returned. I took a camera with a 28mm fixed wide angle lens and shot in black & white. There’s something about foggy winter days in the depth of northern winters which demands black & white.

This morning’s walk was only about 2-3 miles. Probably closer to two. The streets at 8 AM were mostly empty, but I stayed off most of the busy arterials. The ones I crossed were dead too. It wasn’t as foggy this morning as it was yesterday afternoon. That sort of surprised me. Usually, it’s foggy in the morning and if it burns off, the fog dissipates by 2:00 PM or so. But the switch was reversed this morning, and as I arrived back home about 10 AM, fog was descending in my neighborhood.

..

It’s been foggy the past few days in Seattle. Often that means gloom. But it almost always means no rain. It was foggy yesterday as well. The panoramic camera on top of the Space Needle is one of the world’s best web cameras, and the view from there at 4:10 PM and 5:20 PM were fantastic for December 20, especially the latter time. I’ll post a link to the camera if you’re interested, but you’ll have to navigate to the date and specific times yourself. I don’t know how to link to time-specific images. It’s easy to navigate their site: the Date vertical slide selector is on the righthand side of their camera homepage; the Time dial is along the bottom border.

https://www.spaceneedle.com/webcam/

#winterwalk #winterfog #capitolhill #seattle#pacificnorthwest #pnw