I know I haven’t posted anything new in ages, but it’s been a bit hectic around here. It was a busy peak season at work, and perhaps due to that other parts of my life are a bit messier than they should be right now. My hobbies seem to be shaken down to the point they are all slowing down to mere fractions or have outright stopped. Nevertheless, i do have some more pictures to share; and I’m thankful photography gear tends to last.
On New Years, I had intended to get back in the metaphorical saddle with the camera at Anacortes’ Washington Park Loop. This is usually a good place to get pictures of birds and landscapes, and I’ve been here often enough I am used to using certain lenses at certain points. (100mm in the trees, 35mm or less at the lookouts.) This backfired, as the trees had almost no birds and the widest lookout had a swarm of kinglets. I’ve never seen anything like that before, and the resultant pictures only have a tiny sliver of a couple visible. Furthering the unexpected, I had a close encounter with some deer at the boat trailer area.
My luck turned better at Cap Sante later that night. There was a group of RC crawlers on the rock face that provided good conversation. I didn’t have my crawler with me, and the other crawlers there were thoroughly upgraded to handle the higher risk posed by the dropoffs. For this site’s purposes, however, the real highlight was a sunset vista where the lack of light on the marina upstaged the sun. I don’t seem to take pictures like this often enough despite having the means.
A couple weeks later I went to Northern State Recreation Area near Sedro-Woolley, and it’s a small wonder it took me so long to wander out here. For someone that doesn’t do street photography often, the abandoned buildings feel novel.
These buildings are against a backdrop of wide open spaces, lending themselves to views of the not-so-distant foothills.
Some of these buildings are deteriorated far enough there’s glimpses into their construction I’m not used to being able to see.
I feel like I’m getting the hang of pointing my camera again, though a few quirks still need some work. For example, there have been a couple times at Northern State where I used the blatantly wrong finger to fire the shutter. I don’t recall ever resorting to this beforehand on even the heaviest of lenses I have. I also have very long fingers, so there’s even less excuse. Hopefully life gets less chaotic from here.
Joe R. Stead 