A Ride to the Other side of Snohomish

Continuing with the long lens constraint, I drove out to the east side of Snohomish to see what might be interesting.

Home Tour

Since we are stuck at home so much these days, I thought I take a few minutes to actually show you our humble abode. I did a walk through and made some videos. Above, starting from the front door, is a tour of the living room. It ends at the entrance to the kitchen.

A Ride Around Snohomish

Since I have regaled you with images taken with the 35mm f/2 lens for the X-H1, I thought I switch to the 100-400mm telephoto to see how this changes what and how we see.

Just outside the city limits, we find a farm with a few horses. This one is settled in for a rest.

Found Another Free Little Library

Just a few blocks from us is this little gem of a library that wasn't on any list I could find. Pretend that this is now cut out and glued to the older photo essay on these repositories.

This one is nice with the mermaid handle on the front. Glad to see that there are more of these delightful things located in Snohomish.

Out Past Sultan, Toward Lake Spada

Our weekly drive takes us east into the woods north and east of the settlement of Sultan. The Sultan Basin road takes us out to Lake Spada. Of course, we can't actually get to the lake because it is on national park property and it is closed for the apocalypse. However, along the road are some interesting places to stop and take a few images.

Focus on the Front Yard

Normally, any sort of close-up photography results in images with a very shallow depth of field. They way around this is to take lots of photos and compile a summary using only the parts of each that are in focus. This is called focus stacking and is used extensively by the folks who make those jewelry photos where all of it is in tack sharp focus.

I thought I'd give this a try and see what I get. Above is one of our tulips you've seen several times already, but this time it is all in focus.

Santa Fe at Christmas Time

Back in 2009, we headed off to Santa Fe, NM for Christmas. This was well before we began housesitting, so this was a stay in a hotel for about a week.

A Walk Downtown

On this walk along 1st street, as well as on our most recent trip to the grocery, I find that things are perking up. No more stores are open, but there's a lot more people out on the roads. And after so long with nearly no one out and about, it really feels like a lot.

But with all the stores in town, most of which are antique and/or decorating stores, still closed, there is nothing in the windows changing. As a result, I'm hard pressed to find new things to photograph.

Another B&W Walkabout

The weather report on KUOW this morning told us that there is rain a comin', so I hurried out for another walk around the neighborhood. I try to get at least a few new streets on each walk, but there is quite a bit of overlap.

Stairs of Snohomish - 2

This house a small set of unassuming stairs that might be on a house anywhere in the country.

Stairs of Snohomish - 1

While the street in front of our house is pretty flat, that is only because it runs along parallel to the crest of the hill. Once off this street, things get hilly pretty quickly. This means that most people have stairs leading from the sidewalk to their front door. Today's challenge is to photograph them with a fixed focal length (35 mm on the X-H1) and in B&W. See what you think.

A Study at 35mm

So, to change things up a little, I'm trying one of those photographer things to try to improve my images. All the blogs say that one should limit yourself in some way to challenge yourself to find a way to make image work without the freedom you are used to. For today's and tomorrow's posts, I'm shooting only with a lens that I rarely use: a 35mm f/2 lens. This was the first lens I bought when I got the Fuji X-H1. I got this partly because it was inexpensive and partly because it just seemed like I should a lens with the angle of view of this standard focal length (equiv. to 50 mm on a full frame camera).

A Trip to Augusta Springs

Another blast from the past today.

Back in March of 2008, we drove out to Augusta Springs to the park there to see if we see a few birds. There is pond there and, naturally, there are a few ducks swimming about.

Flowers and a Larger Scale

Since about this time every year, Skagit Valley tulip growers host a festival, we thought we'd drive up and see if there were any to be found in the fields. We found very few compared to previous years. The field above is the only collection of tulips we could find.

La Paz, Bolivia

Since I can't go anywhere now to bring you photos, I thought I reach back to travels before we started the blog and show a little of what was happening in that dim dark past 10 or more years ago. This is the first of several installments on these "ancient" travels.

Thirteen years and three cameras ago, E and I visited La Paz, Bolivia. We were visiting a young woman and her family that we were supporting through the then named Christian Children's Fund.

The airport is located on the Altiplano at 13,325 feet is the highest airport in the world. On the way into the city, I asked the taxi driver to stop for a moment so I could take a few photos before we descended the 1,000 or more feet into the heart of the bewildering maze you see in the image above.

The Tulips in the Front Yard

Now that we are little later into the spring and there was some sun yesterday, I headed to the front yard to check out the tulips again. I mean, what else are you going to do, right?

Most of the images here are taken with the 45 mm extension tube on the 100-200mm lens (GFX-50R camera). However, this first one, uses the extension tube on the 32-64mm lens. Here, the depth of field is very shallow and I must get very close to the flower to get anything in focus at all. In fact, if I try any focal length on this lens except 64 mm, I can't get close enough to focus at all.

Free Little Libraries

In Snohomish, and as near as I can tell all over the greater Seattle area, the free little library is a pretty common. So I decided that it would be a fun photo essay to get pictures of all of them for you. I think their prevalence tells us something about the people we live near.

A Stay-at-Home Easter

Dilly and I watched the kids while the yard was filled with eggs and a stuffed toy or two for the easter ritual of finding things lying out in plain sight and getting excited about it. Except, of course, Charlie was totally nonplussed by the whole idea.

Our Weekly Ride in the Country

For our ride this week, we headed east on US 2 to the small settlement of Index. This village sits on the shore of the Skykomish river nestled in a narrow valley. As you can see above, the river here is as clear as a swimming pool.

On the Sidewalks of Snohomish

Once there wa a train line that ran through Snohomish, presumably to support the burgeoning lumber industry that once was king here. The tracks were removed and the space paved over to create the Centennial Trail. It runs about 5 miles or so from north of town down to the Snohomish river. I run each morning and my path takes me on a portion of this trail. I discovered some fun sidewalk chalk drawings along the way that seem to represent an 8th-graders version of therapy for the times.

Our Anniversary!

Back in the dark ages 38 years ago today, when Olivia Newton-John was at the top of the charts and Billy Joel was singing about Allentown, we got married.

If you were there for the glorious event, drop us a line. Let's catch up on memories.

Down by the River

Since we've been having a bit of sunshine (what's up with that?) lately, I've been trying to get out and grab some photos to help keep your morale up. Besides, getting out the house is good for me as well.

Viewing the Cascades from Monroe

On the way back from Snoqualmie, we stopped along the road between Monroe and Snohomish to take in the view of the Cascades. There is a nice place along the old road between the two towns that looks across a low pasture land giving a good view of things in the distance.

Snoqualmie has Trains

For our drive through the country, we headed to Snoqualmie. For those of you who know that this is where Twin Peaks was filmed, I will not be showing any of that. Social distancing, remember. too many folks were parking there to look at the falls.

Snohomish in the Sunshine

Now that you've seen all the interesting images I can conjure, it is on to the found things that cause me to push the shutter. On a Saturday morning walk about town, I found some things I have rarely or never shot before. I'm sure that some of this will have you scratching your head wondering why I shot them now.

A Look Back at Laxey

The seawall that protect the harbour at Laxey on the Isle of Man juts into the sea during a quiet moment. The wind is not letting up as you can see from the stiffly horizontal flag.

I'll bet your Weather is not Quite this Bad

Rather than completely bore you with endless photos of plants and our little empty town (that will come later, rest assured), I thought slip in a few of the also-ran images from our travels for you to see.

This image is from on a hill near Ramsey as we drove up to Maughold on the Isle of Man. By no means a winning composition, but it does remind me of the place and what it was like to be there. Cold. Foggy. Rainy. And though you cannot see it here, windy.

Perhaps, in addition to sharing images of happy flowers and plants, I can cheer you along with place that have worse weather that you do.

Neighborhood Plants

Since all the parks are closed, I've been trying to develop some facility with my macro photography. It is also something I can do on foot, close to home.

Tulips

As may be a surprise to some of you (who weren't paying full attention in spring of '18), we live in tulip country. Just north of us in the Skagit valley are vast acres of tulip farms. Typically, each April there is a tulip festival with all the farms open and filled with visitors buying tulips and gawking at the seemingly endless fields of flowers. See 2018 tulips here.

I'm guessing that this is all on hold this year so I've done the next best thing. Here are a couple of the tulips that E planted in our front yard.

A Flower Walk in the Neighborhood

We managed, by some mistake I'm sure, to get a little sun, so I headed out for a short walk about the neighborhood to see what springtime happiness I could find. At the corner, I found a camellia just a little past peak bloom.