Pink and Gray Morning, Astoria

Astoria, Oregon ~January 27, 2011

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Another River-front Weather Report

October 24, 2010

I love the light and colors of storms! Today's storm was more about shading than colors. It began early. In fact, the lightning flashed through my eyelids before my eyes were open. The lightning didn't last long, but it came back later. I didn't see any of the strikes, and they were not terribly close, maybe four miles away at the closest.

I've noticed that the seagulls hunker down and look very flat in the rain.

This time it's not rain, but hail.

Heavy hail.

Hail and rain against the side of the workroom window. I thought I was getting the mother and baby stuffed opossum (top of the bins on the left) in the photo, but they aren't visible. They seemed not to mind the crashing hail or the thunder.

Hail outside the window. This is where the lovely tangle of plants lived until last summer. The neighbors tore them out, then got as far as putting in a few big rocks, but no plants I guess until next spring (I hope).

When the downpour stopped, a familiar pattern of clouds emerged. So often, there's this layer of clouds over the river obscuring the hills of Washington. It takes one form or another, but is usually separate from the clouds above. I thought the arrangement today was striking.

And it rained again. As I type this at 9:37 p.m., I've just seen lightning outside the window. I wonder what's in store for tomorrow? The big winds didn't materialize yesterday. The forecast usually gives a hint, but it's usually not spot on.

Web stuff: I finally decided today that I had too many blogs going on, and while I like the theme of all of them, I concluded to integrate "On the Pavement" with Tapirgal's Daily Image. I had very mixed feelings, like ripping up a piece of artwork, but went for it anyway. I also spent some time putting these plastic floating/swimming fish online in a way that people could order them from the site. It turns out that the page on the gift shop blog featuring these fish was by far the most popular of all my pages, but since I didn't have them online in the store, people had to order them by phone. Here's the new set-up. Let's see if they're as popular as I think they'll be.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Today's Colors on the River

 Astoria, Oregon ~ October 20, 2010

I'm still astonished when I look out the window and see something like this, and sadly, I still have not been able to get it right - to show how dazzling these ships really are when the morning sun catches them full force on a clear day.

This may be a better example, but it doesn't have the GLOW of the way it looks in real life. "Pan Bright" is the name of this vessel, and the "bright" part is certainly fitting.

In this case, the camera actually heightens the color. I wanted to capture the green of that anomalous fern on the concrete tower base; it came out well, and the water seems bluer than it is in real life.

I love the old "feet" of the radio tower. I may be sorry if they ever paint them.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Just One of Those Yellow Kinds of Days

October 18, 2010

Clear, clean, and cold. The brilliant yellow boat caught my attention, but ufortunately the closeup was totally fuzzy, because I was trying to take the pic before the camera focused.

Toward the end of the day, this bit of yellow caught my eye. I don't know if the city is just parking their "No Parking" signboards here or whether they thought WOW would actually pick up something at the "cardboard only" dumpster that wasn't made of cardboard. In any event, they are adding some color to the scene.

In the background are broken pieces of marble columns. Sadly, a couple of the carved columns for the Chinese Heritage Park didn't make it unscathed. Many more columns are inside the old Englund Marine building on the River Walk just waiting for opening day. After being displayed there, they'll be installed at their permanet home in the park at Astor and 9th Streets. Meanwhile, it's nice to have activity and something to look at in my neighborhood. This is the same building where Goonies' Headquarters saw a lot of action this past spring.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Dec 26, Bend: Splashes of color in a black and white world

We drove into Bend last night in the dark, and weren't able to see the fairy kingdom made by frozen fog on trees and bushes until this morning. I took all of the photos in this post in color, and I didn't change the color in Photoshop. A few of the photos came out really well. Others are included to help me remember the day.

There was only a dusting of frost on the ground - no snow - but every branch and needle were covered in lacy white, making the green of the trees look more black than green by contrast. After this week, I won't be back to Bend for a number of months, so I've included a lot of photos in today's post. It was magical being out in these conditions.

First stop, Starbucks, where the papers were full of the news of the fizzled "device on Flight 253. This is when I realized what an entirely different feel the day would have had if the thing had gone off - not only for family and friends of the passengers, but for everyone. Of course, the news continued to be filled with bits about airport security failures, failures to make use of information in databases, etc. The consequences will not be over at the end of the day, even though (thankfully), the passengers touched down safely.

We stopped in a parking lot, because we wanted to take photos of various plants we'd seen along the roadside. There were a few colorful leaves on this dark green bush.

This one came out really well. It may help to enlarge it.

I took this because I liked the shape of the small trees. When I saw it, I liked the color in the otherwise-monochromatic scheme.

Heh. Iced mocha today? Actually, I've been getting cold coffee drinks lately, but not at McDonald's.

Aesthetically, I could have left this one out, but I like the variety of trees covered in frost.

Approaching the traffic circle.

This is one of the things I wanted to photograph. I like the deer in the wreath and the feathery white background. Bend has sculptures of one sort or another in every traffic circle in town, or nearly all of them. Some are realistic and some are not. I think the city has done a nice job trying to beautify the sterile new streets.

The exposure isn't quite right here, but I liked the sun glow on the trees that were painted on the door to Pine Mountain Sports. It looked very nice as we entered.

We stopped at Strictly Organic for some breakfast burritos, and this was the view out the window in front of the counter where you can sit down to eat. I've had their coffee before, and I think it's the worst I've ever had anywhere. In fact, after much consideration, I threw it out. But their burritos were fantastic.

The bell-shaped lights are reflections from inside Strictly Organic.

The "numbers" they give you that correspond with your order aren't numbers at all, but countries. Funny that we got Tanzania, because Lee will be there on his upcoming trip, so he was able to show me his route and where he'd be staying. I'm certainly looking forward to the photos.

More reflections, more frost. I like the shape of the arch in the bricks, too.

I took this out the other window. I like a number of the elments here, but the first thing that caught my eye was the unusual coloring of the trim.

Again from the cafe window: red, red, nice shapes of the bike rack, and a square within a square.

In the corner of the room behind us as we were eating, was this nice tree painted on the wall.

The counter where we ate was cool. I think it must be palm wood in laminated rectangles. The next photo shows what nature can do in Creative Design class.

Isn't that wonderful? The smaller dots look like a jaguar's coat.

I'm not sure why I included this one. It was just part of the moment.

Strictly Organic supplies water for dogs. But today a dog would need an ice pick.

Frosty bike. Cool bike rack design.

I've taken pictures of these grates before and liked the color better without the frost, but this time I noticed the type: It says, "Bend, Oregon - Est. 1905."

Oak leaves. I love the pale brown.

This is one of my favorite pix of the day. I took it through the windshield of the car, looking at the lacy white-on-white trees on the right, but it turned into a nice composition, and and love the colored sign, too. We were almost home.

Astoria, fall leaves (in December) and more

These pix come from walking around Astoria today on various errands. It was overcast but not actually drizzly. The ground was wet and water clung to leaves. The colors are still brilliant when the light comes through the trees. Today's light was mostly filtered through overcast skies. The building above is the Heritage Museum of the Clatsop Country Historical Society, taken from Exchange Street.

The bright sky behind the trees made it hard to get the color to show up in the pictures. I need to learn more about taking photos of back-lit subjects. I know one way described by the instructions for my camera, but Canon didn't really think a person could push the trigger halfway with their index fingr and hold it, push the "Set" button down with their thumb and be coordinated enough to then push the trigger the rest of the way down (while still holding the "Set" button) and time this to shoot the picture when they had finally framed the shot, did they? The buttons are just too close together! Come on!

The curling bark on the trees (above and below) with light coming from behind was just stuning. I hope the photos show it half as lovely as it really was.

It's too bad about background. I was en route on an errand or I might have tried more angles. I guess one should carry a portable ladder.

Please click on this one to see it bigger. It's nice, but not as nice at the reduced size.

My errands took me down to my dentist's office down on the River Walk. This is the building they call "Big Red" - it's Royal Nebeker's studio, which was badly damaged in the big storm of December 2, 2007.

Oct 15, Part 19 - The Church of St. Sulpice

From the row of bikes, we walked down the street three short blocks that seemed like one and jogged left into the unexpected. I'd read the name of St. Sulpice for years, and probably thought I was going to see a smaller church in a Gothic format. This thing was huge. It was imposing in a way that literally quickened my breathing and got my adrenaline going, although it's hard to see from the photo why it would be so. But it was. The church was also under the wraps of reconstruction. I don't know if that made it feel more or less intrusive, but I'm sure it added to a sense of mystery. I only found out later that St. Sulpice has gained fame as a landmark in Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. I didn't remember that at the time; you can read about it here. To me, the edifice was simply huge, Baroque, and breathtaking.

We arrived at that special time of evening when the sky and the artificial light balance each other and created interesting mood-altering colors. Apparently this is the fountain of the four bishops. Makes sense, it's a church.

As I snapped this one on the run. It's way, way, way out of focus, but Lee and I both liked the perched birds. I was thinking "philosopher" rather than a man of holy orders. Anyway, I loved the birds and the memory of being here enough to include this out-of-focus photo.

One of the prominent features of the Baroque is theatricality, and our timing was right for the lighting to help promote that.

Look at the gorgeous marble in the columns. Click the photo to enlarge it if you need to.

Inside the gargantuan church, the little light that was available took over the scenario. It felt more like a darkened theatre than a church.

This is one of the paintings on the ceiling. The shape and the moulding have all the Baroque flash and flare you could want.

One of St. Sulpice's claims to fame is this huge panel by Delacroix in one of the chapels near the front doors.

Here are the four bishops again. I don't think we spent a lot of time inside; the light faded quickly.

I really loved the surrealness of the quiet square, the lighting, the huge church half shrouded in canvas, and the patterns created by the monster-sized scaffolding and switchback stairs. It was like a bizarre unadvertised art exhibit. The lights were on, the doors were open, but nobody was in attendance. Except for us.

I think you get some idea of the imposing size from here. I love the lighting.

It takes two photos from this close to get the top and the bottom of the massive structure. So that was St. Sulpice. Nice side trip. We headed back to the Rue de Rennes.

Go to Part 20