When I moved to the Palouse, I didn’t realize just how photogenic the landscape was. Then I saw ads for the Palouse in Popular Photography. It turns out, people will pay good money to come and photograph the region, and here I am living there not taking advantage of my home turf. I’ve only been on Steptoe Butte once before, and it was in the winter with not much snow on the ground. So I was quite glad when Simon came back to visit and suggested we go out and shoot the Palouse. We hit Steptoe Butte at the right time while it was covered with balsamroot and lupine, and the fields of the Palouse alternate between the green of new wheat and brown of a freshly plowed field. Simon also came with an arsenal of lenses that we shared. I knew I needed to get a nice long lens, but now I really know how much a long lens can complement landscape photography.
Steptoe Butte and a country road.Steptoe Butte rises behind a Palouse farm.Arrowleaf BalsamrootA sea of green.Plowing fields.Balsamroot over the PalouseThe small town of Steptoe among the hills.The fading sun captures the dust of farmers tilling their fields.There’s not much native prairie left on the Palouse.Contrasts and patterns of the Palouse.We had hoped for a sunset, but this is the best we got.We came across this moose on the way down. It made up for the lack of a sunset.
Good sunsets often occur after a day of rain and storms. The following Saturday, scattered rain storms swept through the area. I was in Moscow with Erin and Clara at the annual renaissance faire, which is more like an arts festival than a true renaissance festival. As evening approached, I noticed an end to the rain on the horizon to the west. I checked the radar and Steptoe Butte was clear. So we headed back up so I could show Erin the beauty of the floral displays, and to capture the sunset over the Palouse. It wasn’t quite as vivid as I wanted, but I got some color in the clouds and it was much better than the sunset on my previous visit.
Rains in the distance over the PalouseField of LupineLupine on Steptoe ButteSunset on Steptoe Butte
Sunset from the lupine field on Steptoe Butte.Pink clouds as the sun sets.
This post will demonstrate just how fast light can change, especially during sunrise and sunset.
View of Moscow Mountain and the Idaho Palouse.View of Moscow Mountain and the Idaho Palouse.Moscow Mountain and the Idaho Palouse at sunset.
These three images, taken in the same location on the same day within a half-hour window, demonstrate just how quickly light can change. Therefore, it is often necessary to scout out locations before setting up your desired image so that you can be ready to capture the scene when the light is perfect.
Of course, perfect light is a subjective quality. All three of these images are wonderful, which means all three lighting scenarios are desirable. I spent as much time as I could at this spot, snapping images as the light changed. In fact, I was hoping that the entire cloud would light up pink as the sun sank below the horizon, but only the edge glowed with color. Still, there’s nothing lose by trying. I can always return to this spot if the conditions appear to improve.
There are always times when you don’t have this luxury. When traveling, for instance, you’re likely to visit a place once and move on, so you only have the lighting and weather conditions present at the time. Some times you get lucky, and some times the conditions are less than ideal. But if you ever do get the luxury to scout locations ahead of time, take that opportunity, because you’ll return with some amazing images.
Moscow is home to the University of Idaho, the state’s largest university.
This year, I have fallen behind in my photography pursuits. It’s in part due to the events in February, and part due to not having the funds or time to get out as much as I’d have liked. I’ve been looking through some stats tracking the number of photos I’ve taken over the past few years, though a better metric is to look at the number of “good” photos that have made it onto my flickr page. Here’s a short breakdown:
Year
Number of photos
2006
335
2007
310
2008
396
2009
629
2010
341
2011
421
2012
314
2013
185
For all years before 2006, there were less than 200 images shared publicly. This trend does mirror the trend for total photos taken, according to my iPhoto library. It appears that 2009 was my busiest year, which surprises me because I had so many photos I liked from 2010 that I ended up splitting my yearly album into two books. The numbers above don’t include any portrait sessions and ballroom dance events that I photographed, many of which have yielded some satisfactory results, but which I don’t post on flickr for privacy reasons.
Despite the low volume of shots, I still have some images and memories that I am quite fond of. I went through my 2013 photographs and picked out what I feel are the best 10 images from the year:
[AFG_gallery id=’9′]
Of course, you can always see the entire set over at Flickr. Think I should have included some others in this list? Let me know what your favorites are.
Once again, the skies lit up with the dancing inferno of the northern lights. The sun has been fairly active the past two months, but this is the first I’ve both been aware of and had a clear sky to see. All of the aurora events I’ve photographed have been special, and each one is different. This one happened to be the strongest storm when the K-index reached 7. It was so bright, I could make out the red band with the naked eye once my vision adjusted to the darkness. The storm peaked here a little after 11:30 pm on Friday, June 28, sending columns of light high into the sky. After watching the display for nearly 40 minutes, I decided we should move to another location where the view of the sky would be a bit more open. Really, I just wanted a change of foreground scenery. We drove south toward the Bethany Chapel where we were at the southern end of a big, flat field. The sky was still glowing, but the streaks were not as bright. The moon had risen above the horizon providing some light on the foreground, but I also wonder if the moonlight was competing with the aurora. By 2:00, with no new major flares occuring, we packed up and headed home to go to bed. It’s a good thing we did, the storm had subsided quite a bit.
This is the fourth aurora I’ve been able to photograph since moving to Idaho. Every time, I’m still amazed by the awe and beauty of this spectacle. I hope I never grow tired of enjoying these events. As we were driving to the Bethany Chapel, all I could think about were all the people we were passing who were totally unaware of the events transpiring in the sky outside their own homes.
For Christmas, I bought Erin a new bird feeder to replace one that had been broken earlier in the summer. A few weeks ago, we finally got some seed and put it outside, but this was in the middle of a cold snap where daytime highs remained in the low 20’s, and the nighttime lows, well, we just won’t go there. For about a week, the feeder hung with no activity. Then, as the cold began to lift, there was a single chickadee in the lilac tree. It must have spread the news because a few days later, the feeder had full activity.
Erin had noticed that we had Chestnut-backed chickadees this year, in addition to the Black-capped and Mountain varieties that have been showing up regularly since we moved in. So, now we have three of the four chickadee species found in Idaho. It’s unlikely that we’ll see the Boreal chickadee at our feeders since it prefers high altitudes and is found in the northernmost portion of the panhandle.
Since the feeder has been up, we’ve also seen the return of the juncos, red-breasted nuthatch, house finch, pine siskin, and common redpoll.
One of the problems photographing chickadees is that they’re so damn fast. They would land on the feeder, and in the time it took to swing the mirror up and open the shutter, they were already leaving. I think the noise from the shutter/mirror mechanism is frightening them away. The result is very few images of chickadees sitting still, and a whole portfolio of chickadees in mid-wing flap. In some ways, this is no good, but in another way, it’s a neat series of images. So I present to you a gallery of chickadee mis-fires, or birds that just won’t cooperate for a photo shoot.
A layer of mist hovers over the snow behind the house.
Well, now that Winter has finally arrived, we thought it might be fun to tromp through the snow and get some exercise. I dusted off the snowshoes (literally) and we set off for a little hike out of our back yard. As we began our trek, I noticed an awesome mist hovering over the snow, and since we hadn’t left the yard yet, we turned back to get my camera.
We were walking in snow that had not been disturbed, so it was quite soft and difficult, even with snowshoes. In fact, in the hour that we were out, we only managed to travel about .3 miles. Nonetheless, we had fun, and the dogs certainly enjoyed themselves. Greta loves the snow. It’s quite possibly her favorite thing all year round. When the snow accumulates, she become giddy like a puppy. She also likes to pretend she’s a wild dog by sticking her face into the snow as if to hunt mice running around beneath. Shadow also enjoys the snow. While she doesn’t quite act like a puppy, her favorite thing to do is roll around in it. It’s the first thing she’ll do, especially when we encounter summer snow patches in the high elevation.
Shadow shows off her beard of snow.Wild dogs, such as coyotes and foxes, are able to hunt even when the snow is six feet deep. Greta likes to pretend she is a wild dog.
By the end of our little walk, the sun had set and the mist had accumulated at the bottom of our neighbor’s field making a really neat scene. See some more photos from our walk below. Tomorrow, I think I’ll take the snowshoes out and explore some of the forest trails nearby.
The mist on the snow had accumulated at the bottom of our neighbor’s field.
A test shot from early on in the night. Notice the two meteors captured in this frame. Apparently, I also caught the end of a major meteor shower.
This story begins Friday night when I learned that a large coronal mass ejection (CME) sent a burst of solar radiation from the sun headed toward Earth. It was predicted to intercept our atmosphere on the evening of the 8th, producing auroral activity in the high latitudes. Given the size of this solar storm, as described by spaceweather.com, I was a bit suspicious that the auroras migh be big enough to see all the way down here in northern Idaho. So, I kept a watch looking for evidence of such activity.
On the evening of the 8th, I checked Spaceweather and confirmed that there had been some strong auroral activity, and that it had been seen earlier that morning as far south as Utah. I rushed outside and didn’t see much. I set up the camera for a test shot and picked up some faint auroral glow, but it seemed to be far in the distance and nothing worth getting excited over. I was beginning to think that I had missed the aurora and should have stayed up the night before. Throuout the evening, I would periodically go out side and take a test shot of the northern sky, and while the glow got brighter, it never reached the level that it had during previous auroras. So while I went out for the last test shot at 11:30, Erin had gone to bed. I stayed up in an attempt to finish grading exams, but ended up nodding off in the middle. I admitted defeat and around midnight, decided to quit and go to bed.
Curtains of light filled the sky during the most intense flare I had seen.
Before turning in for the night, I stepped out to check the sky once more. I figured, it wouldn’t hurt. Of course, I wasn’t expecting to see columns of light beaming high into the night sky. The aurora had really flared up. So I grabbed my jacket and my camera and decided to drive a few miles south where there were some flat fields and a clearer view of the sky. I was mostly interested in photographing the aurora with a different foreground than the usual barn and trees outside the house. When I pulled off the road and set up the camera, I got something I wasn’t expecting at all. There were full-fledged curtains streaking from the north across the sky overhead, and they could be seen clearly with the naked eye. This was too much to bear. I quickly set up the camera and snapped the first shot. Thankfully, there was cell service where I was and I was able to call Erin and get her out of bed for this one. I also called Colleen, who promptly got in her car and headed out to our place from Moscow.
Meanwhile, I stood out in the field for a good 20 or 30 minutes marvelling at the dancing curtains while snapping away. At one point, I noticed a flash in the sky. I thought maybe someone had come out with a spotlight, but there was no other human activity to be found. It happened again, and again, and soon I noticed that the light was radiating from the north and travelling toward me in waves. The activity persisted for a good 20 minutes and then subsided. At that point, the cold was getting to me, and I decided to head home rather than wait for Erin and Colleen to come out.
The last harrumph before fading away for the night. It was a much more quiet flare, but still beautiful.
The activity had subsided for a while, but I kept an eye on the reports from spaceweather.com. We went out again a little after 1:00 to see if the activity had returned, and indeed, the band across the sky had gotten brighter with some faint pillars streaking upward. Rather than drive back out to higher ground, we went into the field behind the house to see what was happening. The aurora certainly wasn’t as big as it was earlier, but it had gotten bright green. We waited to see if it would flare up some more, but it never seemed to get any bigger. So, by 1:30, we all decided to call it a night. Erin and I finally went to bed by 2:00, and after one last look at the sky, it seemed that the glow had faded out. Maybe the activity peaked again in the early hours of the morning, but I had already seen something good. After all, I had to be up in 3 hours to get ready for work.
While the lack of sleep had taken its toll on me, it was totally worth it to witness this totally awesome spectacle of the universe. A geomagnetic storm this strong doesn’t happen very often, and when it does, I’ll be sure to be outside capturing it.
Well, I made my last post a bit too soon. After spending the evening on Freezeout Ridge (story and photos to come soon), Erin reminded us that the aurora might still be occuring and that we could possibly see it tonight. Clarkia isn’t the best place to test this hypothesis because its surrounded by tall mountains in all directions, so as we passed through Bovill, I noticed a glow on the northern horizon. At this point, it was only 10:00, still early enough that the glow could be residual light from the sun. I pulled the car over and set up the camera for a test shot. Sure enough, there was a green and pink glow in the sky, but there was also some light left over from the sunset. So, we continued on.
When we got home, the sky had darkened and the glow to the north was brighter than ever, with some streaks rising high into the sky. So we unloaded the car from the day’s excursion and I set up the camera in the field and produced the image above. Then I thought about trying to capture star trails, so I dialed the ISO down to 100 and left the shutter open for 10 minutes, being too impatient to wait any longer.
Of course, no Aurora night would be complete without a storm blowing in to cut viewing time short.
We got alerts that a solar flare could cause an aurora that would be visible into the middle states. So, last night, I checked the sky and luckily it was clear to the north. I saw a faint glow on the horizon and set up the camera. Sure enough, there was an aurora. The excitement didn’t last too long. I wanted to view this one from Steptoe Butte, one of the best places around for viewing auroral activity. So, we got in the car and started driving west. Unfortunately, the sky was overcast over much of the Palouse, and by the time we got home, the clouds had moved in overhead. Figures that most of the time we get big auroral activity that can be seen in Idaho, we also get storms the same night.
Since I started using Flickr to show of my photography to the world, I’ve neglected my own self-hosted galleries here at Mineral2.com. I’m considering doing away with the Gallery software altogether and maybe swapping it out for a simpler interface for displaying a portfolio.
At any rate, Flickr has been a much better interface for me because in addition to being a photo hosting site, it’s also a social network and that allows me to get greater exposure into the world. One of the things Flickr does is rate your photos according to “interestingness.” I’m not exactly sure what that entails, but its some magic formula combining the number of views, comments, and favorites an image receives, and I’m sure the rate at which these are received is taken into account. Every day, Flickr takes the top 500 uploads and displays them in a section they call Explore. Given that there are millions of photos uploaded each day, making it into Explore is quite challenging, but also quite an honor. Or maybe it doesn’t really mean anything at all. What confuses me is that most of the images that make Explore probably don’t deserve to be there. After all, the algorithms used to generate the interestingness score are more so a reflection of popularity than the technical quality of a photograph. In addition, a photo with fewer views, comments, and favorites can be ranked higher than one that exceeds it in all three categories. So while it’s fun to get a photo into Explore, it’s not necessarily a reflection of your ability.
Flickr also uses this algorithm to return back to you your top 200 interesting photos from your photo stream. I mostly keep track of the top 20 from time to time to see if the list matches my top picks. For the past few years, my top three images have been some old favorites: the waterfall at Heatherbrook, Mount Washington from Mount Chocorua, and Blue Mine (Wyanokie) Falls.
In fact, it seemed that a good handful of the top 20 were waterfall shots. Most of the top 20 dated back to my film days, and only one made the list from my first year in Idaho. In short, the top 20 seemed pretty robust. But recently there was an upset that changed my top 20. Two images from the past week jumped right up into the list, one of which landed in the number 3 seat. Both of these images coincidentally also made it to Explore for their respective upload dates.
It’s kind of neat to see that this list really isn’t as robust as I thought it was, that an image had to stand the test of time and gradually rise to the top. I’ll never understand just how Flickr’s algorithm chooses the best images, but I’ll be keeping an eye on the interestingness to see how it changes.
Tonight I had a great surprise and learned a valuable lesson as to why it’s somtimes good to stay up late, even on a school night.
I got the word of an aurora event tonight around 11:30 local time, and this was from people on the east coast. So I thought to myself: I wonder if I can see it here. I went outside and didn’t see any dazzling lights dancing in the sky, so I came back in thinking that either I missed it or I was just in the wrong place to see it.
But then I started thinking: what if the aurora is just too dim for the naked eye to see, but bright enoug for the camera to pick up? I asked my wife how bright the aurora usually is and she said it depended on the circumstances. Some are bright and some are dim.
I went back outside and looked to the north and saw that the sky was somewhat bright… like light pollution. But in that direction, there are no towns to produce light pollution. I got the camera out of the car and set it up on the tripod and snapped a shot. Sure enough, my suspicions were confirmed when the hazy glow turned out to be green and pink. My other suspicion came from a ray of light shining up from behind the trees, almost as if someone had a spotlight. Then the beam disappeared. It would reappear in different places throughout the night and the sky would vary its intensity.
Last night, we had the storm of storms come across the Palouse. It was a quick, but powerful cell the big lightning strikes every few seconds that produced enough power to disrupt phone service (land line) each time a bolt struck the ground. Luckily, we had no major power surges and all of the electronics in the house work just fine. But the ligntning and thunder show was both awesome and a bit frightening. I stood outside with the camera as the storm approached, but quickly retreated into the house as the storm came atop of me. Winds picked up and the temperature dropped twenty degrees. Unfortunately, as with all scattered storms, the effects were short-lived. As the storm passed and the winds died down, the heat came back, but at least it wasn’t nearly as hot as it was during the day.
I tried to get some shots of the storm leaving the area, but I had waited too long to get any good lighning shots with the barn in the foreground. This represents my first successful lightning photography. The last try failed to capture the bolts, but did capture that amazing red sunset.
There’s a new book in my bookstore. I finally got around to completing 2010: A Year of Change, Vol. 2. Volume 1 followed the first half of the year as I finished working in Virginia, got married and prepared to leave the eastern United States. Volume 2 continues the journey, starting with a visit to Idaho in February to visit the school and the area, then the road trip from Maryland to Moscow, and some exploration around my new home as we settled in and started school. Pick up your copy by clicking on the badge below.
Last night, I had some folks over from the photo club for a little get together and fun. We grilled burgers, sat around the fire, and played with our cameras. We were mostly interested in shooting the night sky. I’ve shot the stars before, but last night might be my most successful attempt yet.
Shooting the night sky is rather difficult, but it can be quite rewarding. One can end up with an image with more stars in it than the eye can see. The problem is that stars are not very bright, so to capture enough light, you have to use a long shutter speed. Therein lies another problem: stars move in the sky. One solution is to expose for a very long time and capture the star trails. With digital photography, this is a somewhat difficult approach. For one, the sensor is using battery power to capture the image. So the longer the exposure, the more battery gets used. An all-night exposure is nearly impossible. Using film, you can open the shutter forever and not draw any power.
The other option is the “short” exposure, and by short, I mean keeping it to 30 seconds or less. Even at 30 seconds, we begin to notice movement in the stars, but it may not be so much to detract from the image. The images on this post were taken at 30 seconds, but you only see star movement if we blow the image up pretty big. There one last trade-off to consider. Do you want a night sky with lots of stars and milky way detail, or do you want your image to be crisp and sharp all around? To get lots of light, you need a large aperture, f/2.8 or larger. But while large apertures let in lots of light, they’re also difficult to focus and lenses aren’t usually their sharpest at their widest aperture. Stopping down can get you a crisper image, but you’ll only pick up the brightest stars. But with practice and lots of patience, you can have your cake and eat it too.
The Palouse is made up of rolling hills covered in wheat and barley fields. This area was historically a prairie, so there were few trees to begin with. A few of these hills rise up well above the rest, remnants of a time when the region was more active volcanically.
Kamiak Butte is one such high point, located less than 10 miles north of Pullman. The north slope is covered by a lush and beautiful forest, protected as a county park for all to enjoy. The park offers a picnic area, a campground, and miles of trails that ascend the butte and follow the ridge to the summit. There are views in all directions including views of both Pullman and Moscow. It’s a great little oasis amidst the sea of farmland. While it’s certainly not wilderness by any stretch of the imagination, it’s a great place to watch wildlife and look for flowers. On yesterday’s walk, I came across a Mountain Lady’s Slipper, but was unable to get a good photograph.
Kamiak Butte is a good place to get away and enjoy nature. It’s close to Moscow and Pullman and caters to everyone from families to the outdoor enthusiast.
I’ve heard of April showers bringing May flowers, but what do April snows bring? On Friday, I awoke to a white world with about an inch of snow covering everything. It was kind of a shock considering only a week before, there were promising signs of Spring. Of course, after the snow, the temperatures are back up and the weekend’s forecast is quite pleasant.
There is a Forest Service hiking trail about 3 miles due north of our house, though it’s about 7 miles to drive there. Still, it’s close for those after-work getaways. The trail is a ~5mi. loop along the Potlatch River that takes you along the river and then up to the “rim” of the canyon. The first half mile or so is paved, but it then becomes a regular old trail through the woods. There are interpretive markers along the entire length.
I have been down on the trail several times, but yesterday was the first time I decided to do the entire loop. It turns out that while we have no snow left at the house, there is still plenty on the ground out there and what should have taken 2 hours to complete ended up taking a good chunk of my day (and energy!). I actually hiked the loop backward going up to the top first and coming back along the river. Had I gone the other direction, I may not have hiked the loop at all. The snow along the river was still 2+ feet deep and not packed down very well. Every other step or so, I’d sink down to my knees, and the dogs weren’t having an easier time.
Still, despite the difficulty with the snow, this trail seems promising. It traverses through a diversity of habitats and promises to offer good wildlife. I came across the scat of deer, elk, and moose, but did not see any. It could be the combination of my timing (mid-day) and the fact that I had the dogs with me. I saw and heard tons of birds, but without binoculars, I couldn’t identify all of them. I heard Pileated woodpeckers and came across another unidentified woodpecker. There were chickadees galore, and a wren that flew across the trail. We spooked several grouse and saw a turkey in the big meadow by the river. And on the river, I caught a pair of Common merganser.
The trail takes you through a variety of habitats including new forest, thinned/open forest, mature forest, river, meadow, upland, lowland. The best surprise was a clearing with a scenic overlook on top of the canyon (pictured above). The view looks down upon the river, across a swatch of forest and out to some higher peaks off in the distance. Despite being so close to farm and logging lands, the trail feels like it’s secluded in its own patch of wilderness.
I think when the snow melts, the trail will be a bit more fun to explore and revisit. It’s nice to have something like this so close to home.
We get lots of birds in our trees in the front yard. This could be contributed to the source of food we are supplying to them. The list of winter birds is less than the summer residents. For example, I haven’t seen a bluebird in months, and most of the woodpeckers have left the yard too. And of course, the hummingbirds have gone since they don’t have the proper gear to tolerate the cold. But even with the few remaining species, watching the feeders has been a delight.
In Idaho, we have the possibility to see four different kinds of Chickadees. I have seen three of them at my feeder. The fourth can be found at higher elevations in the sub-alpine zone. The Black-capped chickadee is our most common and was our regular visitor in back in the northeast as well. But one day, I noticed a chickadee that didn’t quite look right. It had a stripe across its eye and less black on its chin. Turns out I was looking at a Mountain chickadee, and since my discovery, they have been around every day. One day last week, I saw what looked like a Black-capped with a brown back. Turns out, it was a Chestnut-backed chickadee. I only saw them the one day, during a cold snap, and they haven’t been back since. I’m hoping they’re secretly still around, but I have a feeling they prefer a more wooded environment than the other species and they were only here for a visit.
The other excitement on the feeder ar the Evening grossbeak. These dark birds have areas of brilliant yellow and a clean white patch on their wings. They are gorgeous, and they are also a dominant species. They don’t play well with others. We also have them in great numbers. I first discovered the grossbeaks in late Fall last year, and there were only one or two of them. Then they brought the crowd. Today, we had at least 30 of them eating the food, and when they’re on the feeder, no other birds are around. So they’re not the nicest of birds, but it is nice to have something colorful to look at, especially since we don’t have Cardinals out here.
When you live somewhere long enough and see the same scenery day after day, you sort of become numb to it. It no longer thrills you the way it did when you first moved in. That’s sort of how I feel. Don’t get me wrong, I love my house and its location, but it feels like I could have better scenery out my window living somewhere else. The scenery here is never actually dull. I’ve got a great view of Spud Hill, Deary’s local “mountain” that stands over 1000 feet above the town, and most evenings, we get great light that shines on the barn and the property. But as great as everything looks, I get into this funk where the view doesn’t seem interesting to photograph. This is certainly not true, it just becomes more difficult to find creative ways to display the scenery around the house.
The weather cooperated a bit today and I wanted to take advantage by going for a short hike up Spud Hill. It’s been ages since I’ve gotten up on a high overlook and I’m ansy to stand on top of the world. I also really want to get Erin up there to show her our local scenic view. But she didn’t want to go up there today. By the time we were ready to go, it was after 4:00, still sunny and warm, but that would change quickly. I would have still gone up to catch sunset. But the final winning argument she made was the snow. Although it had compacted and melted from the high temperatures and rain the past few days, it was still deep enough to make hiking a challenge. So instead, she took out her skis and I got out my snowshoes and we made a loop around the field behind our house. It was a drastically shorter hike, but the point was to get out, enjoy the nice weather, and give the dogs some exercise.
I brought my camera with the intent of capturing the scenery that is essentially our back yard. Just beyond our property boundary is a nice view toward Spud Hill (pictured above), which was looking quite nice in the late afternoon light. Then we headed down hill where a seasonal creek was flowing due to the snow melt (left). We crossed the creek, headed up the opposite bank and had a peak in the woods. On the other side of the trees, we have neighbors that live in a neat looking round house. It’s two stories with a dome roof and what looks to be a little observation tower on top. One of these days, we’ll have to go over there and meet the neighbors just to see what the house looks like inside.
We walked along the tree line for a bit before heading back down to cross the creek, this time where a snow bridge had formed making an easier path to cross. Erin enjoyed it enough to ski up the other side, turn around and ski back down the hill and up the side we came down originally. She was especially amused by Shadow’s need to run along side her. After taking a tumble on the return run, we called it quits and headed back home.
I have been back this way before, but on this walk, I realized just how big these hills are. The Palouse is full of huge rolling hills that look like they’d be great for sledding. But we actually have some great sled hills right behind the house. If we get any more winter storms, I’ve got to have people over for some fun in the snow. Although the current weather trends project spring-like weather in the near future, we’re not clear of winter yet.
I’m going to start this post by sharing a few photos I shot on Kodak T-Max black and white film way back in 2001 during my freshman year of college.
Film.
Back then, my little school of 1600 had a darkroom that the photo club and art department shared. It was in the basement of one of the dorms. When the art department got its brand new building, it got a brand new state-of-the-art darkroom, and the club took complete ownership of the old darkroom. I’m not sure what’s left of the facility in the basement of Baldwin, but I do know that the intro to photography class is still being taught using the darkroom in the art building.
It was my perception that art departments at all schools taught photography on film before teaching digital techniques. Apparently I was wrong. The University of Idaho is considerably larger than Drew and yet there are no photography classes offered. Furthermore, there is no darkroom available for student use. This shocks me. How can a school overlook the basic photographic processes and principles? How can a school overlook photography as an art? And why the hell did they have to disassemble their darkroom when students may want to use it on their own?
I was looking forward to being able to develop and print, but I see that it will have to wait some more.
Until then, please enjoy some shots from the past.
