PHOTOGRAPHY
Below are pictures that I took and that I thought turned out fairly well. Better than candid snapshots, anyway. For every one of these, there are dozens of other experiments and the like that didn't turn out too well. Ah, photography....




Contemplation
This was one of a whole roll of film I shot on the Oregon Coast, in Lincoln City, in March 2002. My mother is obsessed with the beach, and I wanted to get a good photograph of something beachy that I could then blow up and mount for a Mother's Day gift. (Which would also show my parents that their daughter was putting to use the nice, expensive camera they gave her for her Christmas/birthday gift that year.) The figure in the photo is no one I know, and I just happened to snap it when their head was bowed, as if they were in prayer. I thought that the picture kind of told a story and had some symbolism to it. My mom seemed to like it when I gave her the finished product, and it now hangs in one of the guestrooms at my parents' coast home.

Footprints in the Sand
This was the second runner-up of my beach photographs from March of '02. I had one of my friends run across barefoot several times before I finally caught the waves in the shot with the print on the sand. So, yeah, this was staged.

Purple Flower
I captured this extreme close up in the garden of one of my friend's homes. Her parents live out on a farm in Dayton, Oregon -- which is a one-traffic-light kind of town -- and they have a lot of nifty scenery that I got into photographing one summer afternoon in 2002.

Sunflower
Same day, same garden, same friend, different flower.

Sunset and the Barn
Behind the old farmhouse of my friends' parents is this barn that is falling apart. It's really neat. I ran around and took a lot of photos of the sunset -- half of which are still waiting to be developed in my camera -- and I liked this one. It makes me feel peaceful.

The Old Grange
I took this photo while out for a drive one evening in May 2003 with my new digital camera. I love old buildings, and the country area around Beaverton is filled with old farms, etc, that are abandoned and falling down. This, based on the signs I saw, was once a grange building, a meeting place of sorts. A newer building is constructed nearby on the property, but this old one captivated me much more, for obvious reasons. There's even a borded up brick outhouse nearby.

The Field O' Flowers
This photo was taken the same evening as above. I'm not quite sure what these raspberry-colored flowers are -- tulips? -- but seen in a field like this, it's really pretty.

Purple Haze Barn
Another photo from the countryside in Washington County. I have no idea what kind of flowers these are supposed to be, again, but I think they grow wild.

The Green of Nature
This is what happens to the wild areas of the Willamette Valley. Notice all those wild blackberry brambles. This location was off the road, and poorly trashed; I saw all sorts of garbage strewn on the ground and in this little concave valley. Sad.

The Roadside
This photo was a fluke. I was taking pictures of a house that I have admired for more than a decade -- in my mind, it's where Doc Brown and his family live in the present day -- and I just thought this was a neat shot through the viewfinder. So, snap.