That peaceful, easy feeling
I spent a morning shooting in Seattle’s Japanese Garden, and came away with a lot of keepers. Here’s one of my favorites…
On my recent trip to Seattle, I spent a morning exploring and shooting their Japanese Gardens. It’s a gorgeous park with amazing reflections available thanks to the pond at the center of the park. One of my favorite spots was this little Japanese pagoda/temple thing on a rock, right on the edge of the pond. I spent quite a while here shooting away, but I think this is my favorite shot of it thus far.
Portland's Japanese Garden
This Japanese Garden in the heart of Portland, OR is absolutely gorgeous! I spent some time there with a few friends a couple of years ago (yep, Jim's a little behind in processing my pics!) and boy did I ever come back with some winners! Sadly, it's taken me over 2 years to get around to sharing them...but finally...here they are! Hope you enjoy the view!
This is one gorgeous place in the heart of Portland, OR!
I was lucky enough to make it to the inaugural NXNW gentlemen's photo trip back in 2012, wherein we popped up to Portland, OR and shot like crazy over a long weekend. It was awesome, but sadly the timing hasn't worked out for me since, so I have missed all the other trips.
The gents are planning one for later this summer right now, and once again I am committed to be elsewhere at the time, so once again I will miss out. But, I will be in Europe so I won't complain. I do love going to Europe (and in fact just spent last week there, in Copenhagen, and collected about 3100 new photos. Whew, lots to do!)
Anyways, all this email banter about the upcoming trip sparked my interest to go back into the archives (which I have been doing a lot lately, anyways) and see what else from that Portland trip remained to be processed.
The answer? A LOT!
I took over 2000 photos on that trip, and have processed barely a fraction of them. It's the same thing I have been saying here a lot lately - that most of my photos are sitting in the library collecting virtual dust.
But that's changing.
It's one of my goals this year to process as many pics as I can find time for. Some of them become blog posts here - and some do not - but they all go onto my Flickr stream as well as on my portfolio site (since making them visible/searchable is the point).
So recently I got into that collection from Portland, and started on these shots from the Japanese Gardens there, which are absolutely beautiful. We spent a couple of hours there on our first afternoon, and I loved it. We all did. How could you NOT love a place this beautiful?
Well, enjoy the views today and come back soon for many, many more photos, as soon as I get them processed!
Step up the stairs
The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps - we must step up the stairs. - Vance Havner
I love that quote - just love it. It's so true, and I think fitting for a lot of us in several ways. Personally, in my photography work I have some things I want to accomplish, and I am in the process of stepping up those stairs to get these things done. More on that soon!
For all my US readers, enjoy your Thanksgiving holiday and thanks everyone for stopping by!
(if you are curious, I shot this at the Japanese Gardens in Portland, OR)
The Tree of Life
Our first stop once we all met up was to head over to the Japanese Gardens, which are in the west hills of Portland not far from downtown. Apart from the intricately twisting branches, the thing I found most interesting about this tree is its size. It's only about 5 feet tall! I actually missed it the first couple of times I walked by!
We spent a couple of hours here at the gardens, and I have a lot more to share from here. But, I think my next post will be the Portland skyline, which we shot a few hours after leaving these gardens. We shot through a beautiful golden hour, through blue hour, and into the night. It was awesome.