The odd second-floor lobby of the Fairmont Olympic Hotel in Seattle, Washington (it’s actually a challenge to find it) reminds me of nothing so much as the Grand Staircase of the Titanic—equally classy, but evidently not equally doomed.
Tag: photography
Columbus Nightfield
Rainy nights make for the best hotel stays; when the city is a strange mix of old brick and modern blah* (hello, Columbus!), a cloudy sky lit by unnatural light matches the alienating mood.
*Where “blah” = solid but uninspired office buildings.
Other Barrels
Aging can be kind of an eerie process, and the rugged steel and green lighting of this other room beyond Woodford Reserve’s standard aging racks certainly emphasizes that. Even if the whiskey is tasty, green lighting proves to be too sinister to resist.
The Club
The Club has two jobs: one part family-friendly restaurant for the community, and one part standard bar. I’m just sad that they stopped having Newcastle on tap.
Wake Up with Towers
The longer I spend in small-town life, the more alien a view down the tree-lined streets of Seattle becomes. If the warm towers are a rare sight, the man crossing the street with his dog is a more normal image for me to concentrate on.
Escape the Suburbs
The gradient from dense, urban (and suburban) areas to rural and natural settings is one of my favorite photographic subjects—and the subject of most of my favorite photographs. In this particular aerial shot from the in-between area over Pennsylvania, the sun has mostly set, leaving shadows and a few orange reflections in the overly ordered geometry of subdivisions. Down the winding highway, beyond the hills, in the less-dense and more agrarian land, the sun still casts a warm glow.
Autumn in the American Backyard
In most of North American, a lawn of short grass has no business being near enormous, deciduous trees; this particular image matches an afternoon of improbably sunlight with that preposterous botanical mix.
VW Bus Interior
The VW Bus is an icon of mid-twentieth-century America, and the surviving examples dotting the West Coast (like this one in Seattle) recall those times. (Given their current emissions issues, that’s perhaps a time for which Volkswagen is a bit nostalgic themselves.)
So much of this interior—the wheel, the gauges, the radio—look to be stock that the subtle additions stand out. The nav/cell holder suction-cupped to the windshield is pretty subtle, but the plastic demon/ghost/goober on the dash is an ethereal addition.
Industrial Birches
I couldn’t resist just one more image from the foothills of the Adirondacks in this weird, gentle fall. The bright blotches of birch branches (I couldn’t help myself) and their attendant leaves stand in contrast to the mechanical, industrial aspects of the scene.
Little North Country Island
There’s a tiny (abandoned?) cabin in the woods of this scruffy, autumn-inflected island. This fall has been warm and dry, the Sun bakes the glacier-cut stones, and the water is already cold. In this environment, I can’t help but imagine escaping to a little cabin of my own.
Canton, New York I
“Downtown” has a very different meaning in a small town. I love the repeating pattern in the second-floor windows of the buildings. Bright reds and blues will soon be covered with snow, but then perhaps I’ll take this same shot again.
Walk by the Tracks
Altweibersommer has struck the North Country, with warm afternoons reaching shirtsleeves weather and the Sun bakes the linear forms of railroad tracks and dry branches. A local man walks his dog by the modern metal forms of feed silos.
Back to the Stables
When the Grand Prix is over and the crowds are heading for the exits, the good horses go back to the barns to sleep.
Batman’s Entrance
The HDR technique brings out all of the subtle textures of brick and roofing where comic book heroes dwell: on the roofs of fancy hotels. When a supervillain takes the (imaginary) party below hostage, a skylight makes a perfect entrance. Also, a great way to end The Game.
Run with the Whiskey
Barrels of (basically) moonshine await aging at Woodford Reserve. Do you feel the temptation to just roll one out the door and down the road?
Decaseconds 