The Urban Landscape…

Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category

Seattle Public Library

 Gotta love Seattle for its street art and sculpture.  Of course, there are some who say the buildings themselves are works of art…take our Seattle Public Library as an example.  The building is quite unusual and walking through it is an experience in and of itself.  But more about that in another post….

Urban life, city streets, architecture and art,  cracked and broken sidewalks, trees and flowers:  These are just a few of my favorite things to photograph.  I thought I would share a few photos here of Seattle.  We are so very lucky to live in a city with an abundance of art right out on the street.  I sometimes think Seattle has more street art per block than any other city I have visited.  I have even overlooked, on occasion, art until I have walked passed it and suddenly realized the art was incorporated right into the structure of the building I was passing. 

Take for instance the entry to the building on the corner of 2nd Avenue South and South Jackson Street.  The building houses the Metro Transit Offices.  The gates that form the entry to the building are also the security gates when closed at night.  They are named the Rainforest Gates (painted steel) created by Jean Whitesavage and Nick Lyle in 1999.

Rainforest Gates

Piece of the Rainforest Gates

The plaque for the gates says,

the imagery used in the forged steel is taken from the plants and animals found in Pacific Northwest rain forests.  Hundreds of pieces of iron work are woven together to express the beauty and harmony of the web of life, alluding to the process of co-evolution that brings billions of individual creatures together in the intricate dance that we call an ecosystem….

The artists think of their sculpture as a kind of visual poetry; rather than simply imitating nature, they create artwork that speaks the language of  living things through the medium of steel.  It is one of my favorite pieces to shoot as it reflects the light differently depending on the time of day I am there.  It is a fun piece of art.

On October 4, 2009 I headed out to Puerto Vallarta.  Having never been there before, I did a lot of Google-ing and website searching as soon as I received my itinerary from Destination Ventures.  This was a travel agent familiarization trip as a Puerta Vallarta Pro Specialist.  There were six of us on this itinerary from all over the USA. 

Not knowing anyone, nor the language, the biggest  hurdle is getting through the airport intact.  There was supposed to be someone waiting for me with a name plaque so that I could escape the crush of taxi drivers who are aggressive and border-line abusive.  Once again, as in Los Cabos, I was not so fortunate. But I was soon taken under the wing of  a young woman who seemed somewhat “official” and also found a fellow travel agent traveler, Kathy.  We were shown to the “VIP” lounge.  There we found our hostess and were tucked safely into an appropriate taxi and taken to our hotel. 

Although suffering from unbelievebly hot and humid weather for the next few days, I fell in love with Puerto Vallarta as we rushed from hotel to hotel, activity to activity.  Notably, the people we talked to about the town were passionate and dedicated to it.  Many were transplants from all over the world.  They were of many ages, race and nationality.  Their love of Puerto Vallarta united them as one.  My only regret, as it so often is on one of these trips, is that I did not have enough time to go see the old town, to see as much of Puerto Vallarta as these people could tell me about.  It means I have to go back, of course, which is not a problem.  Though it will be a while before I can revisit Puerto Vallarta, and that I truly regret.

Not many of the pictures I took were of the urban landscape of Puerto Vallarta.  Most of them were of the hotels and activities that were in our itinerary.  Our itinerary was designed to keep us on the go and with minimal personal time.  As an example, on the first day we did site inspections of 8 hotels.  Truly exhausting in the heat and humidity.  I have started posting pictures on my Flickr photostream.  Because I took more than 1000 pictures, the editing and posting is going to take a while.  Only the first 50 or so are posted as of this date.  Stay tuned, check back.  As I upload more pictures, I will talk about the urban landscape of Puert Vallarta here.  And at TopDawg’s Travelogue I will talk about the hotels I saw and the activties I did.  On National Romance Travel Examiner  I will be writing reviews of the hotels I inspected and activities I participated in.  At Seattle Travel Industry Examiner I will be writing advice to the international traveler regarding luggage, airlines, airports, hotels and activities.  And at Associated Content I am going to surprise readers with a different kind of report on Puerto Vallarta, which you will just have to wait till you see it to know what I mean!  Enjoy a different urban landscape, go to Puerto Vallarta!

We are so urban in this city that if it snows, we cease business.  We cease going out of our homes for groceries, booze or dates.  We curl up in our houses or apartments and become cabin-feverish.  We basically do not know how to drive on snow…and our city does not know how to deal with snow.  The scrapers and the plows are so few, they operate in vain.  Instead of salt there is gravel and chemical (???). The children go play in the streets.  Adults ski from the tops of the surrounding hills to the waterfront, trying to break known records for distances ski’d in a town known for its hills and lack of snow.  As the pictures below show, we had nine-inches of snow on our deck that week.  That was a lot of snow for Seattle!

All the re-hashing in the world is not going to change December 2008.  Will we do any better if it snows in the next couple of months?  If it snows again, as much and in the same fashion as December’s snow…my guess is, “No”.  It’ll be business (or “snow-closed”) as usual.  I love this city, but it sure can be frustrating…and cold!  Also, I took some pictures of 4th Avenue in Belltown during those snowy days.  Here are a few…

I “did” a wedding in September.  It was my first photographic shoot of a wedding.  I tend to shoot in a photojournalism style, liking to be on the edge of the action and shooting with a long lense.  I just put together a proof album for the newlyweds to take with them to their family outings at Thanksgiving.  It has turned into a 121-photo story of their wedding day.  The more I looked at the photographs, the more I “saw” the story unfold.  In some ways I saw it better while putting together the album than I did during the actual event.  While it actually occurred in a small town, and is not an event on the streets of the Urban Landscape, it is a pivotal point for my photographic journeys.   

Shooting a wedding is fraught with pitfalls and potholes anyway.  The “official” photographer is usually at a disadvantage during nearly all the activities.  For instance, I could not use a flash, nor be closer to the action than halfway  down the aisle at the back of the church.  Yet people were using their cameras and flashes as they sat in the front rows of the church or moved into the aisle to capture the precious moments of the ceremony.  It is very frustrating to the person who is tasked with capturing the moments “officially”.  Add the fact that I am related by marriage to the bride, and feeling under pressure as the outsider in a family event, I was fanatical in getting 5 or 6 shots of every moment that passed during the entire event so as not to “blow” a shot. 

I will say that if one is ever an “official” photographer at a wedding, equipment is everything.  I invested a lot of money in the equipment I used, some well spent…some not so well spent.  The camera was instrumental in achieving the end result, however.  I am still amazed at how well the Canon 1D Mark II performed.  I had a 50 mm f1.4 lense and a 75-300mm zoom lense to work with.  I shot in the “raw” format.  And WOW! The pictures were crisp, sharp, and the colors were spectacular. 

I don’t know if I will ever “do” another wedding, but it has certainly taught me some lessons to have done one.  I love photojournalism and telling a story with pictures.  I used to avoid having a person in my pictures.  Now I like to capture life, not just still life, and tell a story in the process that contains a decisive moment!