The Urban Landscape…

Archive for the ‘Street & Urban Photography’ Category

 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.

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.

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…

While my mission statement is centered around the process of what I need to be doing, my vision statement is the end result of what I will have done.  It is the picture of how the landscape will look after I have been through it.  The Vision statement is the force that will sustain me when my Mission statement seems too heavy to endue, enforce or engage.  I share with you, the viewer, my vision and my mission. 

My Mission:

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My Vision: 

 

      To portray, expose & demonstrate cities where people look one another in the eye and say “Good Morning” with a smile.  Cities of people unafraid of  weather,  the streets,  other people, events or politics.  Where newspapers  regularly announce joyous news instead of doom and gloom.  Not a “Pollyanna” sort of city, rather a city of love and respect, of beauty and enjoyment, of culture and education.  Cities where people, their pets, their lives inter-connect with la joie de vie and glorious happiness.  My photography shall contribute to and document the positive, cultural & respectful attributes of every city I visit or live in.

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!