Inessential Stuff

I take pictures here and there all the time–at Marcus’ t-ball games, on the way back from weddings, on photoshoots. It gets to be an odd assortment of photographs that aren’t easy to categorize and, therefore, don’t usually end up in a gallery on my blog. So I decided to lump them all together into a category of their own, and here they are. Will notice a rural theme, and an acute interest in hay bales.

Some people don’t see the appeal of Eastern Washington.  Too dry.  Too barren.  Too empty.

I’m not among them.

Give me some backroads, some music, a camera, maybe even a traveling companion, and I’ll have a great day.  So it was on Saturday, as I did a little South-of-Tri-Cities exploring, including a drive up to the mighty windmills, which I had seen from afar, but never up close.

It took a while to find the right road, but the timing was perfect:  orange sunset; strangely blue sky to the east; rich green fields.  The wind bent down the grain and encouraged silence by whispering “shhhhhhh” in the ears and sometimes died down just enough to ear the “whush-whush-whush” of the rotary blades on the windmills.

Here’s a little taste.

It’s been cold here. And foggy.  Which means frost.  Each day frostier than the last.  Eventually, there was so much frost that I had to go out with my camera.

So here are some pictures.  The stuff on the ground is snow.  Old snow, from our  massive storm a month ago.  But the stuff in the trees, on the branches, forming in magical crystals.  That’s the frost.

Eastern Washington is dry country.  But with the spring rains, the land has been, lately and temporarily, green.  I went down to the river the other day and was mesmerized by the green-ness of the grass.  I took some pictures.

Then felt I needed to get closer.  There were so many different kinds of grass, and in so many different shades.  I zoomed in tight on some.  But I kept being drawn in.

Soon I was laying on my belly with a macro lens poking into the forest of blades of grass.  I have some of the pictures here.  

We’ve had a good bit of snow in Spokane lately. Last winter, I enjoyed going out in the snow and shooting away. This year, I thought I’d try something different and try to photograph the snow in action–that is, falling. It’s not easy. The snow was thick and fast. I tried various things, including manual focusing on an area between a tree across the street and where I was standing, figuring that surely a snowflake would be in focus. I’m not sure the experiments were an unqualified success, but they are kind of interesting, if you want to take a peek.

This little gallery is of an afternoon about a week ago. There is text at the top right of the images.

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It snowed last night. It came in on a wind. A thick, wet, heavy snow that stuck on branches and the sides of trees.

I woke up, saw the beautiful white world, and decided to take a little walk around my neighborhood. It was quiet outside, a sleepy Saturday, and the snow was a blanket while the city rested. I went, of course, with camera in (numb) hand.

It’s foggy.

It’s cold.

It’s windy.

It’s snowy.

It’s dark a lot.

I go out to take pictures now and then.

Here are some from the winter so far.