Inessential Stuff

One of my weddings this weekend was in Pullman, and afterwards, I drove up Highway 195 back home to Spokane.

The wheat fields, along the rolling hills, are gold on top, still green at the stalk, and swathes of green swirl through the gold where the sun doesn’t burn quite so bright or for quite so long.

The day was ending, the sun low on the horizon, sending shafts of light almost horizontally across the land. The sky was blue, with thin clouds, whitish, then melding to grey. Little towns sprinkled the valleys, each clustered around a grain elevator, reaching into the sky.
Then more wheat fields. Then tilled fields, abruptly dark with soil. Then crops of barley. Around every corner, over every hill, another scene, each as beautiful as the last.

I wanted to stop. I wished the sun would stop. I wished I didn’t have wedding pictures to process or a family waiting at home or no more room on my flash cards. I wished I could simply stop. Take out my camera. And allow myself to disappear in those fields, those hills.

I drove home. A couple times, I pushed the power-window button down and lifted my camera, not even bringing it to my eye, keeping one hand on the wheel, rushing past at 60 mph, and fired off a picture, like a tourist on a bus.  I took only a few pictures.  Two are here.  I left a million behind on Highway 195.

I’ve wanted to do a photoshoot in an empty room for quite a while. It appeals to my minimalist aesthetic, I guess. I got the chance with Kori, whom I had never seen or talked to before the shoot.

She was a great model, with the poise and elegance of a dancer, which she is. The natural light was a bonus.

(I also played around with some post-processing plug-ins I recently got: some add “film grain”, some increase the contrast, some smooth textures. There are lots of different possibilities. I tend to dislike too much “post-processing” on an image, but it was fun to experiment).

Bonnie and I were in Phoenix for a few days last month, and while we were there, we saw, several times, from the freeway, a pair of bridges, lit up like like a carnival ride. On our last day there (in 111 degree temperatures), we stopped by, towards evening, to stroll the bridge and take pictures. It ends up the bridges are for North Mill Avenue, one north-bound, one south-bound, and it is supposedly over “Lake Town Tempe”, though it seemed like just a river. It was, however, in Tempe. That is true. And it was cool looking.