Sitting in the Sun, Checking the Phone
Ferry Ride
My previous post showed the fog bank and shoreline, shot on the ferry from Port Townsend to Coupeville. Once at the Coupeville dock, I left the ferry and bought a return ticket, then walked back on the ferry. The trip time is about 35 minutes each way, so a pleasant excursion at reasonable cost … $1.80 round trip.
Quiet Time
I’m not usually interested in shooting “Street Photography” … but in this case, I was trying out a new camera. I liked the feeling of this woman sitting alone having a quiet glass of wine … I thought it was reflective of the last year and a half of isolation during the pandemic.
Spring Hiking Views
Spring covers a wide range of changes to the forests and lowlands of the Olympic National Park. The high country doesn’t start being snow-free until summer … spring in the high country means snow travel. Lower down, the rivers can be running quite low … if the snow isn’t melting higher in the valleys and it’s not raining. The image above is at under 1000 feet elevation and shows the river running fairly low after a couple days of cool dry weather.
The image below shows a group of backpackers that had been up to Big Timber Camp on the West Fork of the Dosewallips. Big Timber is at 2300 feet and they reported 5 feet of hard packed snow at that point. You need good insulation between you and the ground to sleep on snow …
The image at the bottom shows the view up to the high country and the remaining snow in the trees. The area shown has melted out more, since it is open to the south and the sun is starting to do its thawing out trick.
Casting Bronze
For a while I worked at the Pratt Fine Art Foundry in Seattle. I really enjoyed working with metal. I had started with (gas) welding steel, but when I found out how much fun working with bronze was, I was hooked. I worked at developing skills with various styles, many times using natural objects instead of wax models. I cast apples, banana, onion, artichoke, and small trees. I tried casing a trout once, but that didn’t work so well. And the folks in the foundry claimed that when it was in the kiln, it attracted all the neighborhood cats (not likely).
Below is one of my favorites: my hand. I made a model by dripping hot wax from a candle on my hand until it was covered and when the wax was cool and hardened, carefully removed my hand. Then I poured the art wax into the model, removed the candle wax and cast what was left. I was quite pleased with the fact that most of the skin texture and fingerprint patterns showed up.
Unfortunately, all the plaster dust just gave me one sinus infection after another and I had to retire my foundry work.
