Sunday Morning Early at the Market - March 19 2006

The Flag - March 2006

Girl in Rogers Park - Queen Anne Hill

This photo was taken in the spring of 2005. The girl was a student at SPU where I did my undergraduate work in the late 60s. This shot reminds me of something by Monet or Renoir or Matisse, anyway that was what I was trying for a girl in a park on a sunny sunday afternoon.

I have a story to tell about Rogers Park.

It was sunny day during spring quarter 1969 at Seattle Pacific College and I was walking in Rogers Park on Queen Anne Hill a few blocks from the ship canal when I struck up a conversation with a young man who's hair was a little longer than mine. He started talking about Jesus and saying all sorts of things I had heard from other folks who looked and acted just like him. They were called "Jesus Freaks" back then. Anyway, he invited me up to his "house" on Queen Anne hill to meet some of his "family". I followed him up the hill to a large house in an old neighborhood. Nothing much happened during my 45 minute visit with the Love Family. A few people were sitting on the carpet in the living room meditating. I was offered a cup of market spice tea. There wasn't a lot of talking and when someone did talk they seemed to always be speaking in parables and quoting scripture. I left after a while and felt a sense of relief to be back out in the sunshine. There was something a little too "heavy" about the Love Family for my tastes. They invited me to come back again. I didn't.


From the WWW:
"The Love Family was a U.S. communal religious movement led by Love Israel. Formally called the Church of Jesus Christ at Armageddon, the Love Family began in 1968 when the community began living collectively in a community on Queen Anne Hill."

Really Bad Art

An improved version of Bad Art plus some more of the same.

This post is to remind viewers that the best stuff was posted first and is now buried in the archives so if you want to see the serious work you would be better off going to the early posts and working forward.

The posts titled Mark Toby, North Beach, Recent Work and anything else with trees or water taken with long lenses represent my attempt to pick up where I left off thirty some years ago with Frosted Tree and the water reflections Neah Bay. These early works were all taken with long lenses from 200mm, 300mm, 500mm. My current camera is an ultra-zoom which gives me the same look in one package. The long lens has two major advantages. It allows you to isolate your subject and it flattens the perspective. Having sort of grown up with abstract expressionism, I found the flat look suited me. I was looking for a way to do representational work that could be read (viewed) as an abstraction. It wasn't an intellectual thing but a feeling I got from looking at these flat images and how do you explain a feeling?

In the early 70s one of my artist friends Cathy Kushe was working on her MFA at the U of W and the professor who was in charge of her thesis project was demanding that she do nonrepresentational paintings for her thesis project. She worked out a clever solution, doing representational paintings that would pass as abstractions. Later on I had one of here thesis paintings hanging in my apartment when I was in graduate school and also a very stunning work by her husband Dave, a surrealist crucifixion.

Empty Bench

Lincoln Park winter 2005

North Beach

Late winter & early spring 2005, from the North beach of Seahurst park, standing at the waters edge at low tide and looking back toward the bluffs.

Accurate Weight -1972

This was taken in the penny arcade on the lower end of first ave. in Seattle just off the water front. It was late at night. The store across the street is Warshall's Sporting Goods an Seattle landmark that is now gone.

The photo was taken with a Nikkor 28mm f3.5 using high-speed Ektachrome 160ASA pushed by Kodak to 400ASA. Nasty grain pattern and weird colors even under proper light but the lighting here was obviously florescent.

Bad Art

This post is to remind viewers that the best stuff was posted first and is now buried in the archives so if you want to see the serious work you would be better off going to the early posts and working forward.

The posts titled Mark Toby and Recent Work represent my attempt to pick up where I left off thirty some years ago with Frosted Tree and the water reflections Neah Bay. These early works were all taken with long lenses from 200mm, 300mm, 500mm. My current camera is an ultra-zoom which gives me the same look in one package. The long lens has two major advantages. It allows you to isolate your subject and it flattens the perspective. Having sort of grown up with abstract expressionism, I found the flat look suited me. I was looking for a way to do representational work that could be read (viewed) as an abstraction. It wasn't an intellectual thing but a feeling I got from looking at these flat images and how do you explain a feeling?

In the early 70s one of my artist friends Cathy Kushe was working on her MFA at the U of W and the professor who was in charge of her thesis project was demanding that she do nonrepresentational paintings for her thesis project. She worked out a clever solution, doing representational paintings that would pass as abstractions. Later on I had one of here thesis paintings hanging in my apartment when I was in graduate school and also a very stunning work by her husband Dave, a surrealist crucifixion.

Ship Canal

The Catalog

These were taken on a sunday morning in April 2005 at the north plaza in the Pike Place district of Seattle. I don't know where these fellows are from but I would guess one somewhere in eastern Europe or the CIS. Seattle is a place where people arive in America and then stay. Like New York City a century ago. Since they arive by plane, most of them, they tend to stay close to where they touched down. Three Tree Point is five miles as the crow flies from the airport. A language acquisitions specialist for the county library told me we have 100 language groups living within five miles of the library. Yesterday in the park I talked two women from Bosnia who were collecting young nettles tops to eat. One of them spoke english but the other one had just arrived.

Thunder Storm

The sun was shining when I left the house today. By the time I had stopped to pick up some cranberry stuffed chicken breasts for dinner and driven to the park and walked down the hill the sun was gone. I had the camera along and decided to try and capture the mood. You can judge how well I pulled this off. Doing landscapes with miniature format digital camera is a bit of a challenge but it is a lot better than it used to be because I can go home and open up Photoshop Elements and fix the problems. I go caught in the shelter by the beach during a rain, hail, snow sequence and did about 90 exposures and nearly froze to death. After a while one of my park friends (See Off Leash) came by walking her dog in the rain. We chatted for a while under the shelter and then walked up the hill as the rain was letting up. I ditched my camera and took my walk which is three hills for a 1,200 foot total elevation gain (some days I do five hills). On my last trip to the water the sun was out. Typical march day, a little cold 2c.

Mean Puppy

I go to Pike Place to see the people. I've been going there for 45 years. I will probably go there again.

The Shout

This was taken on a summer sunday morning in the plaza just north of the Pike Place Market. There were hundreds of people milling about. No, he wasn't shouting at me for aiming the camera at him. I was standing on a little grassy knoll under the shade of a tree with a crowd of street people longing around me on the grass. He didn't even notice me there were twenty people closer to him than I was. I had to time my shots for openings in the continuous flow of humanity passing in front of him.

Apples for Sale - Pike Place Market

Packing Salmon - Pike Place Market

The Sale

fish market - Pike Place Market

Belts

Pike Place Market in Seattle

Bride and Groom

Enigma

Early Morning on the Water Front - Memorial Day 2005

Odd Photos

A hodge podge collection of photos from the last 18 months.

Neah Bay Road - Fall 1972

These photos were taken off the road to Neah Bay on the north west corner of the Olympic Peninsula on warm fall day in the early 70's. They were all taken with a 200mm Nikkor from a tripod. The two reflections photos were taken on Agfa 64 positive film. These photos were taken as "scrap" for Kathy Kushe, an artist friend who was doing a series of oils on water reflections. I took a shooting trip around the Olympic Peninsula with her in her ancient VW, she had a pentax spotmatic that looked like it had been to Vietnam (the war). Kathy was engaged to a friend and colleague of mine Dave H. who was also an artist but she was "the artist" in our group, graduated top in her class in Illustration from Art Center in LA. Both Dave and Kathy did oils form my photos. I took a three day scrap trip with Dave H. over the North Cascade highway and through the Okangon region east of the mountains. We hit a whole string of ghost towns but my photographic work wasn't much to brag about. Had the memorable experience of walking into Canada where the border was nothing more than a barbwire fence and a cattle guard. I was an illegal alien for about five minutes. Did another scrap trip with one of Kathy's suitors (she had several) from New England. We took her VW junker to Lummi Island in the San Juans. I shot photos but he did sketches. He was a fine arts purist who didn't use photographs. He was making mega bucks doing Andrew Wyeth look alikes and selling them in galleries back east. He was a neurotic obsessive fellow who would take his sketch book with him into a cafe and work while he was having lunch. I was glad when the day was over.

This last photo which I call ghost tree wasn't taken on this trip to Neah Bay. I found the original and it is Kodachrome not Agfa. I never shot to types of film on the same day when I was doing my own work.

Frosted Tree 1979

This photo was taken north of Seattle, somewhere between Everett and Mt Vernon on a winter morning. The lens used was a Nikkor 500mm mirror (CAT) mounted on a harmonically deadened tripod with a lead counter weight attached to the bottom of the post. I did a lot of work with long lenses 200mm, 300mm, 500 Nikkors. I had to purchase a third Nikon body with an electronic shutter to use the mirror since it was fixed at f8 with no half stops. I wasn't partial to electronic gadgets, even built in meters. Used a LunaPro with a spot attachment. Also had a Sekonic L428 for doing incident readings. But I soon discovered you were better off using the through the lens metering with long lenses because the light transmission issues could cause you a lot of grief. The first time I went out with the Nikkor 300mm f4.5 I came home with a lot of underexposed work.