Washington State

How Seattle looks to my morning eyes
Taken from Highway 99, by the tunnel work site (2014).
Right now, the tunnel project is stuck and engineers are scrambling how to fix a massive and still-broken machine trapped beneath Seattle’s mucky dirt. This is the closest the public can come to seeing the work yard, as seen from Highway 99 (2014).
A long line of trucks usually is found on the service road next to the port and visible from Highway 99 (2014).
There is something comforting to me about this factory, which continues to churn out cement year after year (2014).

A massive tunnel-boring project in Seattle, that is pegged to cost more than $3 billion, is now on hold. Th several-stories-tall tunnel boring machine, dubbed Bertha, is now broken and stuck beneath the viaduct I drive over every day (Highway 99), and theoretically the future tunnel will replace the aging structure that takes me and tens of thousands of other drivers daily. North of the port, crews are digging up things by the Gates Foundation headquarters, making this a landscape of cranes, heavy moving equipment, and grand ambitions that tower like the Space Needle close by. Looking at the cranes in these pictures, I imagine I am seeing the giant snow walking machines seen in The Empire Strikes Back. My favorite landmark, however, remains the massive Ash Cement Factory. Time has not seemed to change this place. It just seems to get more grey.

Biking on a spring day with an old bike

 

I have a 23-year-old road bike that, well, I just can’t seem to get rid of. Maybe I will this spring. For now, it works, and it is about as old as my bike pump too, which looks worse for wear. Today I experimented with mounting the GoPro on my handlebars to see what kind of angles would be generated and to see what kind of emotions are communicated when someone is caught in the middle of a very aerobic sport. Biking is one of the most aerobic sports I know, and that is one reason I love it so. As I often do, I adjusted the settings in Lightroom to accentuate the contrast, which is a look I am growing accustomed to. Here’s to spring days, the simple pleasures of riding an old bicycle, and seeing rows of blossoming trees along a lovely lake shore.

Port of Tacoma, the old and new economy
The Port of Tacoma hums with activity on a sunny winter’s morning (2014).

Every work day I drive past the bustling port of Tacoma, hub of global commerce and home to heavy industry. It is blue-collar to the core, and unashamedly so. (I always wonder what kinds of organized crime take place here–my bet is quite a lot.) I also find the port to be one of the most fascinating manmade landscapes in the Northwest. I have started a series of photographs that I am calling Manufactured Landscapes. Here is one in black and white that I published on my web site in color. I like it in both color and black and white. This was taken from downtown Tacoma, looking east upon the port, where you can get a visual sampling of some of the major industry players that call it home.

My favorite park in Seattle, Discovery
In a hidden corner of Discovery, you’ll find the Guardian of the Spirit statue and meeting place, by the Daybreak Start Native Cultural Center.
There are stairs all over the park that are hidden, seldom used, and relics from the time it was a major military base in Seattle.

I frequently go for walks in Seattle’s Discovery Park, one of the country’s best metropolitan parks. It is a true gem. Even knowing every corner of this place, I still discover new ways to see what is very familiar, and also beautiful.

Seattle to Tacoma commute grind, part two
A GoPro illuminates the commuting life on Highway 599 (2014).
A GoPro illuminates life inside the four-wheel box (2014).
A GoPro illuminates life inside the four-wheel box (2014).
A GoPro illuminates life inside the four-wheel box (2014).
A GoPro illuminates life inside the four-wheel box (2014).
A GoPro illuminates life inside the four-wheel box (2014).

The is my second in a series using a GoPro camera to document the commuting life between Seattle and Tacoma. Time inside a carbon-emitting box occupies a massive portion of the daily lives of hundreds thousands, if not more, residents in the region. The effects of stress, speed, and more primal emotions that surge during the hours on the road take a measurable toll, and few of us can stop to contemplate what the cumulative impacts are.

There and back again: commuting Seattle style

The massive Port of Seattle provides an impressive backdrop for my there again and back again, and there again and back again commute. This is one of the country’s largest cargo container ports (eighth busiest, it claims), and most of it is blocked off to the public for miles. Highway 99 is one of the few places citizens can see where our nation unloads containers filled with consumer goods destined for Walmart and other retailers nationwide. In essence, I am penetrating the beating heart of our nation’s mostly consumer-driven economy everyday, enveloped by its brawn, by its scale, and by its relentless motion. For some stretches, this also happens to be one of the most scenic commutes in the country, too.

A GoPro view of the Seattle commute grind
A GoPro captures the evening grind on Highway 99 past downtown Seattle (2014).
A GoPro captures the evening grind on Highway 99 past downtown Seattle (2014).
A GoPro captures the evening grind on Highway 99 past downtown Seattle (2014).
A GoPro captures the evening grind on Highway 99 past downtown Seattle (2014).

I am just beginning to explore the powers and possibilities of the GoPro as a still camera. This is the back seat view, as I drive over the earthquake-weakened Alaska Way Viaduct, which will be torn down in about two years (if the tunnel boring machine gets unstuck and fixed). There is a zombie like quality to all of us, in our metal and plastic boxes, heading from who knows where, to our homes or to work. I pass this scene every day, five days a week.

From Interbay to Elliott Bay, Seattle

A couple of months back, I took a late afternoon photo outing to capture some industrial scenes in Seattle’s Interbay railyard and the always photogenic Elliott Bay and Puget Sound, adjacent to Seattle. More of this ongoing series can be found on my photo gallery.

BNSF Locomotive
BNSF Locomotives, Interbay Railyard

Elliott Bay Sunset
Pier 91 at Elliott Bay, Looking on to the Olympic Mountains

Grain Ship Loading Up
One of many grain ships filling its hull for the global market

Under the spell of Bernd and Hilla Becher

My current expression through still photography, at this moment in time, remains heavily influenced by the highly acclaimed German photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher. The husband-wife duo (Bernd has passed on) influenced perhaps the most acclaimed and financially successful photographers of the past 20 years, through their late-in-life work at the “Dusseldorf School of Photography.” The Bernds’ now famous protégé‎s/students include Thomas Ruff and Andres Gursky. The latter is now on record for selling the world’s most expensive photographic print.

The Bernds were deeply enmeshed in showcasing industrial forms, which they arranged later in books and exhibitions as typologies. (Please read my post about their work and their influence.) They also were telling a story of the economy of the times and the industrial West, just as at was on its downward spiral, before the rise of industrial China and India.

My most recent photographic series on Tacoma and the Duwamish River industrial area of Seattle are in some ways indebted to this thinking, about how the industrial ports of the Pacific Northwest are the lands devoted to the overwhelming power of global trade, the last vestiges of Northwest industrial activity, and the world of high-paid blue collar work that is on the verge of extinction in the United States.

Here is the first of two provocative YouTube videos on the Bechers’ work and thinking, in their own words (you can see part two after part one finishes).

Winthrop to Wenatchee

I an enamored with the incredibly diverse ecosystem, economies, landscapes, and topographies of my home state, Washington. This is a compilation I put together of scenery between Winthrop, Wash., and Wenatchee, crossing  the many-times-over-dammed Columbia River in mid-February 2014. I filmed this using my GoPro Hero 3, which I had affixed to the roof of my car.