Category: Photos
Maine Weekend
Update 2007-09-10: Photos are here. I had particular fun trying out kayaking for the first time, Mike was great getting Jamie, Jordan, and I sorted out on the water the first day.
Just got back from a weekend up in Harpswell, Maine with the bulk of the Farmer clan – celebrating Mike’s and Jamie’s birthdays. We missed Sarah and Pete, who are holding it down in Colorado. A big happy birthday to Pete, who celebrates his birthday tomorrow. More photos to follow, once I get them sorted, but for now here’s the obligatory pretty sunset, taken from the deck at the house where we were staying.
Pacific NW Trip
Jordan and I just finished a trip out to Seattle and Portland (Vancouver just missed the cut) last week. We had a great time in both cities. Photos are here. We’d both been to Seattle before (I made a few trips out there while Joseph was at U-Dub) but it was our first time in Portland. It was quite a shock to be back in gray NYC after marinating in all that lush green. Here’s what I remember of the trip:
Day One: We got to downtown Seattle around 1pm on Monday, and we decided to spend some time at Pike Place Market, grabbing lunch at The Pink Door and checking out the different shops and stalls. We paused for the obligatory low-flying fish song-and-dance at the fish market. Later that evening we saw Charlie and Jason the first night we were in Seattle, forgetting jet lag while having a great meal at a Tapas restaurant downtown.
Day Two: We walked around Pioneer Square and grabbed Breakfast and books at the Elliott Bay Book Company. We then headed south a bit to the International District, wandering the isles of the Uwajimaya before meeting up with Christine for lunch. Christine took us around her work neighborhood. Particularly interesting was the shop that was one-half sealed Transformers toys from the original toy run in the 80s, and one-half generic Chinatown tchochkes.
From the ID we moved on to the U District, and spent some time on campus at UW. It was too cloudy to see Mt. Rainier from the central vista on campus, so we just walked around a bit before heading out. We met up with Cory and Dan for dinner in Wallingford, and they showed us their house-in-progress. At this point I have to say that real estate in both Seattle and Portland underscored the ridiculousness of the NY area housing/rental market. Cory took us out to Gas Works park to watch the sunset. I suspect she was trying to sell us on the city, and she did a very good job.
Day Three: We grabbed breakfast and went to check out the Seattle Public Library, designed by Rem Koolhaas. I went shutter-happy with the camera, what with all the primary colors and cool light patterns. After having our retinas burnt out by the red floor, we picked up our rental car (they gave us a choice of either an SUV or a Prius. We took the Prius) and drove out to the ferry landings. We took the ferry out to Bainbridge island, and somehow in looking for the Bainbridge Island Winery we managed to drive right off the island. It’s probably a 10 minute drive across the entire island, North to South. We eventually found the winery after lunch, but to our disappointment they only hold tastings on Fri/Sat/Sun. We picked up a bottle of Pinot Gris anyway and made our way to the ferry for the ride back to Seattle.
Dinner that evening was at Anthony’s at Pier 66, where Jordan and I gorged on good seafood. We decided while waiting for the bus that the one major shortcoming of Seattle is the lack of a more comprehensive public transit system. Sometimes you can’t cycle everywhere, you know.
Day Four: After checking out we drove out to see Britt, Izumi, and Kaia for breakfast at their new home. I’d last seen the family almost three years ago in Japan when Joseph and I made our trip out there. It was nice to catch up with them again, and see how much Kaia had grown. He’s quite the chatty kid now, and he climbed the tree in their backyard to pluck us a few plums. I’m hoping it’s not another three years before we all see each other again.
After breakfast we were off to Portland. The trip was mostly uneventful, with the exception of spotting the Sleater-Kinney exit. We took a quick diversion to the Columbia River Gorge to view some waterfalls and vistas. We arrived in Portland in the early evening, checked into the new Ace Hotel (which had quite the neighborhood buzz – all the Portland residents we visited were curious about it). We checked out Powell’s and a bit of the Pearl District before having dinner at Clyde Common, which is the restaurant attached to the Ace Hotel.
Day Five: We took a trip out to Cannon Beach, which is a pleasant drive through some very green hills. We had hoped that the sun would break through the clouds, but it was mostly gray. We had lunch at the Ecola Seafood, after which we decided to see just a bit more of the shops down the main drag. We had gone just half a block when we ran smack dab into my freshman year hallmate Karen Murray (now Hardigg)! I think we scared everyone around us, we yelled so loud when we saw each other. We’d been hoping to find her while out in Portland, since we knew that she had a house there with her husband Nick. Unfortunately my email announcing our trip west wasn’t met with a reply — because it turns out she and Nick had moved to Anchorage, AK. Crazy. Yet more proof that God has a sense of humor. After our return to Portland in the afternoon we took a quick swing through east Portland.
We grabbed dinner at Ten 01 and then rode the streetcar out to northwest Portland to catch the tail end of a dinner party hosted by Erin and Peter. We got the scoop on their summer in London, as well as a possible move to Brooklyn next year. They gave us a few suggestions on what to do with our last day in Portland, and also kindly dropped us off at our hotel since the streetcar had to go to sleep for the night.
Day Six: We bounced around a bunch of neighborhoods. We grabbed breakfast in the Pearl District, then headed back to the nortwest to see more of that neighborhood during the daytime hours. We then rode the bus out to the Saturday/Sunday Market, and swam through a sea of arts-and-crafts. Picking up the car we went back west to Washington Park to check out the the Rose Test Garden. Then it was a quick dinner, followed by another stop at Erin/Peter’s to crash another party of theirs, this time a backyard BBQ. A few salmon burgers later we were on the road to the airport.
If you’re renting from one city and dropping off in another one, don’t be an idiot like me and fail to look up your dropoff point on a map. I assumed that our rental agency would have a drop point at the Portland airport, but it turns out they didn’t. After several phone calls to clueless centralized booking agents we just decided to check with the concierge at one of the hotel airports, and they directed us to the car dropoff, about a mile away.
Six red-eye hours later, we were back in NY. We wished we could’ve had maybe one more day for each of the cities, but it was a great trip nonetheless. Jordan may add a bit more on the trip from her perspective, so keep an eye out for that.
This Walk is Always a Blur
My friend Irwin was married this past weekend, at St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York City. More shots are at Flickr. I wish him and Catherine the best of luck – it’s a crime that we haven’t seen each other very often, despite living in the same city. Only Toffy made it from the ISM circle, and it was good to catch up with him and see where he’s landed. Columbus, OH is a long way from Manila.
This was the second weekend in a row that I attended a wedding, and I’m tuckered out.
Hip Shot
Test shot from my new Ricoh GX100. I picked one up largely on the basis of the high-iso B+W output I’ve been seeing on the web, and the noise does look better than most of the compacts out there – almost like film grain. Obviously in color I’ve been sticking to ISO 80-200.
The ‘snap mode’ setting for focus works quite well – DOF is huge on these small-sensor cameras, so I’ve programmed one of the two user settings to be B+W, iso 400, and snap mode – call it my street photography default. Ongoing output can be seen on my Flickr photostream.
Point and Shooo…wait
For the last few years I’ve been primarily been using a combination of a Lomo LC-A and a couple of M-mount rangefinders (a Bessa R2A and a Leica M4) for taking photos. But the cost of good film processing is rather prohibitive (a decent lab here in NYC will generally charge around $20 per 36-shot roll for 4×6 proofs and a CD) so I’ve been looking to shoot more digital for everyday walkaround stuff. I get this urge every three months or so, and always return to shooting with the Lomo and rangefinders. The primary reason isn’t some romantic attachment to film, it’s that they’re fast to operate.
I have an aging, battered Canon A85 that I use every now and then, but it frustrates me – setting stuff using multiple button presses is time-consuming. I realize that I could get a small DSLR (say, a Pentax K100D with a pancake lens) but I’m thinking of something more pocketable. I would’ve thought that three years later the digicam market would’ve gotten better by leaps and bounds, but sadly that doesn’t seem to be the case. Here’s the few contenders:
The Ricoh GR-D: 28mm is a bit wide for my taste, but the results I’ve seen (especially B+W) have been far more interesting than the usual digicam snaps. The GR-D2 is rumored to be around the corner, though, otherwise this would be in my hands already. Some have criticized the lack of an optical viewfinder (you can mount one to the hotshoe, though) and the noise at higher ISOs, but its vocal defenders contend that the noise approximates film grain quite well in B+W.
Ricoh Caplio GX-100: 24mm to 72mm zoom (I don’t like zooms usually but this one has a step-focus feature to jump to the classic focal lengths – 24/28/35/50/72), anti-shake. Otherwise the control scheme is very similar to the GR-D. If I had to choose a camera specifically to replace the A85, I’d probably get this one since the zoom and anti-shake make it more flexible for when Jordan’s using it.
Finally, there’s the vaporware Sigma DP-1, which has intrigued me ever since it was announced – a big sensor in a digicam. Sony did this first with their R1, but that body was SLR-sized. Besides the sensor, however, it appears they were paying close attention to the GR-D – fixed 28mm, hotshoe. f/4 is a bit slow, but if the results at high-ISO settings are ok, then losing a stop probably won’t matter too much. If it ever comes out, that is.
Of course, if someone wants to give me one of these I won’t complain.