This coming Saturday, May 18, will be another open house at my father’s gallery near Leavenworth, WA. He has lots of awesome new stuff, and I’ll have a good selection of my newer work, as well as handwoven scarves. Come on by!
spring colors
Because when the sun shines in spring and the garden leaps into bloom, you just have to go out with the camera. In between weeding sessions, of course.
tulip season
This past week has been the height of the tulip bloom here in Skagit. I’d been driving back and forth to the art show at Rexville, keeping an eye on the blooms, and finally one morning I took myself out to the fields at sunrise and watched the morning fog roll over the tulips and the newly plowed soil. Then I took the pup out to Padilla Bay for our walk, where we saw the fog bank retreat out to the islands.
best of Skagit
A couple of weeks ago, right before I left for a trip, I spent a day running around Skagit County taking photographs for the Cascadia Weekly‘s Best of Skagit issue. They had just gotten the voting results in, so it was all very last minute. The Weekly ran several photos for the article, plus one of my old tulip photos for the cover, and I wrote a piece on the Chow page as well, so I felt very well represented. Here are some of my favorite images from the ones I shot for that issue.
Loved this shot of bartender Sam Ward at Skagit River Brewery.
There weren’t any tattoo artists available for a photoshoot when I stopped by Good Vibes, so I contented myself with their alley art.
I was happy to have an excuse to shoot the tap lineup at our favorite beer hangout, The Porterhouse Pub.
Lucky Dumpster owner Jessica Bonin obligingly posed for me. Such a great shop, and she has awesome tattoos.
The Smith & Vallee Gallery in Edison. It’s in an old schoolhouse and has incredible light.
The Old Edison Inn, another favorite stop of ours. They make the most astonishing fresh potato chips.
Deli case at the Skagit Valley Co-op.
Pastries at the Calico Cupboard (which my mother-in-law always refers to as “the calorie cupboard, for good reason).
And maybe my favorite shot from the whole day, which I got mostly by accident as I was walking from the Brewery down to the Lincoln.
daffs and swans
Fields of daffodils, snow on the hills, swans on the wing. This is a pretty place.
happy spring!
Happy first day of spring! Admittedly, it’s not looking like spring yet up in the mountains – we just crossed the pass this weekend and it was still very wintry. But at home in my garden, things are beginning to happen. Hellebores, chionodoxa, hyacinth, early daffodils and muscari are all in bloom, the pussywillow catkins are bursting, and the maple trees are putting out their first tender leaves. Despite the windstorm gearing up outside this morning, it feels like spring might actually be trying to settle in.
currently showing
Last week I hung a show at Brandywine Kitchen in downtown Bellingham. They have a gorgeous old brick wall, and I brought out an assortment of colorful organic macros and abstracts in big frames. I think it looks great – check it out if you’re in the neighborhood and tell me what you think! All photos are for sale, as usual, and the show will be up through March and April.
low tide
As often happens in February in Skagit, the sun has been making brief appearances, only to vanish again behind gray wet clouds. We took advantage of a sunbreak to walk out at Padilla Bay again. The tide was going out, and No Name Slough wound gleaming through the tideflats while mist rolled in from the fogbank sitting out by the islands.
show at The Table
My show of abstract photography will be at The Table in Bellingham for barely two more weeks – it comes down on the 25th, then I put up a different show over at Brandywine Kitchen just down the street. Stop by and take a look!
just messing around
For the last class I took at Photo Center NW, we took a little field trip to Counterbalance Park on lower Queen Anne, where I discovered some of the fun things that could be done with multiple exposures in the camera.
I just got around to finding the settings for layered exposures in my new camera and started playing with it. For some of these I used a print from the Counterbalance photoshoot as one of my layers, which is nice and meta. I may be having way too much fun.
Note: these photos were all made in-camera, with little to no post-processing, just a little exposure or color correction. Isn’t that COOL? I think it’s cool.
Jessamyn Tuttle 