Up in the Top Bits

Something a little different this week. I recently traveled to the state of Washington. I spent a week on Orcas Island, which is about 3 hours from Seattle and wedged in an archipelago right up against Canada. The national border is on both the north and the west sides of the island.

Initially, I didn’t really want to do what I am about to do. If a coworker were to tell you about their vacation for more than a minute, you’d start to wonder if they intended to stop talking about it at all. Vacation is a strangely intimate experience for those involved, which is why I think it always comes off as superficial to talk about it with people who weren’t there.

I can’t point to any specifics, but the goofy neighbor or coworker going on and on about their vacation feels like a sitcom plot point. I keep picturing a scene where the mom and dad are home early from their game night because their neighbors, the Mortinsons, whipped out the slide reel and started going through the negatives from their latest cruise.

Selfishly, I don’t want to be a Mortinson. To avoid that, I made this piece about the images and not about the places they were taken. It’s about seeing, not sightseeing. If you would like to learn more about the island, I recommend this video from pre-influencer YouTube and this monthly newsletter from the local hardware store. Looking to learn anything else? You’re on your own.

This first set came from a film camera, a Nikon FE, that belonged to my grandmother. It was loaded with Kodak UltraMax 400. I kept the colors and exposure as unaltered as possible to preserve the integrity of the film. I also brought along a mirrorless Fujifilm XT4. Digital images to follow in a later issue.

More than usual, thank you for your time.

Transportation in this part of the world is bizarre. I don’t mean that negatively; I only say it to emphasize that I grew up landlocked. There’s no need for ferries in Colorado, so this was my first exposure to the Washington State Ferry System. Heck of a thing. The vessels themselves are behemoths that lumber through the Puget Sound and driving a car into one feels like being eaten.

I found this set of chairs in the ship’s galley. Most of the ships in the ferry fleet were last refurbished over than 20 years ago. Again, not a negative thing. The architecture and warm-ish colors created a gorgeous liminality throughout the ship, as if it had, literally, been encased in amber. The chairs, tables, and tiles all had this balance of age and preservation that was worth capturing. I’d redo my living room in a similar way if I could.

This was from a trail surrounding Mountain Lake in Moran State Park. I greatly enjoyed the relationship between the moss and trees here, but the light was too harsh to really show that in a way I found interesting. This was one of multiple attempts of different scenes on different points of the trail.

I’m not the superstitious type. There’s plenty of scientifically validated things that I know rule over me. Still, this picture was unnerving to get back from the lab because I forgot that I took it. Seeing it again felt like I had captured a ghost. This mound and log look almost human to me, almost as if someone is sleeping under a blanket of moss. I forgot this picture, but upon reviewing it, it felt like it hasn’t forgotten me.

I just loved this location. Of all the things I saw and visited on this trip, I think this little crime scene here got the most exposures out of me. I experimented with a tripod, and then a flash, and then I came back later in the day, and then I came back the next day with a different lens.

The juxtaposition between real and fake, the intended function of a birdbath versus the actual use as a boneyard, it was a scene I am thankful to have found. I’ve never been that compelled to capture “stories” in my work, but I take great care to find and document an epilogue whenever possible.

Low tide. It’s amazing how delicate this all is. Seeing the ocean rise and fall makes the whole thing seem like it’s breathing, and schlepping around at low tide is like poking a deflated lung.

I was intrigued by the complicated desolation of these rock formations. Place them anywhere else and they'd be remarkably awful things to look at. They get a pass here, though. Why? They’re clearly part of an alien ecosystem. Alien to us, anyway. Kelp, fish, crabs, they all call this place home for half the day. I appreciated how these stones maintained their compositional weight in relation to the decaying pier in the background. It was as good of a time as any to get hit with a reminder that we are what we leave behind.

That’s all for now. I’ve gotten whatever illness results in parsing through my old work, so I plan to write more about other sets I’ve done in the past. Thank you for reading.

Thank you for your time.

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