I've lived in West Seattle now for 1 whole year and we feel right at home. I think we've met more people and more friends in one year here than we ever met in 5 years in Vancouver. Not sure why that is because Vancouver is a really friendly place, but alas. We've become close with our neightbours and they all seem to like us and it feels so good to live with friends to your north, south, east, and west. I'm right now in two bands, writing music, and loving our additions...The dogs. I'll do a blog post on them one day. But alas, I digress.

Driving to West Seattle via the Spokane Viaduct there are a lot of people that live/work under there asking for money etc. I sort of never really knew if I should look at them or not or give them something or not. A lot of people say don't give them anything, but then if your heart says to give something etc etc. Ahh, you gotta love the moral hazards. Don't get me started on the bailouts! But again, I digress. So I went down there with my camera and decided to start chatting them up and lo and behold, I met some truly genuine and nice people that like chatting and talking to me. Their lives are open books and they sincerely love it when someone listens to them. I'm not sure if they hope that I give them money. I haven't yet, but they don't seem to expect it. I've absolutely loved the experience and I have some decent shots already. Here are a few. I'll return with some more of these over time. Here's two I took yesterday that I really enjoyed.



This is Bullet's little Chihuahua. A wonderful skiddish little puppy that was intrigued by me probably because she smelled my dogs. I was surprised to see how this shot came out because I basically held the camera down close and pointed it upwards. Shot at F4, if I had this opportunity again I'd shoot it at F8 or 11 so the owner would be more noticeable.



This is Dred. A really great guy who gives me a big hug and wicked hearty pats on the back. He's called Dred because of his dredlocks and he lives in a little abandoned motorhome nearby with his girl Patricia. She was the first person I met. Extremely friendly and introduced me to some of the other transients. Compositionally, I was thinking about doing a whole bunch of portraits this way, with that big looming bridge over their heads and the traffic going on behind them. Here's Patricia.


She's with Timmy. An interesting and quiet fellow that doesn't drink which is quite rare. I asked him why he doesn't drink and he responded "I don't like how it feels". Simple enough. I'll expound more on these good people later. I hoped you'd enjoy these now.

My week in Paris

So I recently spent a surprise week in Paris with my good friend Brian who is looking at getting a place over there. We're both really into photography so we thought we'd just cruise over for a week, look for some places, take tons of photos, and then scoot back. It was wonderful as we'd basically wake up with no agenda and wander the streets taking photos. I was impressed with Brian's bold way. He never even hesitated to take someone's photo, he'd just raise the camera and click. Often people were aggravated, often they smiled, and some hammed it up. I sort of wished I was more like that (I'm a little more squeamish).

I took lots of photos, but mostly concentrated on holgas and 35mm, as digital doesn't really mean as much to me somehow. I've also started liking the more circular photos that I get from using a digitally sized lens on a 35mm camera. Here's an example that I really like.And here's another:
Okay one more:




I'm not entirely sure if it's the actual photo of film emulsion as opposed to digital, or if it's the experience of taking the photo, or if it's a combination of both. All I know is, digital photos are cheap. I throw them away all too often. They sit in massive mountains of megabytes on my computer, usually never to be seen again. There's a lot more of the mysterious and care to film. The unknown of what you're going to get, whether or not you got the shot. In those previous shots, I had no idea whether or not I got it because that particular moment happened so fast.

Here are some of the holgas. If you're into the element of surprise, the Holga is the ultimate. They're wonderfully soft and unpredictable. The focus is sort of a toss-up, and the exposure might get it or it might not, depending on the speed of the film etc. I'm looking forward to lots more holga work. When it works the shots feel sort of etherial.

I also like Holgas because they're square. Rectangular compositions feel sort of obvious to me. Square presents a bit more of a challenge in making the composition compelling. I haven't gotten the Holga thing down perfectly yet though, but I'm loving the process. Not loving the cost (developing and buying 120 film) but it's worth it.

Thinking about the hundreds of photos I took, it's tricky to choose which ones to share. One that comes to mind is one of the hotel room shots. I love taking photos of hotel rooms. Once I was getting out from a long bath (stiff legs from all the walking) I saw this. It was super dark but I had to take it:
Oh yeah, I was also on a quest to grab the perfect bird in flight shot. Here's one, though the shot above with the two chairs is probably my favorite bird in flight shot, I took lots of them, sometimes scattering crowds of pigeons and then quickly taking their picture (it's a lot harder than it sounds, and it probably doesn't sound that easy).
I'm suddenly feeling sort of tired and ready to finish this post. I'll maybe post some of my colour shots later. I do have the typical shot of the Eiffel tower and all. You can go see them at www.flickr.com/photos/elton. They're pretty good but they're not as interesting as these ones In my opinion.