Showing posts with label Washington. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Washington. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Olympia in the Morning, Part 2 (Oly 05)

Let us continue our morning walk through downtown Olympia, Washington. It is quiet, and most stores are closed. I saw only 5 or 6 homeless people his time. Two years ago, there were 10s or 100s of them. How did the city purge them? Regardless, downtown Olympia is still rather grungy.


206½ 4th Avenue
Dumpster on 4th. I bet that stuff looks better than most of my wardrobe. 
Capitol Way view south
Alley parallel to 4th Avenue (25mm ƒ/4 Color Skopar lens)
My favorite Olympia Alley (25mm ƒ/4 Color Skopar lens)
Jefferson Street view north. I have not yet seen a train, but I occasionally hear them, usually at night.
Frog Pond Grocery in the historic South Capitol district (50mm ƒ/2 Summicron-DR lens).
Argh! Another Taco truck, this time on Plum Street. The fire system is for the hot sauce? 


Well, enough of exploring downtown. Time to walk home and have another coffee.


State Avenue view west (50mm ƒ/2 Summicron-DR lens).

Proceed north and soon you reach East Bay. On many mornings, it is still as a mill pond. The buffleheads and surf scoters love it here.

East Bay from Olympia Avenue NE (50mm ƒ/2 Summicron-DR lens). Swantown Marina is in the distance.

The Bigelow neighborhood has many charming traditional cottages from the early 20th century. It is not as elegant as South Capitol, but is more modest and free from the background drone of I-5.
 
Traditional cottage on Quince Street (25mm ƒ/4 Color-Skopar lens)
Historic Quince Street house

This ends our walking tour around Olympia with Kodak Gold 100 film (another one of my experiments with expired film). I used Pentax Spotmatic F and Leica M2 cameras. We will see more of Olympia in future updates. Thanks for walking along.


Monday, March 18, 2024

Olympia in the Morning, Part 1 (Oly 04)

Early morning in December, the light is soft and misty in Olympia. Well, it rains much of the time, so indeed, the light is softened and colors are muted. It was time to experiment again with color negative film. One early morning, I left my car at a repair shop on Capitol Way and walked home through the city. Here are some random scenes on the way.


Capitol Way, early morning
Time for some wiggling, 117 Columbia Street NW
Alley parallel to State Street
Alley parallel to State Street
Rhythms Coffee, 210 4th Avenue W.

According to Rhythms, "Stay tuned for some of the finest coffee on earth, never before served in Olympia." I think the best coffee I ever drank was in Colombia, but that is a story for another day.
 
It is fishy at 116 4th Avenue
Capitol Way view south, rather uninspiring
OSSA Skinworks, 109 Capitol Way N. Could they make my skin look good?
Washington Street view south, also uninspiring

Every city in USA seems to have a Washington Street. This one is not too interesting, but it does have some older architecture.

This ends Part 1 of our morning walk. Please type "Olympia" in the search box if you want to see older Olympia articles.

I took these photographs on long-expired Kodak Bright Sun (i.e., Gold 100) film using my Pentax Spotmatic F camera and the 50mm ƒ/1.4 SMC Takumar lens. This is one of the mid-1970s versions of the 1.4 lens with multi coating and without elements containing thorium salts (some early 1970s versions yellowed because of the thorium glass). Most of my exposures this morning were at ƒ/2 or ƒ/2.8. It is convenient to have a large aperture lens. 

This Gold 100 is more grainy that the Gold I shot years ago when the film was in production. The colors have that old film look; this roll survived the decades reasonably intact. Still, years have passed, and I suggest you not seek out Gold 100. I wish Kodak would reintroduce it. I tried their contemporary Gold 200 and thought it was too grainy. But in 120 size (medium format), the modern 200 might be fine. The Gold 100 decades ago was superb.


Monday, March 11, 2024

Olympia with Fuji NPH400 (Abandoned Films 12) (Oly 03)

Dear readers, we will continue our irregular series on Olympia, Washington. 

Moving to a new home in a new state was quite an adventure. Closets and boxes in our former home revealed all sorts of treasures (much of it junk). How did we accumulate all this stuff? Is this the curse of American suburbia? 

But I found some goodies. The depths of the freezer disgorged a box of 120 size Fuji NPH 400 film. The box expired in Feb. 2005. The last time I used a roll may have been in 2018, when I drove to Asheville, North Carolina, to The Vintage car show. Six years later, was it this NPH still viable? 



Being a 400 film, I thought it would be useful for hand-held work with my Rolleiflex, which has a ƒ/3.5 lens. One drizzly January morning, I walked around west Olympia while waiting for car repair. 


Eagan's Drive-In, 1420 Harrison Avenue - not yet open for the day
Eagan's toilets, maybe not available today
The dancing burger, Eagan's Drive-In
Division Street view north
Taco trucks ready to roll, Harrison Avenue

I took the Rolleiflex out on a cheerful sunny day. The NPH film responded much better.

Swantown Boatworks, Marine Drive NE 

Conclusion: Semi-success, this long-expired NPH 400 was still viable. But some of the frames were slightly underexposed, some more extreme. My Luna Pro light meter is working correctly because other rolls of film from 2024 are properly exposed, frame after frame. Could this old NPH film be more sensitive to reciprocity failure because of its age?  (Reciprocity with camera film means that the film sensitivity is not linear over a standard light range. Therefore, darker scenes need more exposure than a light meter might indicate.) For this roll, I set the Exposure Index at 320, but next time, I will use EI=200 or even lower. Regardless, it is time to use it up. Even frozen, it will not last forever.

Thanks for enduring another adventure in expired camera film. 


Monday, January 15, 2024

Into the Woods: Squaxin Park, Olympia, Washington (Oly 02)

Squaxin Park, formerly known as Priest Point Park, is a 314 acre oasis of big trees, mosses, and ferns just north of downtown Olympia on the east shore of Budd Inlet. The Steh-Chass (People of the Water)  settled this land for centuries, living in villages along the shores of Budd Inlet. In 1848, Catholic missionaries, the Oblate Fathers, came to the area with sponsorship or funding by the Hudson’s Bay Company. The Oblate Fathers displaced the Steh-Chass, cleared the land, and established the St. Joseph d’Olympia Mission and school. The Mission only lasted until 1860, after which the land lay idle for 45 years. In 1905, a group of land investors deeded some of the land to the City of Olympia to form a park. 

Priest Point Park, early 1910s (from City of Olympia)

The original park name was Priest Point, but the priests were only there for 12 years. Converting heathens must have proven a bit too difficult or not sufficiently lucrative.

The importance of this timeline is that the forest in the park has been largely undisturbed for about 150 years. This is not old growth forest but is as close as you will encounter near an urban area. The dense mosses, ferns, and towering tree trunks hint at what old growth forest must have looked like. Pockets of old growth or at least very old trees exist in the Olympic Peninsula, but Squaxin Park is closer and easier to reach (and it is only a 10 minute walk north of where I now live). 

Ellis Cove at low tide
Woods above Mission Creek
Dusk in Squaxin (1+ sec. exposure)
Trail to Ellis Cove
Rest area at Ellis Cove

I took these pictures with my little Fuji X-E1 digital camera and the compact 27mm ƒ/2.8 Fuji lens. I have not exercised this kit much in the last few years but need to refamiliarize myself with its functions. It is convenient and easy to use. For most of the pictures above, I used the Astia simulation and set the frame to 1:1 to resemble the square frame of a Rolleiflex. This crops off the edges, so you end up with fewer pixels in your files. One of the µ4/3 Panasonic cameras, the GH2, had a multi-aspect ratio sensor, so setting various frame sizes used different parts of the oversized sensor. But I think all current digital cameras simply chop off part of the frame. 

Digital is certainly convenient. The pictures are usually "sharp" (whatever that means), the exposure is usually decent, and the camera adjusts the white balance for many light conditions. You take pictures, go home, download the files, and you are ready to use them. I formerly would open the raw files and adjust them with software, but honestly, the jpeg files that the camera computes look fine for 8-bit web display. I never got into the use of Lightroom or developing a secret formula to manipulate the raw files.

Despite having used 4/3, µ4/3, APS, and compact digital cameras, I think the best digital files in my archives are from a 2005-vintage 10 mpixel Sony DSC R1 camera. Despite being "early" technology, the output was superb.


Thursday, December 28, 2023

From the Space Needle in 1995 (Seattle, Washington)

Business took me to western Washington in 1995. A coworker and I looked at the beach at Ocean Shores, facing the Pacific Ocean at the mouth of Grays Harbor. Southward sediment transport had built a wide beach against the north jetty. Developers were building condominiums on the beach. Was this a vulnerable location? Were there feasible escape routes if sirens warned of a tsunami? What would happen to the beach if the sediment transport shifted to moving north? 

After the field trip, we had a few days to spend in Seattle. My coworker had never been to the city and was intrigued by the Space Needle. A fellow we met under the Needle generously offered us two free tickets for the elevator. It was a gorgeous sunny day, so, of course we took the lift to the viewing balcony.


Room with a view: Space Needle from the Mediterranean Inn (Fuji digital photograph taken with a Jupiter-8 lens)
2004 panorama of South Lake Union district from Eastlake Avenue E

First, the general setting. This is a 2004 panoramic photograph of Queen Anne (the hill to the right), South Lake Union, Uptown, and Belltown districts (taken with a Hasselblad X-Pan camera). The Needle is the iconic tower built for the 1962 World's Fair. In the 1970s, when I was a student here, this area south of Lake Union was a commercial district of warehouses and manufacturing. By the early 2000s, it was transforming into condos, clubs, museums, and modern businesses. In the photograph above, the red building in the foreground is part of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, one of the foremost cancer research institutes in the world. Click the picture to enlarge the scene and see the snowy Olympic Mountains in the distance.


Port of Seattle, view south from Space Needle

Now, let's ascend to the viewing balcony on the Space Needle and look south. Seattle is a high value seaport. It is a spectacular natural harbor because it is ice-free, deep, and sheltered from Pacific Ocean storms. In the photograph above, you can see the container terminal in the distance with a freighter in the roadstead. A ferry boat is on its way to Bremerton. Many Seattleites commute daily via the ferries. Seattle is also a major cruise terminal, but I do not see any cruise ships in this scene. 

To the left, you can see two features that are now, thankfully, gone. 

The big white dome is the infamous Kingdome. I recall some of the controversy during construction in the 1972-1973 period. It was sited in the Industrial District south of Pioneer Square. African-American businesses were displaced (i.e., forced out at low real estate values). Construction was plagued with errors, poor design, and a contractor who was unable to complete the work. The building suffered water problems. Parts of the roof collapsed in 1994. Finally, controlled implosion brought down the nasty structure in March of 2000. A century-old African-American community had been replaced by a boondoggle that lasted 27 years. King County taxpayers had to pay for the bonds for another 15 years. Hmmm, is it possible some corruption might have been involved?


Alaskan Way Viaduct before demolition (from Wikimedia, based on Open Street Maps)

To the right of The Kingdome is the Alaskan Way Viaduct, a double-decked freeway that carried State Route 99 along the waterfront. The city built the viaduct in three phases between 1949 and 1953. It cut off the city from the waterfront, similar to the way the Southeast Expressway in Boston became a barrier between Boston, the North End, and the waterfront. The web site, The Historic Pacific Highway in Washington, has more information about the viaduct

Engineers knew that the viaduct was vulerable to earthquakes. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in Oakland, California, destroyed the similar Cypress Street Viaduct, causing 42 deaths.  The 2001 Nisqually earthquake in Seattle damaged the viaduct and its supporting Alaskan Way Seawall. The steel flanges, girders, and bolts that I saw in 2004 were attempts to shore up the structure of the viaduct.  

My coworkers at the Corps of Engineers were well aware of the viaduct's earthquake vulnerability. They told me which lanes to use in case the upper structure collapsed. By carefully driving between the concrete support rows, my car would be only partly squashed by the descending concrete roadway. I was so reassured....

After long and heated debate, King County, the city, and the Port of Seattle decided to bore a tunnel under the route of the viaduct and totally remove the concrete eyesore. You know the story: the tunnel cost vastly more than originally predicted and numerous technical issues slowed construction, but it finally opened to traffic in February of 2019. Demolishing and crunching up the viaduct took only a year. The city now has access to the waterfront without the concrete eyesore. 

On recent trips to Seattle, I have driven Route 99 instead of fight the traffic on I-5. The tunnel appears to flow well while I-5 is bumper-to-bumper. Cameras automatically tag your car to identify where to send a bill for the toll. 


Union Bay with University of Washington Campus in the distance

Turn to the northeast and look at the body of water. Union Bay is a freshwater bay in the center of Seattle. The Fremont Cut (to the left) lets boats reach Puget Sound via the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks. The Montlake Cut, beyond the I-5 bridge in the distance, gives access to Lake Washington. Museums, shipyards, houseboats, and seaplane companies line the shore of Lake Union. "Sleepless in Seattle" takes place in these houseboats. The Vashon Glacier excavated the lake about 12,000 years ago and sculpted most of the contemporary geomorphology in the Puget lowlands.


Lake Union view south

This is Lake Union from the Gasworks Park, the site of a former coal gasification plant from the early 20th century. 

This ends our much too quick overview of Seattle. I want to look at my 1970s archives and see if there are more photographs from downtown.

By the way, if you want to see a really bad Elvis movie that features the Space Needle, watch "It Happened at the World's Fair." As TCM described it, "The Monorail and Space Needle are prominent as Mike (Elvis Presley) and friend Sue-Lin (Vicky Tiu) take in the sights". It is an utterly absurd plot, but Elvis sings. What more could you want in a movie?



Tuesday, December 19, 2023

Cruising Rural South Central Washington

Years ago, when I was young and strong, I sometimes hiked on Mount Rainier in south central Washington state. Back then, I did not do urban decay photography and did not pay attention to the rural towns south of Seattle. Finally, in summer of 2023, I had a chance to revisit the area and take a few snapshots. These towns were probably a lot more interesting in the 1970s, when the lumber industry was beginning to wind down and western Washington state had not gone through its conversion from a resource extraction economy to a high technology, finance, and arts economy. 

I sometimes regret not photographing good grunge when it was available. However, many people argue with plenty of backup evidence that infrastructure and small town society in USA has deteriorated in recent decades. The rural South certainly shows this pattern. But even here in the Pacific Northwest, I expect to find interesting material to photograph in the future as I explore. 

Let us take a short drive from Olympia towards Paradise, on the south side of Mount Rainier. 

Looking for coffee in Rainier

Rainier is a former lumber town and appears to be a bit rough. I want to explore soon.

 

Mountain Highway E, La Grande, Washington
Old La Grande Post Office

La Grande is an unincorporated community in Pierce County. Most people heading to Mount Rainier buzz on through in a hurry.


Elbe, Washington

The Mount Rainier Scenic Railway runs between the towns of Elbe and Mineral. I am not sure if the cars on the siding above are currently used or if the railroad has other rolling stock. 
  
Time for coffee in Ashford

Keep driving east and going up in elevation, and you pass Ashford. There is not much there, but you could pick up a coffee.


Copper Creek Inn


Near the Nisqually entrance to Mount Rainier National Park is the Copper Creek Inn, Cabins, and Lodge. They claim that this is the oldest continuously-operating restaurant in the state, in business since 1946. We has a superb salmon meal, and their blackberry pie is a piece of berry and culinary heaven (dare I compare it with the chocolate baklava at Niko Niko's in Houston??). Regardless, I am heading back to Copper Creek. 


Mount Rainier is an impressive stratovolcano, rising to 14,410 ft above sea level. I have not climbed to the summit but have walked a section of the Wilderness Trail, which circles the mountain. The Paradise visitor center on the south side of the mountain is mobbed in summer with tourists. Plan ahead, go early.


Snow lake - you can't see the mosquitoes

Snow Lake is an easy walk from the Stevens Pass Road, a short distance from the Paradise Visitor's Center. The highest elevation is 4,700 ft (1440 m), so easy breathing. In June, the mosquitoes were not easy!! 


At Tugboat Annie's, Olympia

Back to Olympia and dinner at Tugboat Annie's. Someone is still in the 1970s with his VW dune buggy.

I took most of the photographs with expired Kodak Bright Sun (= Gold 100) film using my Voigtländer Vito BL camera. The 50mm ƒ/3.5 Color-Skopar lens (a 4-element Tessar design) always performs well. I exposed the film at EI=100, but for the next roll, I will give more exposure (EI=64). The film is more grainy than fresh rolls, and some of the colors are a bit off. It was a worthwhile experiment, and I have three more rolls to use.