final day of Juan de Fuca

I have been pleasantly surprised by how nice this festival is. yes, it is sort of like a Folklife redux, but only in terms of crowd size. the music groups are pretty good. I heard bands performing music from Hawai'i, Ireland, Madagascar.... very relaxing, although every now and then the technicians monkey with the sound system, and since there are speakers right next to my booth, sometimes I get a blast.
yesterday I sold four framed pieces. I'll list the prints once I get home and can look at my receipt book while I type. I'm going to try a shoot this morning at a bed-and-breakfast outside of town known for their gardens. fingers crossed!
I'll leave this post short. gotta get going....

day three and finally some cool weather

it was a little panicky last evening because the wind picked up in the afternoon. I asked Larry and Laureen to bring over some extra concrete blocks to help weight down the booth, but the wind died down over night, and this morning dawned gray and still.
I drove up to the top of Hurricane Ridge again this morning, and as soon as I passed the tunnels at about 3,000 feet the clouds melted away and the sunshine burst out.
the trail up to Hurricane Hill was lined with flowers: avalanche lilies, lupine, douglasiana, spreading phlox, rockcress and violets. beautiful shots of the scenery as well, mountains floating on beds of clouds. amazing.
pet peeve, literally: a couple on the trail had clearly decided to ignore the park signs and brought their dog and their cigarettes with them. ick.
no bears this morning up on the mountain roads, but lots of deer again. I can't wait to get home and update my photo diary.
sold two prints yesterday, including a framed 11x14. looking forward to the last two days.

day two of Juan de Fuca

yesterday was a hot one! we got some serious heat: 85 degrees. the booth is in an excellent position, right next to the ticket booth near the Vern Burton center, on grass, which is really comfortable, but the afternoon sun really comes into the booth. I have to figure out how to block off the sun a little more to protect the photos.
it wasn't a bad day in sales, considering it was still a weekday. sold a framed 8x10 of riffle and sold another matted print of lying low.
need to do some wiring of the framed pieces today and mark more prices. looking forward to more excellent weather!

hear the Brady kids sing!

the sun is shining so brightly it hurts. I got into Port Angeles much later than I thought so I'm doing all the setup this morning. it's going to be hot, though!
and I am staying at such a great place: my friend Laureen has taken me in to her home and it's wonderful. had a great sleep and ready for fun today.
come on out to Port Angeles, everyone. it's going to be a wonderful day.
oh, and the title: there was one episode of the Brady Bunch where the kids formed a singing group and one of the songs was "Bright Sunshine-y Day".

departing today

well, I had my endoscopy yesterday, and my nasty surprise turned out to be a gastric ulcer. luckily it was in the new stomach, so she didn't have to run the camera up and around.
for some reason, an ulcer isn't as bad as I thought, considering I was flashing on the idea that I might have had cancer.
so now it's medication, which luckily dissolves in the mouth so I don't have to worry about swallowing horse pills which might get stuck down there.
today, I'm off to Port Angeles, for the Juan de Fuca Festival of the Arts, which starts tomorrow. the weather calls for some wind, so I hope my sandbags are enough!
still have lots of preparing to do before I can leave, though, so it'll be interesting to note what time I actually make it to the ferry. as always...

a nasty surprise

first, the non-nasty news.

I really like using my new photo diary. I've made three entries for shoots in the past week:

• WSU demo garden in Bellevue


• the Bellevue Botanical Gardens


• the Dunn Gardens in Seattle

I actually was out on several shoots yesterday, but I'm using an analog camera, Hiro's old Canon, to try and decide which lenses I might want to get when I might be able to get a new camera. it's been fun shooting analog, and I am liking the Canon 100mm macro lens I rented from Glazers. The 65mm lens I rented is also great (and it offers 5X magnification, which is incredible!), but it would require a studio environment, really, to take advantage of it, because the depth of field for it is fractional.

so what was the nasty surprise?

so nasty that I can't really go into details. suffice it to say that I believe I am having some minor internal bleeding going on. I talked to an on-call physician last night and will be talking to my surgeon today. probably going to need a few tests. joy. my working assumption is that the problem can be fixed.

so, panicking optimistically would describe the current mindset...

long time no blog

I've been away from my blog for a while, working on adding another blog.

I decided to separate out a lot of the photos I would put here into a blog that could just be about the photos. that way, I wouldn't care so much about limiting the number of photos I put here, and could really indulge the shots that I like (at least on the day I pick them!).

so, after a few weeks of reviewing my shoots since late February of this year (material from prior shoots has already been incorporated into my floragraphy portfolio), cropping and re-sizing for the web, I can now announce my new photo diary blog:

the floragraphy photo diary


clearly, from that blog, you can tell I've been shooting a lot (although it's pretty damp this morning and I wanted to shoot today too). I've been to places I've never been to before, like Aitken's Salmon Creek Garden down in Vancouver, Washington (the Aitkens are really amazing iris gardeners, and they have a great collection of orchids too), and, since I have wanted to visit since the first time I saw the sign on the side of I-5 in Woodland, the Hulda Klager Lilac Gardens.

I've also had word on more shows. got into the Mill Valley Fall Arts Festival, which is way cool (and my first show in California!) as well as Bumbershoot in Seattle, so I'm looking forward to that. I was also invited to jury for two other shows which I've since added to my schedule.

strangely (at least, to me), I also managed to have two of my photographs accepted into the juried competition that runs together with the Edmonds Arts Festival. I say strangely, because my work was not accepted for vendor status at that same festival. so I'm good enough for the fine arts jury, but not good enough for the vendor jury. ok.

the personal dramas that plagued Hiro and I in April seem to be calming down somewhat. it looks like Hiro will be back in classes come July, although we don't have a final word yet whether the new university will push his reinstatement paperwork or not. the Saab has been returned, although I don't yet know if Saab will charge me anything beyond my overmileage charges. the Previa had a flat a week or so ago, and then I found out that the alignment was way off on both axles. and to make our use of the Previa much more enjoyable, the lock on the driver's door has stopped working, so I now climb in and out through the passenger side. hopefully this will all get fixed soon enough.

other than that, I'm in the run-up to the show in Port Angeles in two weeks (thanks again to my gracious hostess Laureen). so prints and mats and frames are my life once more. :)

time to get back to it!