Timelapse on the bus

For those of you who didn’t ride the bus across the city today, I time-lapsed it for you so you can feel like you did!
Alternatively, you can watch the clock on the bus and see how long I held as still as I could in the center back seat of the bus. I locked it down with my awkward.

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Seattle Monorail in 10 Seconds

A little video segment nabbed during today’s commute. Shot on my old iPhone 4s and cleaned up in After Effects.

The Saddest Seagull

His name is Filbert

It’s been crazy busy of late, but I managed to squeeze in time to make a quick looping cartoon in the last couple of days!

I mixed sound and music with it as well! To see it with sound just follow this link !

The End of the World as We Know it

It snowed a few inches in the Seattle area this morning. Unfortunately, once again, the miniature ice age did not fail to wipe out all of the local miniature dinosaurs. Now only time will tell how long till this once green land is full of their tiny roars again.

Vaguely Analogous

Here are a few more macroesque shots of dead things resisting falling over in the daily rain. In other news, I just decided I want to do macro shots of cheese solely for the purpose of being able to call it “Macro-ni and cheese.”
And on that note, onto the pictures.

I love the spider web that makes bridges from cluster to cluster

One of the few last spots of bright color. The stem was naturally that purple as well.

Though they don’t look appetizing, the dead black berries make complex, burned, and alien terrain if you look close enough.

 

 

An Oven with a History

I’ve been sitting on these photos for a couple of weeks now and just finally got around to editing them. That being said, this was from a location shoot! The house we were in had such a lovely old oven that spoke of a different time in which all ascetics  could be traced back to cars.

In fact, the design of this oven was very clearly influenced by said cars.

I love the product design of that now lost era. It’s awesome just by the fact that though everyone would stare at the beauty of your oven’s badge, no one would second guess its being there.

The left was for roasts and the right was for casseroles and other side dishes.

As you pull out from the initial  trance the badge has held you in for so many moments you begin to see a device that is not only very pleasing to the eye, but built with extreme purpose. And that purpose was to feed the nuclear family. The left oven has one low rack and only one other spot to move that rack in case you have a smaller roast because the kids are eating at the neighbors. The right oven has a number of racks so that you may prepare all of your side dishes at the same time in a timely manner.
The gas stove protecting from the high cost and lack of reliability of an electric one. (Electric stoves were slow to catch on, especially in rural areas due to the high cost of electricity. The patent however, was granted in 1897, at least one with a dial.)
If you’re in need of more counter space, then the green back moves down to cover all of the burners, both child proofing and providing that extra counter space that you need.
Finally, for convenient storage, there are to pull out drawers beneath the respective ovens to keep those pans close at hand!

Complete with dials and timers that could have been pulled out of any car at the time

They even thought to include a little tick mark for every other minute on the inside of the larger numbers so you could make your dinner a perfect golden brown! I think that an oven like this provides more of a definition of what the 50’s – early 60’s design and family life in America than just about any other object.
On from the design itself, the brilliant white plastics have long since yellowed from all the meals made within. Over the years they become stains that won’t come out with any amount of scrubbing, just adding to the over all mystique of the thing.

The weather knobs still ready to be turned to make dinner

I think that it’s always interesting how much history an object like an oven can have when given the attention that it so rarely receives. This is true not just for ovens, but for just about any object, especially those of antiquity. What a neat place we live in. If you made it this far, thanks for reading though my babble or quickly scrolling though the pictures and catching the last sentence!

Skeletons of Summer

For the past few weeks every time that I’ve gone out with my camera, I’ve ended up taking photos of dead plants. This is a selection of those photos.

The back ground is cars going by across an inlet of the lake

And, because it’s always threatening to rain or actually raining, all of the light is nice an consistent across the whole batch.

While pretty when they’re alive, their shapes become very interesting as they dry up.

This is one of my favorites, when I was doing post on this one, I noticed you cans see a small blue lady beetle about mid picture.

Even the lake plants across the street from where I live change hugely in the winter.

I think that one of the reasons that I find all these dead plants so interesting is because for the most part everything stays green here. Most of the trees are fir trees, and ferns, ivies, and a lost of other small bushes just stay green though winter. Also the wet weather breaks most of the dead plants down fairly quickly, so by this time of year you actually have to keep an eye out to notice them.

If i were to ever describe a plant as pissed, it would be this one.

To take this I was standing on a nubbin of old foundation that was peeking out of the water on the lake.

In the overgrown field near an abandoned farm.

The Abandoned Barn

Finally found motivation and time to edit some of these pictures! So here goes. I had another rainy day off so I went to shoot photos at an old barn that I had made note of a couple weeks ago. There were a lot of neat details laying around, but the whole place was grown over very thick with blackberry stickers.

This was in the center of the barn

Since I shot the photos I’ve been able to ask around and find out why the old barn still stands. Up until about ten years ago it was part of a large buffalo farm. I don’t know if the farm was faltering or if there was just enough money offered, but WallMart bought all of the land with the intention of building a new store there.

And then? Nothing.

Experimenting with adding cool to a weak establishing shot.

No one seemed to know why a WallMart was never built here. But it seemed most everyone was happy it hadn’t been. So now ten years later all that is left is the overgrown farm and the memories it holds.

And clearly some memories have been made and lost here

While by no means covered in beer cans and bottles, many of the larger bushes would show off troves of hoarded glass and tin if you peaked beneath their leafy exteriors.

The skeletons of mattresses rose from sections of ground like coiled plants in places

The small sticker bush tunnel to the barn proper once had a soft floor of mattresses. Now barely remaining are their coils, almost invisible until you step on the rusty springs.

This was a room at one point

You can still see all of the tin roofing on the ground. One of two small rooms off the back of the barn that looked like they had once been canning rooms. The only evidence this being some left over shelves and some broken mason jars. This room still most of three walls even long after a tree broke though the roof on its trek for sunlight.

The garage was dark and dirty. A mix of red cups, tires, dirt, and paint cans.

Near the garage a section of tow chair and an ice scraper found their new home

A long since broken window faced the way I had come from and was heading back too.

I really enjoy these old places. I feel like they often have more life and stories than the places where people still reside.  You just need to look for them. Like a detective, but without the snub nose revolver and the goons on your tail.

I’m already sitting on photos from a couple other houses. I have more marked out to shoot too. I occasionally just drive around looking for places, but more often then not, I hear about them through the grapevine. More soon! Thanks for reading all the hubbub or at least quickly scrolling to the bottom!

Red Apple Motel sign – Cinemagraph

I saw this sign while catching up with my mom. She saw some of the photo’s I have of old and abandoned buildings (I’ll edit and post them soon) and wanted to show me some she had found. After awhile this just turned into us driving around chatting. We ended up in the town of Machias. It was just after sundown that I saw this sign in someones yard. I loved it. I grabbed the gear that I of course had in the car and set up on the edge of the yard.
After a moment a lady came out and asked what we were doing. I was able to meet her and her husband Bruce (I never caught her name). They allowed me into their yard to snap this and told me how it had come into their possession. Oh, and of course I was hiding with the tripod under an umbrella because as always, it was raining.

45sec/exposure f32 ISO1600 White balance: All of them

They had an assortment of of other beautiful treasures around their yard so I hope I can make it back out there again!

Indecisive focus – Cinemagraph

Another one from the other day at the abandoned farm. I’ve been too busy working to edit any other photos yet. Soon though!

I love how odd and slightly unsettling these things are. Plus they’re very fun and fairly quick to make!