I've always had a special affinity for dragonflies, and they haunted these old places. Very large, over four inches, and without fear, they let me approach fairly close. The photo above gave me an interesting lesson in cropping... I immediately like the image as it is here, but then cropping down to five a better close-up of the dragon fly seemed obvious. The closer crop, however, lost all grace and drama. Somehow it became a close-up of a dragon fly, losing the feeling of the drowsy afternoon, the lines and implid movement of the grasses, and additionally looked like a bad, discard-category photo. Although this version doesn't show you the hairs on the legs, it captures better the glimmer of the dragonfly afternoon.
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Malheur National Wildlife Refuge reflections -- the middle of nowhere
Reflection in a pool at the Bonneville Fish Hatchery (near Dam) on the mighty Columbia River And, yes it is mighty, like the school songs said in first grade, comprable to the Mississippi Roll On Columbia Roll On. Sturgeon so large that one wouldn't want to meet them in a dark alley, 'cause they are way bigger than you or me!
I processed these using a combination of my old favorite app PhotoFX by Tiffen, and Snapseed, which has just recently become available to iPhone users. The latter started out apparently as a iPad app. (Gosh, what else am I missing by not having an iPad? Does one need it to stay current in the iPhone art trends? App philosophers and iPhone Art Gatekeepers, how does the Pad change our commitment to make images ONLY with phone-based Apps????).
The only downside with Snapseed, that I can see, is that all photos processed with it have a pretty distinct (but great!) look, tending toward the Faux HDR look. This can be avoided if not using this app as a sole processor (but hey, who used just one app? What's the fun in that, when at least an hour can be wasted combining processing apps to achieve a final masterpiece of phone photography? Snapseed is easy to use, you can work and rework, save and continue, and a variety of lighter to darker filters for black and white, vintage, and other modes. For fast processing the "dramatic" mode is pretty handy. One other nice feature can be seen in the almost limitless versions of "grunge filters" -- scroll through slowly though, because it is not easy to get back to one you might have liked but passed by.
Well, the best and really the defining thing about a Blog as a writing form, as opposed to essays, poetry, fiction, portfolio work, business site work, and client work.... in a Blog (kind of an ugly word) one can play, and please only ones self. Although in those other forms, the best work often comes from following one's passions and working in such a way that very idiosyncratic pieces emerge, still in a Blog, to me, the necessity to put ONLY my best foot forward is absent. Here I can play, share experiments, some more successful than others, and feel my way into who and what I may be as an artist and a human female of a certain age.
That stated, these are my impressions of a bittersweet road trip that took me through many landscapes of my early childhood when my Dad was getting his Phd in Theatre at the University of Oregon, then teaching at Monmouth. Trips throughout my childhood from our homes in Oregon and later in Nevada to visit one set of Grandparents in Richland, Washington where I was born and the other set in the wild desert landscapes of Eastern Oregon (the Oregon Stepchild).
My great-grandfather and -mother, fresh from Sweden, settled in the Baker Valley where Great Grandpa Jacobsen snapped up some prime land in Haines, and on the Snake River where it curves away from the Oregon Trail at Farewell Bend. The little park there was once our playground, before the State nabbed it for a park. The little white house on the hill above Farewell Bend State Park, was my grandparents "fancy" house, built after the war which they had spent living near the the creek below in a plank shack near the sheep sheds.
Farewell Bend State Park -- supposedly named for the regret the wagon trains felt as they left the good and plenty of the Snake River to turn inland through some very rugged country.
The trip started in Portland. This shot of the Tram at Night was taken from the semi-new restaraunt "The Original," a pretty nice place. I recommend the sandwich that uses Southern Fried Chicken for bread! Kind of mod take on Chicken Kiev. The deserts were very fun. It was National Ice Cream Month, so they had some pretty freaky ice cream flavors including a Stout Beer flavor. I opted for a fashionably miniscule cup of French Toast flavor.
Historic Bank in downtown Portland. I heard it was once a mint building but this is not verified...
The "Atlas" has been in dry dock for awhile, a tree grows from the deck.
Perhaps you can tell, I had a big crush on the "Atlas" -- Coos Bay
Early morning at Arigo Bay
On the other side of the state is the equally beautiful Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and the remote Steens Mountains, where you will seldom meet anyone on the road and all the cowboys are real.
When I was nine I had my first week at ballet school. I only lasted one week because my teacher, a grey little Japanese man in a shaggy brown cardigan and black ballet slippers, told my mother that it was no use my coming back next week -- my feet were too bad and I would never go on point. That confirmed a suspicion of mine, that the ugly "corrective" shoes which I so despised, had not and never would improve my feet. Nevertheless, I was disapointed, and had not until that moment realized that "going on point" was the sole (pun?) reason for taking dance lessons. Really, I thought the possibility of a tutu reason enough.
I just spent my second week at dance school. The Eagle Performing Arts Center Intensive was absolutely intensive. From 10-4 each day girls from 6 to 18 proved themselves enviably dedicated to learning and to performing. Against a backdrop of hot green walls, creamy venetian blinds, and glaring florescent lights they spent hours in warm-up, hours at ballet, at jazz, stretching, learning choreography, and -- perhaps the ultimate challenge--moving in unison.
The glaring lime colored walls, harsh lighting, venetian blinds, and mirrors made it pretty challenging for me as a photographer too, making it difficult to isolate a figure, correct skin tones, and make the flash work for me. In addition I had to stay out of the way! I recently suffered from a herniated disc and my physical therapist has been working with me to "strengthen my core," and the deeper psychological overtones of that terminology are not lost on me. In every way these young girls and young women and their instructors demonstrated the meaning of a strong core and corps. If they were in pain, believe me, so was I.
In the end I was happy with the results. In addition to getting the "artsy" and moody images that I was seeking, I also attempted to get a nice portrait shot of as many girls as I could, although there were so many of them in identical leotards I know I missed some. The results can be seen here: www.stacyericson.com but I wanted to put a few images up here as well. There are two groups, first the iPhone photos, mostly taken using OldCamera, which is slow, slow to develop, but occasionally delivers a result so outstanding it makes up for the app's deficits.
In the second group are a few of my favorite shots from my "real" camera, in which one can hardly tell that the walls were lime green! For obvious reasons, I've posted mostly anonymous images here, in which the faces, especially of the youngsters, can't be easily recognized, although I feel most happy about some of the portraits, caught without benefit of any of that easy-peasy POSING business.... definitely NO time for smile, look to the left, raise your chin....
I'm experimenting with this series of dark/light extreme ways of seeing the long view desert. While photographing as a monotone, the open spaces that I love have an overwhelming presence of light and dark and do not FEEL monochromatic. I printed one of these on metal in a sheer ink for the show at the Modern Hotel and the results were more effective than I anticipated. The sheer ink and the faint gleam of the metal underlay give a dreamy, dramatic, yet peaceful effect -- exactly what I was going for.
The Snake River is one of the great and little known rivers of the world, and certainly one cannot know the Mountain west without learning its secrets. The people that have lived on its banks for 20,000 years; the wet smell of its swelling current, when only dry sun smells surround it; the place where the calm movement becomes the River of No Return and the effect that no-return policy has had historically and psychologically; the Ranch that was once ours at Farewell Bend, where the river turns away from the Oregon Trail and settlers had to leave its comfort.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011 at 08:24PM 
