one time i stood under a flowering pear tree in my wild backyard and thought, this is good. it was warm and i’d just finished nursing my baby girl. she heavy-slept in a sling on my freckled chest. her hair was red and my feet were bare.
one time i stood on a street in london in my doc martens and thought, this is good. it was warm and i’d just toured buckingham palace pretending i belonged. steaming tea, a double-decker bus. my dress was red and my socks were yellow.
one time i stood all alone in my choked bedroom— the air was hot, the bed unmade— a shadow stretched over drifts of laundry left to fold. my face was red, the pen denting my thumb, and i thought, is this good?
5/100 For the next 100 days, I’ll be writing and posting a poem every day. I hope you’ll follow along.
The #100DayProject ended on June 2nd. It was a wild, exhausting, fulfilling, and beautiful experience. Here’s my final images and a brief recap.
First, the numbers: I delivered 20 full galleries to photography clients, each with an average of 100 photos. I don’t have a count on total number of photos taken (that number would be embarrassing), but I edited 3,384 photos. That’s a lot of practice!
My biggest take aways:
Storytelling behind the lens is beautiful, and I love it more and more every day.
I really need a camera with a bigger sensor so I can capture low light easier.
Editing and color theory are so interesting, and I have a lot more to learn.
Documentary-style photography is my whole heart.
This can become a second career for me.
I can push through even on hard days.
Challenges work for me.
Not all of these are revelations, or even surprising, but they all give me information which can help shape my path forward. Let me know what you think of these images, if you have a favorite, and if you see improvement.
Thanks for following along!
If you missed the earlier posts and want to compare:
These were taken with my Olympus E-M1 MarkII, using various lenses and edited with Lightroom Classic.
What’s next for me?
I’ve got several more photo shoots lined up in the next few weeks, and then I’m taking a brief break to do a 100 day poetry project. My heart still wants to finish my book dedicated to Neil, and so, I’ll give myself that challenge. I’ll begin on July 1st and end on October 9th. My goal is to have the book published by Christmas. I hope you all will indulge me sharing lots of poems starting in July, with a smattering of photography as well.
Here’s hoping I can find balance and keep up my motivation!
This past November, my husband and I went to Dillon Beach to celebrate our anniversary. It’s taken me a long time, but I’ve finally edited the photos. I’ve done some experimenting to try and make these more dramatic and engaging. Do you think I’ve gone too far? Do you have a favorite? One that just doesn’t work for you? Let me know. I’m planning to take a ton of photos this year, and I really want to get better at both shooting and editing.
I hope everyone is doing well and staying warm. Have a great rest of your week!
As summer winds down, I took my nephew to a few local museums. By far, the Aerospace Museum of California was his favorite. He loved seeing all the planes and playing with all the interactive materials (Legos and other type of building supplies). We spent almost four hours exploring and playing together.
The museum holds another special place for me. My father was in the Air Force and worked at McClellan Air Force Base my entire childhood. It’s also the place a budding journalist (16-year-old me) got to meet President Bill Clinton and see Air Force One.
Let me know if you have a favorite photo and have a great day!
#1#2#3#4#5#6#7#8#9#10#11#12#13#14#15#16#17#18#19#20#21#22#23#24#25: My nephew wanted to take my photo because I “looked like a toy” next to the giant plane.Also, the Man of Steel now has a permanent place in my van.
These photos were taken with an Olympus OM-D and edited with ON1 Photo RAW.
For tickets and information about special events, visit aerospaceca.org
This will be the eighth time I’m sharing photos with you of Dillon Beach, a place I’m lucky enough to visit several times a year. It’s crazy how each visit is a little different. This visit we saw thousands of tiny crabs, met a lot of really sweet dogs, and shared the early mornings with fishermen and surfers.
These photos are for Heidi, as she showed me again how magical this place really is, and for Sephera, for always being my exploring buddy on the beach.
Hope you all enjoy these and let me know if you have a favorite.
One of the highlights of our recent trip was spending a night in the longest continuously operating hotel in Washington State, The Shelburne Hotel. After a few difficult days and missed connections, this place waited for us like a refuge.
It was our third time visiting and my first time staying in the most haunted room. You can read about our earlier experiences here:
An overturned truck on the freeway delayed our arrival, and we checked in 20 minutes before the small bar closed. I had been hoping to write in the bar drinking a cocktail called the Bee’s Knees, but instead only scribbled a few poetry lines on a napkin while drinking the renamed cocktail, The Bee Sting. How perfectly fitting for this trip.
The house has two attic bedrooms, both said to be haunted by a spirit named Nina. After our encounter in Room 6, we had been looking forward to what might happen in Room 5. However, after all the stuff the trip had thrown at us, we both felt pretty emotionally drained and just wanted to sleep before making the 10 hour drive home the next day.
The little nook my daughter was going to sleep in had a door in it (photo below) looking way too much like a Coraline door, so we ended up sleeping together in the main bed and blocking that door with the extra pillows.
The room, like most the house, has an old feeling and is filled with quirky things. I put white noise on my phone and collapsed almost immediately, too tired to really take it all in. Around 2 a.m. I woke because my white noise stopped. I looked around the room and saw nothing, but I heard what could only be described as a low moan. It wasn’t coming from my daughter, and I tried to tell my brain it was something outside…maybe a truck? It got louder.
“I can’t do it tonight,” I said out loud to the room. “I’m too sad and tired.”
The sound instantly stopped and the white noise turned back on. I went right back to sleep. It was probably a dream, but I like to think Nina was taking pity on me. The next morning I took a bath in the clawfoot bathtub and took a few photos outside in the beautiful garden.
This is the last photos from our trip, but I have some beach and camping photos coming your way in the next few days. Let me know if you have a favorite photo among these and have a fantastic weekend.
Part of our summer trip included searching for Thomas Dambo’s giant wooden trolls. Let me tell you, these incredible sculptures do not disappoint. Not only are they breathtakingly beautiful, but they are enormous!
Thomas Dambo has crafted over 170 creations all over the world. If your curious if one is near you, here’s a wonderful Trollmap. We only visited two trolls this trip, but we will try again soon.
Now, come with me into the forest to meet Bruun Idun and Pia the Peacekeeper.
“In the night, there was a storm, there at the beach where she was born And Idun felt a feeling wrong, and so she walked there in the dawn And in a flute, the magic horn, a tune so passionate and strong She played for them an orca song to ask them where they all had gone“
Brunn Idun stands on the shoreline playing her flute to the Orca’s to ask them why they have all left the Pugeut Sound. Her flute was made by artist, John Halliday Aka Coyote from the Muckleshoot Tribe. On August 25th, the Mayor of Seattle, Bruce A. Harrel, declared it “Brunn Idun Day”. This special recognition celebrates Bruun Idun’s and the Trolls’ contributions to our collective stewardship environmental management, water protection, repairing habitat restoration, preservation and conservation. Every August 25th is Bruun Idun Day.
“Pretty pretty please, let’s keep the peace beneath the trees Hold you in my hand I will remind you with a squeeze Quiet little people cause your criers make me tired Pia likes to play with people, people they keep quiet“
Pia likes to play with the people beneath the trees, and she likes it when it’s not too noisy.
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These photos were taken with an Olympus OM-D and edited with ON1 Photo RAW.
I’ve always been someone who is in awe of the world, but being able to capture some of that feeling with my camera is incredibly satisfying.
This third installment of photos from my Washington trip are shots taken around the city of Seattle. I sure hope this isn’t like making someone sit through vacation slides! Let me know if you have a favorite and thanks for supporting me. It really means so much.
“Sometimes I come up here at night…just to look at the city. I like to imagine that the world is one big machine. You know, machines never have any extra parts. They have the exact number and type of parts they need. So I figure if the entire world is a big machine, I have to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason, too.” —Brian Selznick
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These photos were taken with an Olympus OM-D and edited with ON1 Photo RAW.
On the second night of our trip, we traveled to the historic town of Seaview and stayed at the Shelburne Hotel. You may remember I wrote about our ghost experience in this same hotel last year, and so we were eager to return. Although I’m certain I felt someone gently pressing me down in the clawfoot bathtub, this time our experience was mostly restful.
For me, the beauty of staying at the longest continuously operating hotel in Washington State is the interesting light fixtures and the way the hotel makes you feel like you’ve stepped back in time. I hope you’ll consider staying here if you ever find yourself in the area. Let me know if you have a favorite photo or if something stands out for you. Thanks!
“All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.” —Leo Tolstoy
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These photos were taken with an Olympus OM-D and edited with ON1 Photo RAW.
Bridgette Tales 