I’ve put together a few calendars again this year, over on Qoop. One features photos, all taken this past year, of Skagit Valley landscapes, from volcanoes to tulips to views of the Sound. Another has images of the Peshastin Creek watershed in the upper Wenatchee Valley, which I think is one of the prettiest places on earth (I’m allowed to be biased, I grew up there). And the third is a selection of this year’s food photography from Food on the Brain. Your pick!

All calendars are wire-bound, 8 1/2 x 11″ pages, with sturdy paper and date boxes large enough to write in appointments.

Go to my Qoop store!

Last week we had a couple of surprisingly beautiful days before the rain set in again, and I took advantage of the weather to drive out and about on the Skagit Flats. A low autumn fog had rolled in onto the farmlands, so I found myself a high perch on a ridge overlooking Edison and the San Juan Islands to take some shots, then drove around in the brilliant mist as the sun gradually burned through. Such a beautiful place.

A couple of weeks ago my husband and I drove down to California to visit family. I took a lot of pictures out of the window of a moving car, as so often seems to happen when we’re in a hurry, but I did get to wander the beach and wharf at Capitola, near Santa Cruz. I also spent some time playing with my new camera phone, and discovered that while it’s perfectly capable of taking crap pictures, it’s possible to get some quite good results. Here are some of my favorite shots from the trip – some from my Pentax, some from the phone.

This is the time of year when all the flowers in the garden are either blue or purple. Blue star creeper, forget-me-not, iris, centaurea, geranium, columbine…but there’s something about the blue of forget-me-not. Very cool and pure. I liked several of the close-up shots I took, but liked the feel of this one, where it seems as though the flowers are just blowing through the frame.

It has occurred to me that I should probably be posting here a bit more frequently. Part of the problem is that I haven’t been shooting as much as I would like, and how many pictures of my garden do you really want to see? (although I do like this centaurea shot)

I have a bunch of photos showing right now in Mount Vernon and Bellingham (check the Schedule page for details) and more shows coming up this summer, as well as the work I’ve been doing for Grow Northwest magazine. And I’m hoping to start building a small portrait portfolio soon – stay tuned, I’ll write more here as I figure out details!

In spite of endless rain and the occasional hailstorm, spring has finally come to the Skagit Valley. The daffodil fields came and went, and the tulips are in their full glory. Every once in a while the clouds part and the mountains remind us of their presence.

My Light Control class just finished up at PCNW. For my final project I decided to try something a little different – mirrors. I found a smallish piece of mirror in my workroom, stopped at the grocery store for a bag of fruit, and went into the studio not really sure what I was going to do with it all.

My approach was to set a piece of fruit on the mirror, arranging large pieces of white foamboard around the perimeter so they would create a solid white reflection in the mirror. I began lighting with two Mole Richardson tungsten spots, bouncing off the foamboard for fill light. The mirror was small enough that I had to frame carefully, but I loved the surreal quality of the resulting images.

After a while I got tired of the spotlights, and wanted something less hard for lighting the very shiny Granny Smith apple I had brought. I put away the tungstens and brought out a single strobe with a large softbox, placing it very close to my subject. This produced less interesting texture on the pears but a smoother background, as well as good light on the apple. It was also good for macro shots, although not particularly dramatic.

This was a fun project to play around with. I’m hoping to do more with this idea once I have some lights at home and can use a larger mirror. What subjects do you think would be fun to shoot this way?

Just as spring really seemed to be settling in here in Skagit County, we had a rude interruption in the form of 18″ of fresh snow. We’ve lived here for 14 years, and have never seen a snowfall like this (we usually consider it a big snow year if we get 6″ for the whole season).

It may have been a real pain to dig our car out of the driveway yesterday, but I had a great time stomping around my neighborhood with my camera, breaking trail on the sidewalks and looking for spring bulbs peeking out of the powder.

It may be cold, windy and wet, but spring is definitely approaching. Last week I caved and bought some gorgeous primroses for the front porch. Now if the wind will just settle down so they won’t blow away.

The problem with flower photography at this time of year is that most of the blooms are down at ground level. Yesterday I noticed that we had some snowdrops open under the fir tree, and I wanted to try to get some closeups, so I kneeled down and tried to peer through the viewfinder with my head nearly on the ground. I got a few shots, but then decided to try something different: I turned on the autofocus (which I don’t often use), put the camera on the ground, pointed it at the flower, and let the camera zoom in by itself. When the lens was extended enough that it seemed to be focussing on the right thing, I clicked the shutter. I got some terrible pictures this way, but also some rather cool ones. And I love just how much bigger than life that snowdrop is.