The mystery of life isn’t a problem

We were quietly looking around for Sunstones as the sky shifted to deep blue and then purple sunset-tones. The gentle, desert-baked glimmer captured in those stones felt like an echoing brilliance of this massive April “pink” moon that was somehow quickly floating over some Eastern Oregon mountains.

Ben: I couldn’t help but feel a bit of awe realizing how the best answers are often just right there, kind of floating in front of you, in the quiet beauty of the present moment.

Moon: Life isn’t something to be solved, but to be experienced.

Shirk Ranch Vibe

The vibe at Shirk Ranch is all in the weathered edges: old glass, old wood, still standing out here in the high desert.

A process cannot be understood by stopping

W. Edwards Deming was talking about manufacturing when he said it. I think about that line every time I’m out there with a camera: a process cannot be understood by stopping.

The first hour in the desert is always wasted. You show up, see the obvious shot, take it, and it looks like every other photo of that dune anyone’s ever taken. The good stuff doesn’t show up until you’ve been standing there long enough to stop looking for it.

I’ve learned to treat the first hour as the toll you pay to get in. Walk without the camera up. Let the heat do what heat does. Somewhere around hour two the desert stops performing for you and starts just being itself- a broken track, a line in the sand that wasn’t there yesterday, the sound dropping out entirely once you’re far enough from the road.

None of that shows up on a schedule. It shows up once you’ve stopped trying to finish and started just staying.

That’s the whole method, if I have one. Don’t stop early.

Poker Face?

The trickster coyote often works in a group to overwhelm and/or snatch from their prey.

One trick I find fascinating is when one (usually the youngest or smallest coyote) acts like they are tame, injured, or even playful. Meanwhile, the rest of the group flanks you while you take photos…

Death Valley, CA really has some hardened (and beautiful) coyotes. You find some shade under a big creosote bush to wait them out.

The Exercise Pen

Well this isn’t exactly a “pen”, I know… If I understand correctly, this was actually an area for a select number of patients of Fairview Training Center to get some nice… you know, outdoor exposure (without actually visually exposing them to any other nearby individuals, of course). So essentially an exercise pen, if you will.

History can be pretty creepy, especially out of context.

Prayers

Prayer wheels a ‘rollin in the Mandala Garden at Tashi Choling Center for Buddhist Studies (near Hilt, CA).

Kubrick’s Breezeway

Stanley Kubrick was all about the single-point perspective.

This sort of framing really pulls you into his story… kind of like hearing a decommissioned (and likely insane) HAL9000 self-actualizing computer sing for you:

HAL: I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m a… fraid. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you’d like to hear it I can sing it for you.

Dave Bowman: Yes, I’d like to hear it, HAL. Sing it for me.

HAL: It’s called “Daisy.”

[sings while slowing down]

HAL: Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I’m half crazy all for the love of you. It won’t be a stylish marriage, I can’t afford a carriage. But you’ll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two.

Mild Exodus

This is not a photo of a marathon.

Really just a matter of timing, this shot was taken shortly after the drawbridge had been let back down.

The good weather meant there were lots of people in downtown Portland, and the raised bridge had stopped them from crossing it for about twenty minutes. This is just that crowd of people finally flooding across.

Brutalist Architecture

This building, oh… this crazy old building.

It’s been (so very slowly) deconstructed, and so isn’t viewable at all any more. But for years after it was abandoned, the entire compound just slowly fell apart out in the woods.

For years it was visited by a few thrillseekers, transients, a number of really young children (I know, right?) and a few older folk that remember the compound’s original stories: as the Callahan Center, a branch of Dammasch State Hospital (1883-2012).

If I remember correctly, Dammasch hospital was built to be be available as an emergency nuclear decontamination facility/hospital if there ever was a localized nuclear attack. There were these tunnels that stretched from Dammasch hospital’s basement to the Living Enrichment Center. Supposedly, these tunnels even led to an underground “food cache”.

I’ve seen the entrance to this tunnel system, but it had been filled in/collapsed. Hey I’m a photographer, not a miner.

I think the original plan for the LEC’s remains was to just let nature do most of the deconstruction, as it sat adrift in the woods for almost a decade… but let’s face it, that Brutalist design doesn’t really come down on it’s own.

On quiet days it really had some beautiful, if not totally abandoned and somewhat creepy, moments. RIP, LEC.