Seattle gets 300 (more or less) gloomy days a year. The dark mood becomes more apparent in January and February. The sun rises around 7:30 am but it looks more like the middle of the night outside. Sunset is around 4:30 pm but you wouldn’t know it since the sun is covered by clouds. You go to work before the sun goes up and go home long after the sun has set. Vitamin D deficiency is a thing doctors check when you live in Seattle.
Three weeks ago I got back from Manila where it is always sunny. It wasn’t easy getting over jet lag when days would go by not seeing the sun and the non-stop rain. The rain and cloudy weather linger. I would sometimes look at the skies and try to imagine the Manila sunshine in place of the Seattle clouds.
I needed something creative to do in the midst of the clouds, rain and freezing temperatures. Rain Likely is my little bit of sunshine in the dead of winter, my small dose of vitamin D. Instead of dreading another gloomy day, I looked forward to being outside to find something interesting to photograph. On days we got a little bit of sun, I made sure to look at the blue skies knowing there will be days without it.
View Rain Likely
If you are a lifelong student of photography, you will enjoy the exhibit Don’t Photography and the Art of Mistakes, currently on exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The exhibit features the “rules” of photography and how techniques such as double exposure, lens flare, motion blur are considered as mistakes by some photographers but deemed artistic aesthetics by others.
The walls of the exhibit were painted with the brightest red paint and deepest blue paint. On it were examples of photography mistakes (or aesthetics) and quotes from photographers relating to the subject. I personally enjoyed the exhibit. I found the chosen quotes funny, the description of the techniques interesting and the examples amazing. Perhaps having limited formal training in photography, it is easier for me to relate to not following the all rules of photography. There is no exhibit catalog and information about it at SFMOMA’s website is scant so the only way to learn about the exhibit is by visiting the museum in person.
The Washington Nuclear Project Nos. 3 and 5 or more popularly known as Satsop Nuclear Power Plants is a $2.5bn boondaggle located in Grays Harbor County, WA. Two years ago this month, it was the location of a field trip for Ruins in Reverse, a photography class I was taking. The Satsop site has since been reincarnated as a business park and the unfinished nuclear cooling towers serving as an occasional location for movies, music videos and photo tours. The nuclear plants and cooling towers were never operational. The project abandoned in 1982 and what remains show as if frozen in time. Everything is enormous and felt overwhelming, especially inside one of the cooling towers. I was there to take pictures which seemed like an impossible task given its enormity.
We were surrounded by concrete, and at times the temperature felt even hotter, especially in areas where the sun is directly hitting the pavement. It wasn’t the easiest to photograph. Aside from the structures being huge, it was either there wasn’t much light inside the nuclear plant or too much light outside. The irony wasn’t lost to us that this thing that we were taking photos of is a failed attempt to build a nuclear plant. The reasons why we can be there was that the project failed and the nuclear plants were never operational. The photographs from this set I think best encapsulates the theme of the class - ruins in reverse.
View Satsop Gallery
