Blasts from the Past

Here is a bizarre and totally random selection of pictures I took more than a year ago. I was busy working on some new, recent photos and got bored and instead decided to take a little trip through the archives to see what I could rustle up.
The results were..interesting...to be sure, but in general a positive experience...for me, anyway.

These are taken on all sorts of cameras, in all sorts of places, at all sorts of times of year and stages in my life. The one thing they all have in common is that they are all taken by me, and I guess I like most of them. They arent necessarily good, but that, of course, is rarely the point.

I'll probably write a little snippet about the photo, etc, because this is a blog where I talk about myself, and I like to do that.


This one was taken on the side of the road at a gas station in Utah, maybe, on the way down from Portland to Arizona in January of hmm...2006? It was taken, I believe, with my really really old Kodak that was still film based... Man, I wonder what happened to that thing?
That camera was so cool..it had this flip up thing that went over the 'lens', no settings at all, always used flash, and took decent photos.
Anyway, this has not been edited at all, and I really like it even though it was totally by chance..


The next three shots are all of slot canyons in Escalante National Monument in Utah, during my Epic Road Trip of 2007. Again, old Kodak, I think, and not retouched at all...






I love this next picture because it cracks me up. It depicts my friends Kira and Callie in a van during the road trip, and Callie, the Motherly One, is using tweezers to extract a cactus prickle from the roof of Kira's mouth, because Kira (the Adventurous One) decided to eat Prickly Pear pears somewhere on a dirt road outside of Strawberry Arizona...


I love the overzealous textural editing here...done just for fun. Ok, this one isn't taken by me, but it was with my camera. My friend Dan and I are reenacting "half of Abbey Road", or at least, that was Dan's intention. It doesn't look anything like Abbey Road to me, but I've never really been a Beatles person, so I'm not offended.


This one is Callie (from above), enjoying a lovely, stormy day on the Oregon Coast. This is when I did editing in Illustrator. "lol".
It makes me smile because Callie hikes with an umbrella more often than is normal...


A terrible blown out photo of the Colombia River Gorge, from almost the top of Hamilton Mountain. How I miss you, Oregon.


These are taken in Madurai, India in 2008 (I think). This was my first rickshaw ride in India, and I feel like this picture sums up the experience perfectly. It was wild and fast and very intense...Riding around at breakneck speed in this little open air cab thing on the back of a moped driven by a crazy Indian man with no traffic laws...


Also in Madurai, in some old palace. I love the colorful girls at the base. This isn't retouched at all, and I still like it...


Sometime a few years ago, a late night trip to the grocery store. This is a friend of mine holding "twenty bananas" after I had told him that if you eat twenty bananas, you'll apparently die from a potassium overdose. I have no idea if its true, or if he really has twenty bananas in his arms. All I know is, I really hate bananas and this pictures cracks me up.


Back on the Epic Road Trip. This is a terrible picture of me, and I love it, because this is taken 30 seconds after I made it to the rim of the Grand Canyon after hiking in and out in two days.
And I am triumphant.

I am also wearing my Explorer Shorts, which is most likely the only reason I made it out alive.
Early August, 2007.


Taken in early December of 2008. I borrowed the Architecture School's DSLR and took it out for a spin. I wasn't overly impressed at first but with a little work, came to really love the thing.
Now if only I could afford my own...




The same camera, several months later. Taken on top of an abandoned McDonald's restaurant in Sandusky Ohio. I was tired of sitting in a hotel room and set out to explore instead.
Taken with a Canon EOS30D.




Also Sandusky Ohio, also an abandoned building, but this one is a farmhouse on Kelley's Island in Lake Erie.


A parking structure, empty.


Back in Ann Arbor, a building in passing.


Bicycles on the front porch of Valhalla, my house several years ago.


That appears to be all I've set aside for now.

I'm working on some pictures from the end of October, gearing up for the cold season and generally cooking too many things with pumpkin. Seriously...too much pumpkin.

It might snow tomorrow. eeeek! I'm not ready!
Really, though, I'm never ready.

Picture These Rocks...

I went on vacation.
Man, I soooo needed a vacation.
In fact, I think I'm rapidly approaching needing another one.

But I digress.
I sort of went on a two pronged vacation, and this was the first part.
Beardy Man, his manwife Tews, his manwife's wife Andreea, and I (whooooaaaaa) had made plans to go up to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in the fall.

Hello fall!

Pictured Rocks is easily one of the most beautiful places in Michigan. You know how Michigan looks like a mitten, right? Well, its in the top part of the part of the state that doesn't look like a mitten, and most non MI-folks forget is part of the state and think is in Canada or Wisconsin or some garbage like that. Its called the Upper Peninsula, or UP for short.
Whew! Ok, are we good?

The northern edge of that remote land of pasties, euchre and snowmobiles is all along Lake Superior. Its a good 6? 8? hour drive? Something like that. The boys insist we leave at like, 12am or some garbage, and drive all night. I was crabby about this because I was promised real sleep in a real bed. And I knew they would sit up in the front and blast the air con and...anyway...I digress.

So we drove all night and made it to Muinising, nearest town to our destination, around 6.30 or 7 am, just as the sun was rising over Lake Superior. Man...what a world to live in.

We watched the sun come up, then, all hyped up and running on excitement, we got some breakfast, (ok, alot of breakfast), drank a ton of coffee, spent too much money on permits, changed into our trail clothes, and made it to the trailhead at maybe 8.30 or 9 in the morning.
This was an intense day for me, because I don't ever get up before noon unless I'm severely jet lagged.

Less talking now, I promise...

This was a cool little spot along the trail...
The boys are probably comparing notes on pipes or something at this stage...

I swear to God, the light actually looked like this...

As you hike, its really only a short 2-3 miles in through woods until you end up at the coast.
Then the trail stretches for miles and miles along the cliffs and beaches of the lake.
Its really less of a lake and more of a freshwater inland sea.
The thing is massive...

Also I'm obsessed with textures, so there are a lot of pictures of rocks...
This was our first point of connection with the beach, so we felt compelled to kick off our shoes and explore.

Big ole pile of driftwood...

The rock in the area is mostly sandstone, which makes for some wild formations and erosion, since its so thin and brittle...

Yeah, like this shit.
Awesome.

We found a cool little natural cave and hung out there most of the afternoon.
Beardy Man didn't want to look up for this picture, and only did so because I threatened never to make roasted potatoes again.
And I botched the pic anyway...

Sacre-bleu! Envadors!
Sup, homes?

Also, since we were all hilariously sleep deprived, we all sort of stretched out on the rocks and slept in the sun for several hours. Tews reported waking up at one stage and seeing tour boats going by taking pictures of us sleeping.
They must have thought we were some sort of seals or something...

Met some nice fishermen.

Played endlessly with this dog.
"that dog's a retrievin' fool"...

Left the cave, made it to camp. Crashed the heck out.
The next day...

Beardy Man makes sooooup.

Lots of hiking...

Lots of cliffs and incredible views.

Sup, kiddos?

Uh...here's my feet.

Some early fall color.

The darling of the Pictured Rocks...Chapel Rock.

Eenvadors! Chaaaaarrge!

Airing out the rainfly...

A blurry pic of the boys attempting to enjoy a windy sunset.

Killer skies.

Yeah. Just, yeah...

Fact: Men like to light things on fire and poke at them with sticks. The bigger the better, of course, seems to be the logic.

So fall is pretty much the greatest time to go backpacking. It's the perfect temperature, there aren't any bugs, there's almost no people...its beautiful out all around.

Also there were loads of mushrooms....

There they are a-standing in a row...bom bom bom..

Big ones!

Small ones....

Some as big as your head!

Crazy, huh?

And it was pretty much the greatest four days ever.
I stunk really badly.

It was a great trip.
It should also be noted that the boys went on and on about how they were going to "show these girls how to really play euchre" because "in the UP is the only place it really counts" and Andreea and I beat them like a million times. It was good...so very very good.

After our hike out, we took a short trip over to Marquette and ate some Thai food and ran around town for a bit before driving like mad a million hours back to Ann Arbor, which was awful. I did manage to buy a fluffy fox tail along with some smoked fish at a gas station on the way home. I want to go back....

These are from the sunset on our last night there, which also happened to be a full moon.

Just fantastic.
This kind of thing makes me so glad to be alive, and to feel so privileged to be surrounded by such beauty and wonder, to have friends who are willing to trek through woods and put up with my stench.
We are truly lucky.