As an organizational framework or a unit for reflection, a calendar year is arbitrary but it is more or less shared by everyone.
I can't pretend that I left 2008 happier than I entered it.
I'm not alone.
Photography wise 2008 marks a return of sort. It is the year I went truly digital by purchasing a Canon Rebel XSI. It allows the flexibility I have missed since my film Canon Elan and Canon AE-1 cameras were supplanted by my digital Sony Cybershot point and shoot.
I like to think I will still shoot film with my two older Canons.
Yes, I like to think that.
My ten favorite photographs from 2008? Not really. Like on Spinal Tap, this one goes to eleven...
Portland Oregon, Fuller's Coffee Shop, April 3, 2008.
Every time I walked by Fuller's (established in 1947) at night, I would think to my self that this Hopperesque scene would make a good picture. One night I had I happened to have the point and shoot with me.
Port Townsend Washington, October 12, 2008.Why haven't I been to Port Townsend before? Scenic and architecturally frozen in the 1890s, it is also a true sister city to Portland (co-founded by Francis W."tails we name it Portland" Pettygrove).
We stayed in room #15 the Water Street Hotel in the 1889 N.D. Hill Building, which had a deck facing east. I woke up at sunrise to see the ferry Steilacoom II arriving from Whidbey Island with the North Cascades in the distance. I got out of bed, grabbed the camera and ran out on the deck. Outside it was thirty two degrees. I had no shoes on.
Portland Oregon, The Paul Bunyon Statue, April 3, 2008.Paul Bunyon, so close and yet so far from ever seeing the tiny naked ladies across Interstate Avenue at the Dancin' Bare (not Bear as the sign so succinctly explains).
Portland Oregon, Gus J. Solomon Courthouse, December 5, 2008.It was very quiet in the little known art deco styled post office inside the Gus J. Solomon courthouse. At first, I thought the Bush and Cheney portraits and the pop machine muddied the scene, which has the feel of times slow, steady march into history. At first.
Lincoln City Oregon, June 20, 2008.We had no idea that this would be our last trip to the coast with Robin. I like to think of the good years we had with her rather than being sad that she is not around. I am not always successful.
Portland Oregon, Albina Yard, October 26, 2008.The smokestack was built by the Northern Pacific Terminal Company in 1887, which became under control Oregon Railway & Navigation Company (Union Pacific) in 1890. Albina then was a separate city which would merge along with East Portland into Portland in 1891. The cabooses were built in 1979. In 29 years that followed, Union Pacific expanded through mergers from 9,807 miles to 33,141 miles and the caboose has been all but vanished from railroading. The locomotives were built in 2002 and 2005. One picture, three centuries on the Union Pacific.
San Francisco California, Vesuvio Cafe, July 22, 2008.Beer at Vesuvio! The Beats, City Lights Bookstore, the Tosca Cafe across the street. A warm night, live jazz from multiple directions. The cryptic "We are itching to get away from Portland Oregon" painted over the entry way. Time is paper thin, it can almost be crossed over at will. Perfect- except for Jack Kerouac Alley. Kerouac saw Adler Alley, we see history labeled for rubes and squarejohns. Disney, meet the Beats. Still, it was Vesuvio, and the beer was good.
Buellton California, The Dining Cars Cafe, July 20, 2008.I saw it for a second and a half at 70 mph on Highway #101. An abandoned diner made from old Los Angeles Railway streetcars. How on earth did they get there? I passed a exit that could have lead us back and continued on toward Morrow Bay. Minutes and miles later I was still thinking about it.
A diner made of old streetcars, how cool was that?
I would have to come back later. Then I realized; for all intents and purposes, there would be no later.
"We have to go back..."
Jill was fine with that.
Portland Oregon, the Blagen Block, November 30, 2008.I have been interested in Portland's cast-iron architecture for a long time, but 2008 was the year I honed in on the what is essentially a lost city hidden in plain site: Portland's original riverfront downtown of the 1870s through early 1890s; a place very different than any other city in the Northwest of the time.
Out of this interest grew the possibility of a book that places what is left of that city in context with what is gone, a tour through time as it were, which I am sketching out.
Then I heard about development plans that would change zoning heights in the district. This lead to involvement with a ad hoc citizens group to protect the Skidmore Old Town National Historic District, and to my post "Stewardship" on my Portland history blog, Cafe Unknown.
Portland Oregon, the Samjohn Amity, November 30, 2008. A half mile from where Captain John H. Couch declared "To this very point, to this exact point I can bring any ship than can get into the mouth of the Columbia River, And not, sir, a rod further." thus placing Portland on the worlds commercial map, ships still call.
The Samjohn Amity is seen loading grain at O Dock, taken from the Steel Bridge, directly across the river from Couch's Addition, where once John H. Couch lived and shot ducks in the marsh from his front porch at the present site of Union Station.
San Simeon California, Hearst Castle, July 21st 2008. We rode the tour bus up the winding road into the Santa Lucia Range to William Randolf Hearst's mega-folly overlooking the Pacific. The castle was shrouded in morning fog as the tour began, but by the time we reached the Neptune Pool the sun was breaking through the mist which cast everything in an unearthly glow. I was like a fruit fly circling around the tour group as I tried to capture it.
