A bear finally

Well I finally got to see a bear in Idaho. Of all the many years of going to the family cabin growing up and the many years since then I have never seen a bear. Patience pays off, because not only did I get to see one multiple times but now I am able to photograph it, sweet.

We believe this was probably just a 2 year old brown bear. Slummin' it in the neighborhood of cabins near Easly Hot Springs and Baker Creek Road in the Sawtooth National Forest. I captured these photos at my uncle's cabin.

We knew the bear was out and about so we were keeping all the trash inside and keeping things clean. Of course there are those little things you forget about, like leaving some old hamburger buns out on the stump for the chipmunks and birds. Well add bear to that list now. This bear was even caught trying to steel bird seed from a bird feeder. Talk about your lazy Yogi bear.

Alliums

Near my families cabin in Idaho you can find some wild alliums growing. Usually I am up at the cabin so late in the season that the alliums have dried up and don't have as rich a color. Aaah, but this year on my weekend trip I was able to capture these plants, which are related to onions, in their prime.


I just like taking photographs of these plants. I don't know why, something just calls to me. What's fun with these few shots is the inclusion of a flying insect. I don't know what type of insect but it just added that extra bit to the pictures. I like them.

Wind Power

I was down in California for a weekend and I got to drive my old college route from Davis to Antioch. I always went the back ways through Dixon and Rio Vista. Well it has been a while since I have driven that route and boy has some of it changed. Yep, those HUGE windmills are new. I mean HUGE. Look at the portrait picture, down at the base of the windmill is a car. Not just a small car but a big suv. I mean HUGE!. Wow is all I could think and had to stop and take some pictures on the drive.

There used to be windmills out there to generate power, but never this big. But these big behemoths have their advantages. They generate a good amount of power and turn slowly giving birds a chance not to be filleted when flying by. They are also very fun to photograph.

An old friend visits

My good ole' friend Mike Carson paid us a visit back in July. He arrived here in Seattle just in time to stay at our new apartment. Which worked out great because the new apartment has 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Where as our former apartment in Fremont just had one each and was much much smaller and more expensive (that pay more for less attitude).

Well, Jenn and I gave Mike the full Seattle tour. First off we went to Pike place market, saw some flying fish, ate a good lunch and then had to rush home to meet up with the cable guy. Aahh, but the next day Mike got to experience the Seattle bus system, Top Pot donuts (yummmy), ride the ducks, tour the Sci Fi musuem (EMP(they had the Jim Hensen's muppet show up, very cool)), and then see a movie on the imax screen. Man that was a long day.

So to slow the pace down a little Jenn and I took it easy on Mike. First up was a nice walk down to breakfast. Where we then tried to take Mike out with a heartattack by making him walk back to the apartment up the seriously steep hill (Mike lives in flat land Woodland, CA, but that hill is steep). After letting Mike catch his breath Jenn gave Mike the grand city tour. We drove all over Seattle showing him the different neighborhoods. We then ended up at Volunteer Park. This lovely park designed by Olmstead, houses the Asian Art Museum. This museum is a great 1930' piece of architecture and even has some interior gates made by Samuel Yellin. Mike and I spent most of our time checking out the gates in the museum. Also in Volunteer Park is a green house, where I snapped a couple of photos from.

The next day we all went to see the Harry Potter Movie (good flick). After the movie we got some lunch in Ballard and headed over to Golden Gardens. It was a nice windy day and luckily I brought the kites to fly. Murphy's Law reared its ugly head causing one of the kites strings to be a huge knot ball. I got that ball untangled, after about an hour or so and we were up and flying. After we all dive bombed each other with the kites we headed out to the beach for a bit and then drove on over to the Ballard Locks. One of the locks was working and we saw some boats go on through. There were even some salmon running, very cool to see. After that we drove on home and did some BBQ'ing.

On Mike's last day we were able to go on the Seattle underground tour. I hadn't done that yet and was looking forward to it. It was a blast. Both Mike and I enjoyed it immensely. I will have to take Jenn on the tour, hopefully the adult version, where you get all the dirty stories along with some alcoholic drinks.

All in all Mike had a great time and we both enjoyed having him visit.

Ceramic time

It's time to talk about some of my ceramics. Mostly because I was not too bright and didn't take a lot of photos of my forged work. Which means I don't have any more photos to show, doh! But now I do take photos of my work and here are some of my latest ceramic creations.

These are from my Sagar class I took at Pottery Northwest here in Seattle, WA. These two containers were to of my better finished pieces from the class. I will have to take another sagar class sometime here in the future, once I have the time and money to do it.

forged part 5

All right, let's get back to our regular programming and continue were we left off at. Some of my blacksmithing work. This is just the beginning of my path to tying some metal flies. A basic hook. I did a few of these. Each one a little different, mostly at the barbed end. I created the barb on this hook by folding back the tapered end onto itself and then forged welded about a 1/4" to 1/2". All that was left to do was point up the end and bend up the barb.

The eye though I had to have fun with. I gave it a little flare with a wrap. Which I did with all of my hooks.

I'm Back

Well, it has been a long time since my last post. But there is a reason behind that, or an excuse depending on your view point.

I have been working on getting my Photography website up and running. Today I got it up and running. You can check it out here. To go right to some of the photographs click on these links
architectural residential , architectural commercial , architectural academic , product , personal , and published work . A few of the photos have been published here first but a majority of the images are new. So go and check it out, www.AsBrittonphoto.com.