Let's talk hiking and photography this Saturday!

A quick note that the lovely new (well, it was new 10 years ago or so but still is a beautiful building) library in Sammamish will host me this coming Saturday afternoon, May 8 @ 2:00pm to present a talk and show sharing my adventures and stories working on the Day Hiking book series, published by The Mountaineers Books. Get a great start to your Mother's Day weekend and get excited for a great 2010 hiking summer ahead! See you there I hope.

Artist Reception at Marianwood Art Gallery tomorrow

Hello friends-Just a quick note to invite anyone who might be interested in coming by to see the “Hit Me with Your Best Shot” photography exhibition being shown at the Marrianwood Art Gallery up on the Sammamish Plateau. The show runs until May 31st but tomorrow night happens to be the artists reception to have a little bit of fun. I’ll also have a table set up with extra unframed matted prints, some cards, and even my guidebook series of books for people to browse over if they are bored. Ha.
This is a continuation of the artEAST winter gallery show that was in Issaquah for the month of February at the UpFront Gallery – I haven’t even seen the gallery yet so I’ll be curious how it is set up there actually. For an interesting side note….turns out the quartet music that is lined up for this is a quartet made up of four members of the Evergreen Philharmonic Orchestra in Issaquah, of which the viola player will be my own daughter. We didn’t even realize that until just a week or two ago – funny! Pretty cool….
Thanks for your time and maybe I’ll see a few of you there tomorrow evening!

Fall City artists now featured at Eastshore Gallery

Beginning this past Sunday, February 28th, and ongoing until April 11th, the Eastshore Gallery in Bellevue is hosting "Spring in Fall City!", a dynamic variety of beautiful art work from Snoqualmie Valley local artists. Many of these stellar works are by good friends of mine who I have had the honor of getting to know through the Fall City Arts organization and I thank everyone for helping make this show happen over the course of the past year! Art work ranging from glass work, painting, drawing, jewelry, sculpture, all is featured...and yes, so is my photography. Head to the website detailing who is showing their masterpieces at the gallery HERE, and let me know what you think!

"Hit Me with your Best Shot!" exhibition opens this Friday!

A new gallery showing is opening at the UpFront Gallery on Front Street in downtown Issaquah in February. I'm honored to have had two prints selected for this juried gallery exhibition and the opening reception is Friday night, February 5th from 6:00-8:00pm! I hope some of you can come by to see the diverse imagery in this show "Hit Me with your Best Shot!" and for more information you can go to http://www.arteast.org/ - if you can't make it Friday, the show runs until February 27th. Enjoy!

Coming to the next artEAST gallery exhibition soon

I'm very honored ad pleased to share that I have heard news that at least two of my images have been accepted in the upcoming Art East Gallery "Hit Us with Your Best Shot" Photography Exhibition which will run starting in early February at the gallery! Maybe I'll have a chance to submit more work to add to the line-up but for now I'm just enjoying knowing I'll have the work ahead of me preparing my prints for the early February hanging.

More details for when the opening event occurs will follow once I know more later this month!

Presentation in Everett, WA for the Everett Mountaineers tomorrow

Quickly wanted to remind everyone that I will be in Everett, WA tomorrow night to give a talk to the Everett Mountaineers. This presenting at the Everett Mountaineers monthly branch meeting (tomorrow night, 7:00PM) will have me giving a talk rich with photography and goofy stories on my experiences doing Day Hiking-Central Cascades. Check out the Everett Mountaineers website HERE for full details, and if you can't make it maybe I'll see you at the Everett Public Library on April 25th or March 7th for my other upcoming talks in your neighborhood. Hope to see you there!

Calendar time again...with a different twist in my world

It would be expected that I create an annual 13-month calendar each year since I take a few images every year. But while most would in my shoes make this a calendar of nature images...maybe birds or mammals in my case...or landscape photos is very common among most people I know who spend time in the outdoors with camera gear. Me? I use it as an opportunity to create a special memory every year, one I will cherish forever, and share it as gifts to my family and many friends. Well, it isn't a gift from "me" but instead has the tag "From: Mittens" as it is the annual gift from my wonder pooch and border collie best friend Mittens!

Yes, it has become well known now after the past four years that this is going to be a project that I put a lot of work and thought into. Many special moments spent with my best friend and even my family doesn't mind that it isn't a calendar of THEM. My border collie never complains about my driving, many 10,000's of miles later, and is always there with unconditional joy even if I'm just having a bad day. It is a way to showcase many of my special days with her in the past year, many of the special images I've captured that will forever be in our memories of this special wonder dog in our lives!

So Mittens, this entry is for you! Thanks for making the 2010 calendar just as exciting to create as the first one years ago! And thank you for making time together that much more special. Now, can you stop asking me for a Nilla Wafer while I'm typing this in!!? :)

(photos: various images from the past couple of annual calendars...)

You can buy your winter/spring Desert Hikes preparations again

Hey, it might be dark 16 hours a day now but winter cold hiking and spring wildflower hiking in the deserts of Central/Eastern Washington are just around the corner! Don't believe me? Today is only 12-seconds shorter than yesterday, and tomorrow? Tomorrow will give us only 8-seconds fewer of daylight!
I'm pleased to see that the outlets for Best Desert Hikes-Washington are back in stock again after the past month or two of unavailability due to the running out of the first printing of this title. The second printing is hot off the presses and I got my first box of them yesterday from Mountaineers Books to fulfill an order I put in back in October!
Hope to see you stomping the sage lands with me the next 5-6 months!

Nice PR for Day Hiking-South Cascades this week

Well, it is nice to be a part of someones "Christmas list" and even more of an honor to be part of a list of great ideas for "gifts for the outdoors type" that shows up in a media outlet such as the Portland Oregonian. Therefore I'm quite happy to see my book "Day Hiking-South Cascades" included in a list of recommended hiking guidebooks by Oregonian travel writer Terry Richard this past weekend. Care to read over the full column, head HERE and enjoy the long list!

Thanks for making the Holiday Market a success!

What a great day it was Saturday and I appreciate each and every one of you who came by the annual Holiday Market and took the time to come stop by my table and display! The enthusiasm from everyone who came was addicting and I was honored to have many surprise visitors come by as well - it was wonderful! Many note cards, many books and prints later, I packed up and left feeling so lucky to have this opportunity to share and be a part of the community around me. Thank you everyone, both those local as well as those who came from outside of the Valley to enjoy the day.

Come browse, shop, or just visit at the annual Holiday Market!

Are you confused what to get a loved one this Holiday season? Strapped tight for money and don't want to get sucked in to the ease of over-spending on the Internet? Have a love and appreciation of hand made goods and wonderful creations by local area artists? Then please accept my reminder to come to the beautiful Snoqualmie Valley this coming Saturday, December 5th between 10:00am-3:00pm to the 10th annual Holiday Market held at in The Commons at Chief Kanim Middle School just outside of Fall City! What? Too far from where you live? Make it into a lovely half-day trip of relaxation and stop by a wonderful annual holiday fair, then add on great other destinations for a fantastic family or romantic early Christmas cheer! I'll have many new products available at my table and as always, a happy smile to greet you and just chat about almost anything! Hope to see you there.

Great music with wind and pipes

No, I'm not talking about bag pipes or flutes or any other wind-blown instrument. I'm back to talking about lovely pipe organs again! I quickly wanted to let everyone know, and I know there are some among you out there who know nature isn't the only thing worth photographing and appreciating(!!), that the CD release of the week-long 2008 OHS Convention in Seattle is out. This wonderful 4-CD set has every performance from every venue that was part of this week-long event, which took place in July 2008 around the Puget Sound region. The 36-page booklet that comes with it has an enormous amount of information for the musically inclined appreciation of historical pipe organs around the region. And I've got to put in a plug that it has a lot of very grand photography, since each image inside of each venue is from my image library shot for this convention! I hope you'll visit the Organ Historical Society and check it out and consider supporting this spectacular organization and what they do around the world. See the CD on their website, then please take time to browse around to learn about OHS while out there too!

Bring on the tugboats

As a child I sure had a fascination with tugboats. Sure, I had a fascination about trains and stuff too! But I remember how thrilled I was to count the tugboats I'd see on the Columbia River when we would do a family trip up the Columbia River Gorge to The Dallas to see relatives over the holidays sometimes. I thought they were so cool and still do! I've had a few chances to photograph them over the past few years in Puget Sound when out on a ferry or other boat. Now my childhood fascination can be enjoyed yet again after seeing one of my images of a lovely tug passing by the front of the Space Needle in Seattle being used in the just released 2010 Tugboats calendar. It was a pleasure to work with Capt. Tom McCall in New York who put this together and I'm excited to get my copies soon! You can see it as well as purchase it here at Tugboatbay.com - enjoy!

(photo: tugboat on Puget Sound passing in front of the Space Needle and the Seattle waterfront)

It's the Holiday Fair time of year

It's that time of year again, time to prepare for some upcoming holiday season art/craft fairs! And time to have fully updated my inventory for the season on my note card sales racks in retail locations. It is fun to see how quickly attention is drawn to the new note cards when I show up changing 1/2 of the stock I had on hand! Makes me realize maybe some people do really pay attention to what I'm doing out there....

Back to creating more prints and goods before December kicks in - man, I'm making a mess around this place! Hope to see you in a couple of weeks in the Snoqualmie Valley - more soon, or just get the info on the "Upcoming Events" tab on the right of this blog!

(photo: messy pile of matted up prints, ready to be reviewed and updated with even more local history, local scenes, and new material from around the Pacific Northwest)

Need your Desert Hiking fix? Book new printing is on the way!

I have seen the supplies of "Best Desert Hikes-Washington" slowly dwindle to virtually non-existent the past couple of months as the first printing of the title has run as dry as a summer in the Columbia Basin! Happily I'm pleased to let you know that a second printing of the book is just coming to completion and will be available before the holidays! I just sent a crisp copy of the cover photo to the publisher today to make sure they were ready to go. So if you are bummed about the rough weather of late in Washington, the snow about ready to start piling up in the Cascades this weekend, and wish you had a good solution to still enjoy getting outdoors? Want to have grand wildlife viewing opportunities all winter and next spring? Pick up a copy of the book soon before Christmas if you don't already have a copy or three! If you already have the book then contact me and arrange to spend a day out in the Washington desert hiking or photographing wildlife this winter! That's where I'll be....

Tomorrow's KCLS presentation @ Des Moines Library - cancelled

Just got word and need to pass along...tomorrow night's last of the series of talks I've been slated to do via King County Library System this fall, slated for November 4th @ 7:00pm at the Des Moines regional library, is now cancelled. Much discussion has passed this week with them since my household has become home to the H1N1 flu virus apparently, and with things happening there as well, we all figured it best to hold off on things.

Good news is we'll be rescheduling this event for after the holidays when people are bored and want to start getting into the outdoors but it's still dark and raining! So look for updated information about when it is to be sometime in January-February. Thanks.

Up next: see you in Bothell

On the heels of getting back to work upon returning from my trip, I'll be presenting the third of my series of talks at various King County Libraries tomorrow night, October 29th. I hope to see a few of you there at the Bothell Regional Library tomorrow evening! Please come up to introduce yourselves to me if you are a new friend so I have a chance to meet you.

Next up to attract interested people in the South Puget Sound region? Des Moines KCLS Library next Wednesday evening, November 4th! You can always see my current schedule of upcoming presentations and shows on the "upcoming events" panel on the right side of this blog :)

(photo: American Three-toed Woodpecker on a burned snag on Crow Hill in the Entiat Mountains, while working on Day Hiking-Central Cascades!)

So how did I get tied to infectious diseases?

One of the things that will always amuse me as a photographer is how many different ways my photographs can end up being used. In particular it is so much fun to see just how many unique clients might find value in my work - even if the image doesn't seem to have anything in common with the subject! Case in point is another photo usage that will happening in December 2009 for the 25th Annual Infectious Disease Conference. Last year my Christmas time image of the Space Needle was used as part of the program cover for this annual conference held by Providence Hospital-Everett Medical Center. While I'd love to have the ability to get a microscope and start photographing the cool looking blob of germs that I'm tied to, I'll enjoy another photo use like last year as part of their conference in 2009 coming up. And maybe someday I'll learn about micro-photography at the REALLY tiny level!
(photo: cover of the 2008 conference program)

Bring on October

Welcome to October! Ah, finally, the month long having been on my radar screen as "the month I'll be very busy!" is here! October brings with it annual things of nature that I appreciate and never tire of photographing. Stellar golden larch trees in the high country await my hopeful visits in the coming two weeks, and maybe another crimson red ridge roam through huckleberry meadows. Throw in birthdays happening, other family events, and it's already a full slate! What is bringing October into the "busy and even more fun" stage is a long list of program presentations that I have scheduled to start off my fall-spring busy time doing presentations. I'm eager to get started in particular with a new set of programs which is being sponsored by King County Library System in coordination with the PBS special on National Parks by Ken Burns. KCTS Channel 9 here near Seattle is teamed with many areas such as the KCLS to promote this time frame with subjects tied to the parks, and I'm honored to have my work with the Day Hiking series I've worked on with The Mountaineers Books the past 5 years be utilized by being asked to present!

I'm only one week away from the first of many presentations, the first being next Thursday 10/8 (see my events calendar on this blog, or view the photos part of this posting). Guess I had better start thinking about creating this presentation that I'll be using all month!

America's Best Idea...our National Parks

A lot has been said in the preceding weeks about the expected greatness of Ken Burns PBS special on the National Parks. Well, this week it starts! I hope many of you find the time to maybe enjoy this six-part series on the history of our National Park Service. I certainly am looking forward to not only the historical coverage behind the human nature in us that led to what we have today, but also the great photography!

I'll start sharing soon with you the exact details

for each of the program presentations that I will be doing throughout October in coordination between PBS/KCTS and the King County Library System - check back soon for more information!