Coopers Hawk Over Sunrise, Mt Rainier National Park

Walking the trail above the lodge at Sunrise, on the way to Mt Fremont Fire Lookout, and even before that on the trail, the hillside is loose rock, each about the size of your fist and so solid it rings like a bell.

The trail is a snaking terrace and protected from a slide by a retaining wall piled high against the natural slope, piled high with the volcanic basalt of the hillside. Gazing up you see trees that have found a hold in the blazing sun, themselves ablaze with a solid, bright green flame.

And the hawk, for it is only one hawk, soars in stop-motion against the blue blue sky. But it’s a Cooper’s Hawk! It’s a bird that never gets so high in the mountains. It likes to be near the rivers and forests where it can get those tasty birds, those jays and pheasants and chickens, and mammals, those chipmunks, hares, mice, squirrels, and bats.

Still, it looks fine with it.

This is a new work, quite large on canvas, with archival pigment ink.

$1500.

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Coopers_Hawk/lifehistory

Fred Meets Therese

One of my photographs was featured on yourdailyphotograph.com, a site published by the Duncan Miller Gallery in Santa Monica.  Duncan Miller is one of two prestigious photography galleries on the west coast, the other being The Fraenkel Gallery To make the cut for that day my photograph was selected from several thousand submissions.

Fred Meets Therese - I Love Lucy was a regular rerun when my daughter was ten and a small black and white set was all we had for entertainment.  William Frawley played Fred Mertz, an irascible character and foil to his wife Ethel, played by Vivian Vantz.

Title: Fred Meets Therese
Artist: Christopher Petrich
Date of image: 1996
Size: 8x10 inches (20x25 cm)
Format: silver gelatin
Features: signed on back, edition of 5
Price: $625
Sale Price: $575*
(*next 24 hours only, until Aug 26, 9:00 am PST)

Walking The Line, On Strike, September 7

"While many districts across the state recently agreed to contracts that featured substantial salary increases for teachers, Tacoma, the state’s third largest district, remains at an impasse, along with Puyallup and a handful of other districts around the state."

So far it hasn't rained. It's usual to get at least some in September, at least in my memory. Now the first week has passed and the sun is shining.

Rain would be bad on the picket line. But yesterday the dry weather opened windows on cars going by, which allowed drivers to shout out encouragement. The teachers on the line wore summer clothes while shaking their heads in dismay.

"We haven't heard anything," was the common response when I asked if the strike would last through the weekend. One man with a short graying beard told me he worked the apparel industry before teaching.  This was to be his first year on the job. "I have a degree in Communications," he said, "but I had to take two courses in communications to get my teaching certificate."

The man standing beside him said "They don't make it easy to become a teacher."

The Big Badlands Last Year

August in the badlands is hot. The dead prairie grasses are yellow, but where there is water, green trees. The land is old, and it is barren. It is so dry that the mineral colors of the eras show clearly. Pinks, browns, yellows, and blue gray stripe the distant eroded buttes and canyons. Any organic material, any loam for example has long ago dried to dust.

The scene is millennia before our very eyes because this was the bed of a vast inland sea and we see the layers of earth in cross section there. The layers accumulated over hundreds of millions of years, an incessant rain of dust and death descending to the sea bottom for all that time.

Now the sea lies bone-dry under empty skies in summer and winter.

Big Badlands, South Dakota, 2017

Missouri Photo Workshop Submission 2018

The workshop has conducted yearly sessions all over Missouri for seventy years with the best up-and-coming photographers in the business. I've sent some of my work, old and new, with the hope that I can add this to my lifelong learning about photography.

"When the late Clifton C. Edom of the Missouri School of Journalism founded the Missouri Photo Workshop in 1949, he too, looked to the past to map the path for photojournalism's future. Inspired by the gritty, content-rich photographs of the documentary photo unit of the pre-WWII Farm Security Administration, Edom promoted research, observation, and timing as the methods to make strong story-telling photographs. FSA director Roy Stryker and photographer Russell Lee worked closely with Edom in the creation of the workshop and served as faculty members during its early years."

Bob And Jay's Ass, 1974

I created large format silver photographs of my home town for 20 years from 1990 through 2010. These are rich, beautifully crafted silver images processed for permanence. Vintage prints are made within a year of the photograph create date. My usual practice was to print within a few days or weeks of exposure. There are at most six prints per image; most images have three or fewer prints.

Ramona - Cradling Daddy, June 23

Ramona - Cradling Daddy 2018

I created large format silver photographs of my home town for 20 years from 1990 through 2010. These are rich, beautifully crafted silver images processed for permanence. Vintage prints are made within a year of the photograph create date. My usual practice was to print within a few days or weeks of exposure. There are at most six prints per image; most images have three or fewer prints.

A Boy On Skates, June 21

This boy coasted up and down the sidewalk on skates behind his sleek young dog, his hand tight on the dog's leash. And when the boy stopped he seemed to puzzle over the right way to tie the dog to a pole. But the dog stood still without the leash, tethered by his gaze on the distracted master.

A Boy On Skates, 2018

I created large format silver photographs of my home town for 20 years from 1990 through 2010. These are rich, beautifully crafted silver images processed for permanence. Vintage prints are made within a year of the photograph create date. My usual practice was to print within a few days or weeks of exposure. There are at most six prints per image; most images have three or fewer prints.

Ramona - Toddler in ivan's arms, June 20

Ramona was tired, but she insisted, forcefully, "grilla for me! stop it!"

Ivan's is a sad story.  Born in Africa, he was taken from his family and was kept as a curiosity in South Tacoma at a discount mall called The B&I Circus Store. His place was an empty concrete room. I saw him once, sitting in a corner with his back to the wall, not moving, pitiable. Then he moved to Atlanta, where he prospered.

Here, he has a red flower in his hand, and a toddler in his arms.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYYL2LxotA8

Ramona - In Ivans Arms 2018

I created large format silver photographs of my home town for 20 years from 1990 through 2010. These are rich, beautifully crafted silver images processed for permanence. Vintage prints are made within a year of the photograph create date. My usual practice was to print within a few days or weeks of exposure. There are at most six prints per image; most images have three or fewer prints.

Ramona - Toddler At The Door, June 15

She's always pushing buttons; she knows the IPhone Home Button works with only my finger. She knows these things.

Ramona - Toddler At The Door, 2018

I've gotten a bunch of requests for technical info on my pictures of the day.
Camera: Leica M9
Lens: Leica 35mm f/2 SUMMICRON-M ASPH
Exposure: 180/f9.5 (ISO 320)
Post processing: Adobe Photoshop Version: 13.0.1 (13.0.1.3 20131024.r.34 2013/10/24:21:00:00) x64
Operating System: Windows NT, Version: 6.2
System architecture: Intel CPU Family:6, Model:15, Stepping:2 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2

I created large format silver photographs of my home town for 20 years from 1990 through 2010. These are rich, beautifully crafted silver images processed for permanence. Vintage prints are made within a year of the photograph create date. My usual practice was to print within a few days or weeks of exposure. There are at most six prints per image; most images have three or fewer prints.

Couple In The Gulch - One In Pink, Photo Of The Day, June 13

Cutting through the ancient beds of glacial till Puget Gulch is the channel for fresh water to the Sound. Over the years the people around it pulled out trash, old cars, tires, needles, mountains of junk to allow stands of alder, maple, fir, cottonwood to grow a thick canopy above it. The trees cool Puget Creek so that the salmon can spawn there again. 

Down the gulch people walk to the sea.

Couple In The Gulch - One In Pink, 2018

I created large format silver photographs of my home town for 20 years from 1990 through 2010. These are rich, beautifully crafted silver images processed for permanence. Vintage prints are made within a year of the photograph create date. My usual practice was to print within a few days or weeks of exposure. There are at most six prints per image; most images have three or fewer prints.