Seattle/Portland excursion

I headed down to Seattle last weekend to visit my friend Peter Davis and do a little shooting with him. As I was waiting for him downtown I happened upon the gentleman in the photograph above. He is what is know in Seattle as a "bin drummer", Peter tells me that there are many others. I took a few pictures of him from various angles before this young child walked up and started watching him intently. I knew this was the “decisive moment” and carefully took a couple of shots before running to the other side of the street to capture the emotion on the child’s face. Sadly the child’s mother must have swept him away as he was gone when I turned round.

I met with Peter and after a few drinks we elected to head down to Portland, Oregon the next day. Peter had not visited before so we hit the road, with a flask of mulled wine and thanksgiving leftovers to look forward to when we arrived.

I just love Portland, in fact I love that place so much I didn’t even shoot that much, just soaked up the atmosphere and enjoyed a few drinks with my friend. One of the best places we hit was the Sapphire Hotel. The staff there were delightful, to the point of buying us both a drink and allowing us to hang out with them after closing time.

The following day we checked out the China Design Now exhibition at the Portland Art Museum. The exhibition focused on the explosion of the creative arts in China in recent years. It covered everything from photography to architecture and was absolutely fascinating. The relationship of these new waves industries to the scaling down of state control is alluded to but never explicit. As with imagery, less it seems, is more.