Another abuse of my cheap trick where I hide part of the subject’s face to draw attention to the eyes. This time it was the outer lip of a spiral slide at the playground. Anya was again not a completely willing subject and the photo is better for it.

I have a series of about five of these and this is the my favorite because it’s the only one that is in focus. I caught the edges of the hood again, but it doesn’t bother me. I’m going to pretend that it is an intentional framing mechanism. Anyone buying that?

I got another shot of that mossy backdrop I liked so much. Here I caught where it transitioned to the plain brick. Lighting was better so Anya has more color and contrast.

This was a shoot we did on Mother’s Day. I bought Patti her own, personal Canon Digital Rebel XT (which is nicer than my own camera) for her birthday — even though her birthday was in July. I found the camera on clearance at Wal*Mart. It eludes me why I was in Wal*Mart. I offer no excuses. I bought it for her birthday, months away, but I only had a 30-day window to return the camera if it didn’t work or she didn’t like it. So she got her birthday present on Mother’s Day.

We went downtown and shot photos in front of the old ice plant. It was a bit of a disaster. The location was dangerous and the kids decided to display their very real death wish by running towards drop offs, broken glass, rebar, etc.

Out of that mess came some photos I like. Anya was quite done having her photo taken by this point, but I wanted to get a few shots with that dark green moss growing on the brick as a backdrop. She complied under duress and it shows.

I like it anyway.

This was the last shot we took in front of the ice plant. As mentioned before, Anya was pretty much done by this point. I couldn’t get her to look at the  camera. But the fact that she was looking away — particularly off-frame created an interesting emotional quality to the picture. It breaks the “rules” but everything here works for me.

I found this doll in an antique shop in the Delta town of Locke. The  city of Locke was founded by the descendants of Chinese laborers and Chinese culture is still strongly present there, although the town itself has slowly faded away after the highway system passed it by.

It was a lock in Locke. I couldn’t resist the pun, so I took a photo. Interesting textures helped.

Another find at the antique store in Locke. I loved the kitchy-ness and the expressive nature of the character. The light turned a little yellow on me, but I thought it worked for the shot and I didn’t really try to correct it.

We found this truck just off the road on our way to Locke. A car-guy could probably tell you the make and model. I just knew it looked cool. It had some  strange pipe-based apparatus in the bed of the truck that I guessed served some agricultural purpose, but I’d be lying if I said I knew for sure. I always wonder about things like this. Who owned this truck? How did it get to the side of the road and what will happen to it? I somewhat hope it gets buried by time, leaving an artifact for future generations to ponder. Perhaps they will ask those same questions.

On our way down to Locke we stoped at some nameless town that had seen better days. We ate lunch outside an elementary school in a blustery wind that we were ill-prepared for, but there was a brand new playground for Anya and Stella to explore and this fantastic green wall. It was freestanding and I have no idea what function it served aside from being a wonderful background for photos.