Into the Woods Again: Squaxin Park in Monochrome (Oly 06)

Squaxin Park (formerly Priest Point Park) is a botanical wonder just north of downtown Olympia off East Bay Drive NE. I have photographed here in color with my little digital Fuji X-E1 camera. How about monochrome? (Warning, "pretty" pictures below; no urban decay.)

Ellis Cove and view west to East Bay (Fuji Acros film, Spotmatic F camera, 28mm ƒ/3.5 SMC Takumar lens)

Ellis Cove (Fuji Acros film, 28mm SMC Takumar lens)

The temperature plummeted on January 11 (2024) and some snow fell. That was too good to resist. I walked to Squaxin Park but was surprised that not much snow had made it through the dense canopy down to the ground.

Samarkand Rose Garden (Kodak Panatomic-X film, Hasselblad 501CM camera, 80mm ƒ/2.8 Planar lens, yellow-green filter)

Near Ellis Cove (Panatomic-X film, 100mm ƒ3.5 Planar lens)

Near Ellis Cove (Panatomic-X film, 100mm ƒ/3.5 Planar lens, yellow-green filter)

On East Bay Drive, a dense multi-trunk tree often catches my eye.

East Bay Drive NE (Kodak Tri-X 400 film, Hasselblad 501CM, 100 mm ƒ/3.5 Planar lens, 1/125 ƒ/4)

Another snow fell on February 14, and I returned to Squaxin Park with the Hasselblad. Maybe I will show those frames in mid-summer..... 

Thank you all for exploring Squaxin Park with me.

From the Archives: Pike Place Market (Seattle) in 1973

Once upon a time, when I was young and energetic, I lived in Seattle, Washington, while attending the University of Washington (the 'Dub). I liked to go downtown with my friends to explore or eat at interesting restaurants. I found some March 1973 negatives from that previous life. 

My dad had been visiting from out of state. We took the ferry boat to Bremerton and later explored Pike Place Market. He liked Pike Place, but that was expected. He was an old hand at exploring markets, such as the famous Flea Market in Athens or the Scott's Market in Rangoon.

My dad checking out the scene

The fish fellow looked crabby

Candles were such a thing in the 1970s

Mellow time, 1973-style

Chopping the cows.

Stacking the crabs neatly. It reminds me of the Central Market in Athens. 

I took these photographs on Kodak Tri-X 400 film with my Nikkormat FTn camera and 28mm ƒ/3.5 or 50mm ƒ/2 Nikkor lenses. I vaguely recall developing the film in the darkroom in McMahon Hall with Microdox-X developer. I did not know what I was doing, but still, the negatives have survived a half century (just like our digital files will, right?). They were scratched and had dirt and lint issues, so I cleaned the examples you see here with the heal tool in Photoshop CS6. 

We will look at more Seattle pictures in future articles. Please type "Seattle" in the search box to see older entries.

Olympia in the Morning, Part 2 (Oly 05)

Let us continue our morning walk through downtown Olympia, Washington. It is quiet, and most stores are closed. I saw only 5 or 6 homeless people his time. Two years ago, there were 10s or 100s of them. How did the city purge them? Regardless, downtown Olympia is still rather grungy.

206½ 4th Avenue

Dumpster on 4th. I bet that stuff looks better than most of my wardrobe. 

Capitol Way view south

Alley parallel to 4th Avenue (25mm ƒ/4 Color Skopar lens)

My favorite Olympia Alley (25mm ƒ/4 Color Skopar lens)

Jefferson Street view north. I have not yet seen a train, but I occasionally hear them, usually at night.

Frog Pond Grocery in the historic South Capitol district (50mm ƒ/2 Summicron-DR lens).

Argh! Another Taco truck, this time on Plum Street. The fire system is for the hot sauce? 

Well, enough of exploring downtown. Time to walk home and have another coffee.

State Avenue view west (50mm ƒ/2 Summicron-DR lens).

Proceed north and soon you reach East Bay. On many mornings, it is still as a mill pond. The buffleheads and surf scoters love it here.

East Bay from Olympia Avenue NE (50mm ƒ/2 Summicron-DR lens). Swantown Marina is in the distance.

The Bigelow neighborhood has many charming traditional cottages from the early 20th century. It is not as elegant as South Capitol, but is more modest and free from the background drone of I-5.

 

Traditional cottage on Quince Street (25mm ƒ/4 Color-Skopar lens)

Historic Quince Street house

This ends our walking tour around Olympia with Kodak Gold 100 film (another one of my experiments with expired film). I used Pentax Spotmatic F and Leica M2 cameras. We will see more of Olympia in future updates. Thanks for walking along.

Olympia in the Morning, Part 1 (Oly 04)

Early morning in December, the light is soft and misty in Olympia. Well, it rains much of the time, so indeed, the light is softened and colors are muted. It was time to experiment again with color negative film. One early morning, I left my car at a repair shop on Capitol Way and walked home through the city. Here are some random scenes on the way.

Capitol Way, early morning

Time for some wiggling, 117 Columbia Street NW

Alley parallel to State Street

Alley parallel to State Street

Rhythms Coffee, 210 4th Avenue W.

According to Rhythms, "Stay tuned for some of the finest coffee on earth, never before served in Olympia." I think the best coffee I ever drank was in Colombia, but that is a story for another day.

 

It is fishy at 116 4th Avenue

Capitol Way view south, rather uninspiring

OSSA Skinworks, 109 Capitol Way N. Could they make my skin look good?

Washington Street view south, also uninspiring

Every city in USA seems to have a Washington Street. This one is not too interesting, but it does have some older architecture.

This ends Part 1 of our morning walk. Please type "Olympia" in the search box if you want to see older Olympia articles.

I took these photographs on long-expired Kodak Bright Sun (i.e., Gold 100) film using my Pentax Spotmatic F camera and the 50mm ƒ/1.4 SMC Takumar lens. This is one of the mid-1970s versions of the 1.4 lens with multi coating and without elements containing thorium salts (some early 1970s versions yellowed because of the thorium glass). Most of my exposures this morning were at ƒ/2 or ƒ/2.8. It is convenient to have a large aperture lens. 

This Gold 100 is more grainy that the Gold I shot years ago when the film was in production. The colors have that old film look; this roll survived the decades reasonably intact. Still, years have passed, and I suggest you not seek out Gold 100. I wish Kodak would reintroduce it. I tried their contemporary Gold 200 and thought it was too grainy. But in 120 size (medium format), the modern 200 might be fine. The Gold 100 decades ago was superb.

Olympia with Fuji NPH400 (Abandoned Films 12) (Oly 03)

Dear readers, we will continue our irregular series on Olympia, Washington. 

Moving to a new home in a new state was quite an adventure. Closets and boxes in our former home revealed all sorts of treasures (much of it junk). How did we accumulate all this stuff? Is this the curse of American suburbia? 

But I found some goodies. The depths of the freezer disgorged a box of 120 size Fuji NPH 400 film. The box expired in Feb. 2005. The last time I used a roll may have been in 2018, when I drove to Asheville, North Carolina, to The Vintage car show. Six years later, was it this NPH still viable? 

Being a 400 film, I thought it would be useful for hand-held work with my Rolleiflex, which has a ƒ/3.5 lens. One drizzly January morning, I walked around west Olympia while waiting for car repair. 

Eagan's Drive-In, 1420 Harrison Avenue - not yet open for the day

Eagan's toilets, maybe not available today

The dancing burger, Eagan's Drive-In

Division Street view north

Taco trucks ready to roll, Harrison Avenue

I took the Rolleiflex out on a cheerful sunny day. The NPH film responded much better.

Swantown Boatworks, Marine Drive NE 

Conclusion: Semi-success, this long-expired NPH 400 was still viable. But some of the frames were slightly underexposed, some more extreme. My Luna Pro light meter is working correctly because other rolls of film from 2024 are properly exposed, frame after frame. Could this old NPH film be more sensitive to reciprocity failure because of its age?  (Reciprocity with camera film means that the film sensitivity is not linear over a standard light range. Therefore, darker scenes need more exposure than a light meter might indicate.) For this roll, I set the Exposure Index at 320, but next time, I will use EI=200 or even lower. Regardless, it is time to use it up. Even frozen, it will not last forever.

Thanks for enduring another adventure in expired camera film. 

Into the Woods: Squaxin Park, Olympia, Washington (Oly 02)

Squaxin Park, formerly known as Priest Point Park, is a 314 acre oasis of big trees, mosses, and ferns just north of downtown Olympia on the east shore of Budd Inlet. The Steh-Chass (People of the Water)  settled this land for centuries, living in villages along the shores of Budd Inlet. In 1848, Catholic missionaries, the Oblate Fathers, came to the area with sponsorship or funding by the Hudson’s Bay Company. The Oblate Fathers displaced the Steh-Chass, cleared the land, and established the St. Joseph d’Olympia Mission and school. The Mission only lasted until 1860, after which the land lay idle for 45 years. In 1905, a group of land investors deeded some of the land to the City of Olympia to form a park. 

Priest Point Park, early 1910s (from City of Olympia)

The original park name was Priest Point, but the priests were only there for 12 years. Converting heathens must have proven a bit too difficult or not sufficiently lucrative.

The importance of this timeline is that the forest in the park has been largely undisturbed for about 150 years. This is not old growth forest but is as close as you will encounter near an urban area. The dense mosses, ferns, and towering tree trunks hint at what old growth forest must have looked like. Pockets of old growth or at least very old trees exist in the Olympic Peninsula, but Squaxin Park is closer and easier to reach (and it is only a 10 minute walk north of where I now live). 

Ellis Cove at low tide

Woods above Mission Creek

Dusk in Squaxin (1+ sec. exposure)

Trail to Ellis Cove

Rest area at Ellis Cove

I took these pictures with my little Fuji X-E1 digital camera and the compact 27mm ƒ/2.8 Fuji lens. I have not exercised this kit much in the last few years but need to refamiliarize myself with its functions. It is convenient and easy to use. For most of the pictures above, I used the Astia simulation and set the frame to 1:1 to resemble the square frame of a Rolleiflex. This crops off the edges, so you end up with fewer pixels in your files. One of the µ4/3 Panasonic cameras, the GH2, had a multi-aspect ratio sensor, so setting various frame sizes used different parts of the oversized sensor. But I think all current digital cameras simply chop off part of the frame. 

Digital is certainly convenient. The pictures are usually "sharp" (whatever that means), the exposure is usually decent, and the camera adjusts the white balance for many light conditions. You take pictures, go home, download the files, and you are ready to use them. I formerly would open the raw files and adjust them with software, but honestly, the jpeg files that the camera computes look fine for 8-bit web display. I never got into the use of Lightroom or developing a secret formula to manipulate the raw files.

Despite having used 4/3, µ4/3, APS, and compact digital cameras, I think the best digital files in my archives are from a 2005-vintage 10 mpixel Sony DSC R1 camera. Despite being "early" technology, the output was superb.