A couple of weeks ago, I was off from work on a Friday (a faculty development day at the college - I'm not faculty, so I had a free day like the students), so Susan, Peter and I met up and drove north to enjoy a photo day together. We chose to head up to a town called La Conner and the surrounding area. We were hoping to hit the very last days of the annual Tulip Festival, where there are farm fields full of colorful tulips stretching far in every gorgeous direction.
Alas, the tulips bloomed early this year (during an early warming period in late Winter and early Spring) and we were late, so we missed the colorful fields - the tulips had already been harvested. But we did find a few pretty patches in the local little garden areas at a farm called Roozengarde, so we played with our cameras for a while there. And then we headed to the charming little town of La Conner which is wonderful for small art galleries, shops, restaurants, and a decidedly Pacific Northwest feel, including the town's "waterfront" location at a delta near the mouth of the Skagit River.
I love all things waterfront, as well as most all things Northwest. Boats, birds, flowers, art galleries of the work of amazing Northwest landscape and wildlife photographers like Lee Mann...
See some of Lee Mann's work at http://www.leemannphotography.com/. But don't look at that until a couple of days after you look at my work. Lol. Hardly a fair comparison.
Here are just a few of the photos I took that day.
On the way to La Conner, there's this wonderful little white church, Fir-Conway Lutheran Church, with an iconic tall white steeple.
(Okay, technically I didn't take the previous shot on our photo outting day; I took it back on an extremely cold day in December when I was in the area doing photography after working an interpreting job even further north, in Mt. Vernon. I liked the sky better in my shots that day than in my photo day with Susan and Peter. I do wish the annoying power lines weren't in the shot. :p All the rest of the images in this post are from the photo walk day, though. All are rather randomnly chosen shots, by the way, not necessarily what I consider the *best* shots of the day.)
I have a few more shots I might add later that were from lunch. Nothing too exciting, just a burger plate, a few shots inside a cute little restaurant/pub.
It was a good day. Afterwards, I finally took the time and initiative to go through the set-up steps for the photo printer I bought (as part of a package) when I bought my SLR camera. So now the ink cartridges (all EIGHT of them!) are in place, the software is installed, and just this week I received through mail the special USB cable I had to order separately so that I could connect my computer to the printer. So... I haven't actually yet been brave enough to try to print any of my images, but I've taken the necessary steps so that I'm ready... about ready, anyway... to try.
Soon. :)
