Back Home!

I'm back from my most recent destination wedding. It was help in beautiful Medora, North Dakota surrounded by the North Dakota Badlands.

While in a fairly remote location, Medora is North Dakota's number one tourist destination. While populated by only about 100 people year-round, during the summer months it is occupied by thousands of tourists and seasonal employees.

I'm sure in the coming weeks, I'll be posting more images from this wedding, as there were so many great photo opps.

Finally Back to Blogging!

After a longs summer hiatus, I'm promising to post on a regular basis again.
In hind-sight, perhaps leaving up funeral photos for the past month was not the best choice. I'm thinking that this blog is going to be mostly of a wedding and portrait slant from here on out. More personal work will be posted elsewhere to be linked shortly.

Currently I am in Montana on my way back from a destination wedding in Merdora, North Dakota.

I'll post some of the images from this very beautiful wedding soon.

In the mean time here is a North Dakota Landscape.

RIP Sandy Barr

A few weeks ago Sandy Barr, a well known St. John's figure died while running his flea market. He was 69.
For years he was well known as a wrestling promoter and, many years ago was a pro wrestler himself. He even hosted pro wrestling at his flea market every Tuesday. I covered his memorial service for The Sentinel newspaper. It was held in Cathedral Park on a rainy afternoon.

Starlight Parade

And now another week has gone. I figure I'd better post something new.
Here are a few shots from the Starlight Parade earlier this month. It's one of Portland's more eccentric events. I like it a lot more than the Rose Parade.

Berries

Wow, it's been a whole week since I've posted -- in my mind it's still March, but here it is the Summer Solstice -- this year is flying by. Last weekend we took Anika Strawberry picking. The berries were good, but I think they were too ripe for picking as they turned to mush within 48 hours.

Dignity Village

One story I've been following for the past several years is Dignity Village
Now located in Northeast Portland, they have become quite a collection of small houses. Beginning in 2000, Kwamba Productions has been working on a documentary film about this intentional community and I have been working with them providing some still images.

This image is from my last trip out there back in March.

Suzanne Vega

Lahttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.spell.gifst week I got to photograph Suzanne Vega for KINK radio as she was recording for them in the studio. I've always been a fan of her work, so it was a thrill to get to be able to take pictures of her performing in such an intimate setting.

Commissioner Sam Adams

I have a shot of Portland City Commissioner Sam Adams on my new site. Images from my 15 minutes shoot with him have been used both in PDX Magazine and in the St. John's Sentinel. The image used on my new site is a close-up. PDX used something similar. I liked this photo also of Commissioner Adams on the steps of city hall.

New site now up!

My editorial site is coming along. I now have two galleries live to give people an idea of my more journalistic endeavors.
Let me know what you think -- http://www.jasonekaplan.com

Peacock

I'm trying to get better about posting more often.
The last few days I've been working hard to get my editorial web site up. There will be a new blog associated with it as well, though this one will continue too.

Valerie Day

Here is a photo of Valerie Day performing with her band Nu Shooz.

More Parade Photos

Another Parade Photo

Her ribbon says 3rd place. I wonder what she did to win it.

St. John's Parade

The 40th annual St. John's Parade was earlier this month. Over the next few days I'll post some pictures from it.

Back at last

Early last week, Anika, my three year old daughter became violently ill. Then Summer, my wife fell sick, then it was my turn. It was a pretty awful week, but we are all well on the mend now and all on antibiotics. These next few days I'll be trying to get caught up on my work.

A couple of weeks ago I rented a perspective control lens. This lens allows you to use tilts and shifts to alter the focal plane. Most often this type of manipulation is done with large format cameras, but I wanted to try it on my full-frame DSLR. For a while I've been fascinated by the potential for using tilts to enhance selective focus in portraits. You can see a couple of photos experimenting with this.

The first one is of Anika. The effect is subtle here, but you can see the plane of focus cut across her eyes. In the next image the lens was able to be used to isolate her while sitting at a table with Summer.

I also went for a bike ride with my camera and tried to experiment with "false miniaturization" which is an optical illusion created by using selective focus to make your mind see subjects in an image tiny models. I discovered that the angle of view is just as important as the use of selective focus. You can see that in the image looking up at the bridge there is no miniaturization. However, the illusion is achieved nicely while looking down from the bridge onto a condo complex.

It would be interesting to try to incorporate this illusion into photographs of people. I'll have to work on that.

The Easter Bunny Coming to Portland (from last month)

Time is going by so quickly, I forgot to post that I saw the Easter Bunny early last month.

Tree at TSD

While I was in Texas I stopped by to visit the Texas School for the Deaf where I worked during the 96-97 school year. It was strange going back. For one thing , It's a closed campus now and I had to go with security and get a tour from a staff person. Walking through the grounds was a little like walking in a ghost-town. All the kids were in class during my mid-day visit, so everything seemed empty. When I was working there, the whole campus was under construction. Only a few of the new building were finished (including the dorm where I worked). Now the whole complex is not only complete, but lived-in, aging, no longer new. It's quite nice, though; much nicer then when I was on staff. All the plans that seemed to be distant dreams back in 1997 are now fact -- the new cafeteria, auditorium, and media center. New huge school buildings now house the classrooms that used to be scattered in small, dilapidated structures connected by covered walkways. One thing I always loved about the campus was the live oak trees that had been meticulously spared during the construction. There was one right outside the dorm where I worked. I could stare into its upper branches from the office. I looked at it for months before I finally brought my 4x5 camera to work and photographed it. The small image was the result of that picture taken 10 years ago. The larger image is the biggest reason I wanted to visit that campus -- to see that tree again, and photograph it one more time.

Austin Bats

The very first time I set foot in Austin, TX it was early August, 1996. I was driving from Portland, OR to work for a year at the Texas School for the Deaf. My car broke down outside of Waco and I had slept in it the night before. I then walked to the closest small town and had a very uncomfortable encounter with a tow truck driver who took me to a mechanic shop in Waco. I had to leave my car and take the Greyhound to Austin with only as much as I could carry.

When I arrived Downtown at the bus station it was about 7:30 pm and 105 degrees. The damp heat was oppressive and I strained under the weight of my luggage. I was walking across the Congress Ave Bridge to find a Motel. I noticed a long line of people on the sidewalk looking over the side. Looking over the rail to see what they were watching I saw about 100 people sitting on the grass below starting back up at the people on the bridge. When asked, a woman on the bridge said "we're waiting for the bats." "There are bats under this bridge?" I asked. She said, "you're not from around here, are you."

I went down to lie on the grass and watch. At about 8:30, just at the sun touched the horizon to set, about one and a half million bats flew out of the grooved in the underside of the bridge and made a cloud that darkened the sky as they flew out and spread over the river to spend the night foraging insects.

Last week I was excited to hear that the bats had returned from their Mexican migration and were flying right after sunset. In the cool of the spring time, they don't fly out in one huge cloud so much as stream out in a fluttering river over about a 10 minute period. It was still something to see, and the people were still lined up on the bridge.

Back Home

I'm back home in Portland, and have been busy editing all the photos from Craft Brewers Conference. I'm actually all finished with that and am now looking at some of the personal photos I took during my off time.
This image was taken with a Holga at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Research Center.

The Conference has begun

It is good to see that unmistakable skyline again. I spent the day driving around the city and wondering around downtown. I had lunch at the Avenue Cafe which was just as good as I remember. In the evening I photographed the opening party of the Craft Brewers Conference. I'm now on my way back to the conference to photograph more of the conference activities.

The opening party took place at Stubbs BBQ on 8th st. Before it began I walked down to fabled 6th st and was exstatic to see that Jim-Jim's Water Ice is still open and going strong. Jim-Jim's makes the best Italian ices I've ever had.