“Black Lives Matter” banner hanging on the side of a downtown Olympia building

Today is the first blog post of three that make up my submission to Expedition May of the WE35 Research Project.  Expedition May assignment was to photograph a local event or gathering and tell its story using 3 images.  The three images are of a totem, a moment and a portrait.

For those that have been following the news you might have seen the story of a recent officer involved shooting in West Olympia that involved a white OPD police officer and 2 black men who had allegedly attempted to steal a case of beer from a local grocery story.  I will no go into a great deal of detail about that shooting, you can use your favorite internet search tool and find out more than I could ever recap, and this post is in no means meant to express my opinions on what happened, IMO the investigation is still ongoing and I like to withhold these types of comments until I feel I have a good amount of the information available.  This post, as well as the 2 to follow are meant to document the event, not to comment on it.

Today’s image, as well as the next two that I will share, are from the first protest at city hall after the shooting.  For what I hope are obvious reasons I choose the above image as my “Totem” image as it feel it truly represented protest itself.

Stay tuned, my “Moment” and “Portrait” images will be coming early next week.

The Dalby Water Wheel in Union, WA on the Hood Canal

There doesn’t seem to be much history online about the Dalby Water Wheel, but the signs at the wheel indicate that this water wheel not only was important to the Union, WA area on Hood Canal, but also helped play a part in helping shape Seattle, where the wheel was first used.

We first came across the Dalby Water Wheel a year ago when we drove through Union just after dark, it was to dark to stop and try to get some pictures, but we returned over the long Memorial Day weekend and I made this image yesterday.

An in camera double exposure of The Kiss in downtown Olympia

I really enjoyed the April expedition, it was sort of a flashback to the film days when I would do in-camera double exposures. In those days you always sort of hoped that you ended up with an interesting image. In the modern digital world it is so easy to combine images in Photoshop that I hadn’t given much thought to doing them in camera again.

For the April expedition I loaded the “multiple exposure” app into my Sony a6000 and headed to Percival Landing here in Olympia. I have shot “The Kiss” many times in the past, this is the first time that I have made a double exposure of it. I really enjoy the surreal effect that this image conveys, but beyond that I really was shocked out simply doubling up, and in this case reversing, something can add something entirely new. Take a look at the very center of this image and tell me what you see there?