Floodwaters

Tuesday, the valley below my home flooded. It wasn't a little flood, it was a big, whopping "things outside the 100 year flood plain are under water" flood. Pretty much the entire valley was under water; all the roads out of Carnation were closed. If you all felt uneasy on Tuesday, it was because the entire world was cut off from the civilizing influence of little Carnation, WA. Lots of people had their houses full of water, and it just looked like the evening news when they want to show you a horror story.

I was working the polls on Tuesday, and I went out at lunchtime to make some photographs. I'm not quite ready to look at those, yet.

I went out Wednesday morning, though. It was hard; I was upset and most of the places I wanted to go were still inaccessible because the roads were still underwater. When I got home, my wife asked me if I'd gotten anything good, and I told her I'd gotten nothing but crud. Sometimes that happens.

But this morning, I sat down and went through the Wednesday images, and got a surprise. Lots of dreck, to be sure; bad compositions and nasty tonality and power lines whacking off corners in ugly ways, and no convergence or depth at all. I look at those frames, and it's clear I was just pointing the camera and letting the shutter go. But, to my delight, some frames are good. Strangely, most of the frames that are not dreck are exposures I don't really recall making. There's probably a good lesson, there. Right now, I don't have a clue what it is.

Anyway, the decent ones are now in the sdg gallery on my website. If you just want to see the new ones, start here.