Tale of Two Paintings

I'm taking a watercolor painting class from Tom Hoffman and must miss class tomorrow, so decided to  post this week's work here. (I had to photograph the paintings using a flash tonight. Ich!)

The first painting below is a sketch for our homework assignment, which is to simplify a complex scene. The scene I chose was a photo I took of houseboats on Lake Union. To simplify it, I left out most of the details and made the background misty, using the method described in Lesson 10 of Carl Schmaltz' book, Watercolor Lessons from Eliot O'Hara. The misty approach worked pretty well, and I'm looking forward to using it in a more formal painting of the same scene.

The original photo is quite complex

Here's a radically simplified painted version

The second painting is of a barn I saw outside of Leavenworth. I made Bill stop the car and turn around so I could grab a photo of it. As you can see, I didn't do anything to simplify the painted version because it was already quite simple. At first I thought the picture was about the barn, but I soon realized that, for me at least, it's really about the wonderful blue tree shadow.

The Year of the House

This is the story of how Bill and I managed to sell our house in the worst housing market in decades and then find our little dream house that we want to retire in. It took a whole year, and 100% of all my energy. Looking back now, I realize that we were quite lucky to succeed at this because many have not.

January: On the seventh morning of 2010 that we discovered the lower level of the house had acquired a couple inches of water overnight. Uh oh. The toilet intake hose had let go. The cleanup crew efficiently demolished our newly remodeled family room and bathroom and put everything out in the garage. It took enormous heaters several days (and copious noxious odors) to dry things out enough for us to inhabit the house again. Meanwhile, a couple tablespoons of water seeped into the corner of the family room from outside, so we decided to fix that problem before reassembling things. This decision was the beginning of the end of our year.

This whirling dervish is tearing up the new flooring in our family room.

 February: We interviewed several contractors about fixing the drainage and managed to select the one who didn’t understand that water runs down hill and who proceeded to destroy the landscaping while transforming a slight problem into a REAL problem. We fired him and started over. Eventually we got the yard repaired and a proper drainage solution installed.

March: Now it was time to put the lower level of our home back together. We interviewed the requisite droves of contractors and hired two: a very good one and a not-so-good one. Meanwhile, after living in a chaotic mess for of a couple of months already, we decided to make a year of it, and so put our house on the market in mid-month. We’d been thinking about moving westward, across the lake to Seattle, and it suddenly didn’t seem so daunting, all things considered. We staged the house, putting half of our belongings in a POD to store until the house was sold, and we’d found another place to live. We interviewed a few dozen agents and came up with a realtor to handle the marketing and sale. Seattle, here we come!

 

April: We fired realtor #1 (the best thing about our house was the floor plan, apparently. Hmm. Unlikely to draw hordes of buyers to our split-entry home), and found realtor #2, Cindy Peschell Hull, who turned out to be an angel in disguise. We entertained a number of offers and picked the best buyers of the bunch, who proceeded to tie up the house during the last week of the buyer tax credit and then back out for no reason. Back to Square 1.


May: We spent the month at the neighborhood watering hole while scores of buyers checked out our house. I know that some of you won’t view this as a particular hardship, but given the fact that I don’t drink and Bill can’t, it wasn’t nearly as fun as it should have been. By the end of the month, we were so worn down that we decided to give the house to the next buyer.

June: This strategy worked. We had a buyer. Yeah! Cindy coaxed them towards our mid-July closing date while we completed inspections on a house in the Ballard district of Seattle. But by now you should know that something would have to go wrong this month or else it would interrupt the flow of the whole year. And you’re right on the mark. At the 11th hour before closing on the Ballard house, we learned that it was of high interest to the EPA due to its role as a used-motor-oil dump. The resulted in another flurry of interviews and the employment of a real estate attorney. So far, we’d been doing a lot to combat local unemployment, but we were to do even more in future months (this is foreshadowing, BTW).


July: The toxic-waste-dump house issue resolved, we were now officially homeless, as the sale of our Kirkland house closed in mid-month and we didn’t have another one on the line. So we put the remainder of our belongings in storage POD #2 and moved into a short-term apartment right next to Swedish Hospital in Ballard. We never actually heard any of the ambulance sirens I was concerned about when we first moved in. Instead, we heard the details of the many loud conversations and arguments taking place nightly on the sidewalk outside our bedroom window, effectively masking those feeble little siren noises. Our apartment, it turned out, was on a mandatory route between bars, which every drunk in Ballard was required to stumble along between the hours of 11 PM and 3 AM at a minimum. I was tempted to put a sign out, “Night Sleepers!” But I figured no one would be able to focus well enough to read it, so why bother?

Meanwhile, after firing our second selling agent, we turned to our faithful Eastside realtor, Cindy, to help us find a reasonably safe and somewhat-close-to-habitable home in Seattle, which we would be able to pay for by merely mortgaging all we owned and selling our souls for good measure, and she promptly did so. Closing was set for August 15.

August, September, October, November: After a blissful lull of five days that followed finalizing our offer and obtaining mortgage financing, a process too gruesome to describe here, we took possession of our lovely circa 1945 home on August 17th. Then we really began generating employment. The previous months turned out to have been a mere warm-up for what lay ahead – about 20 different repair and improvement projects.

With construction work still in progress, we moved into our new home with the belongings from POD #2 in September (sleep deprivation being a prime motivator). POD #2 filled the house completely. Then POD #1 was delivered in November, inspiring several weeks’ weeding out, with the eventual result of a crammed garage, but otherwise navigable house.


December: This month brought our reward. Visits from far-away family members! From Australia came my daughter, Liz, and her boyfriend, Jim, followed by Bill’s brother Barry from England. What a treat! And, although our little house doesn’t hold as much STUFF as our old one did, it seems to magically expand for company. It works out really well, indeed! And we just love it here! It is worth everything that was required to make the move.

We will have many fond memories to review over the coming years, such as the home inspector who broke our kitchen light fixture and left the circuit panel hanging off the wall, the electrician, long-suffering Eugene, whom I taught to use a drop cloth, and the contractor who put his foot through the kitchen ceiling.

Happy New Year!

PS Just so you don’t think that December broke the pattern, the basement was all set up for Barry’s stay, when we had a record-setting rainstorm during which every basement in Seattle leaked, including ours, so we had to cram him into the dresser-room instead. Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men… How fitting that a year beginning with a wet basement should also end with one.

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Christine, a Made-up Story

Christine sits in her usual spot, a small rectangular table in the front window of Tully’s on NE 45th, sipping coffee and reading The Weekly. She comes here every Friday evening after dropping off Emily with the ex. When Emily was born, going out for TGIF family dinners became a ritual, only since the divorce Christine doesn’t go anymore. Instead, she sits here with a tall non-fat Americano and tries to ignore a dull ache in her chest that just won’t go away, although it will get much better when Emily gets home.

On first and third Fridays Emily comes home right after dinner. On second and fourth Fridays she’s away until Sunday. Then Christine ventures out to a Saturday night partner dance, the one thing that takes her mind off of loneliness. She’s learned East and West Coast Swing, Nightclub Two Step, and Waltz, but her favorite is the Tango, with its long slinking strides. She glides along the floor cheek-to-cheek with her partner, halting suddenly for a dramatic swoop of a leg and a precision about-face, to start over in the opposite direction. Christine can forget everything, even who she is, and become an exotic, passionate, mysterious woman for a few magical minutes.

Friends are always trying to fix her up, but she won’t have any part of that. You’re barely 40, Christine, they say. You don’t want to spend the rest of your life alone! One heartbreak per lifetime is enough, she answers. I’d rather be alone. Thanks anyway.

Guys hand her their cell numbers and ask her to give them a call, but she never does. And she never gives out her own number.

Tonight Christine is reading the Personals and laughing softly when something in the window catches her eye. It’s Todd waving at her to come out. The ache in her chest recedes slightly as she thinks about the fun they have at the Saturday dances. Todd shares her passion for the Tango. In fact, he’s passionate about a number of things like charity work and teaching. Christine admires that. He’s also not bad looking with silvering hair and a well-kept physique, and looks very nice dressed up for a special dance. Christine stops herself. Todd is an OK guy, she thinks, and a pretty good dancer, but he’s a guy. Don’t need any of that. Nope. She doesn’t move.

He sticks his head in the door. "Hey how’re you doing Christie?" (Why doesn’t she mind his using her nickname?) "Missed you last Saturday at the dance. It’s never the same when you’re not there. Come for a walk with me, it’s a beautiful outside."

Christine shakes her head and looks down at the paper to dismiss him.

Ten minutes later Todd is back, this time holding the stem of a red rose between his teeth. Cradling an imaginary partner, he Tangos up and down the sidewalk, stopping every now and then to bend his partner over backwards with a flourish. Christine’s shoulders lift, and she smiles. Todd drops to one knee on the sidewalk, clasping the rose to his chest with one hand and offering the other hand to her, mouthing an aria skyward. Then he pretends to lose strength and slowly crumples towards the sidewalk, like a perishing Romeo. Christine’s chest feels light and warm.

Laughing, she goes out to him.

Hyperfocusing in Photography

What's the best way to get the entire scene in focus in a photo? Like most amateur photographers, I've always focused on the most distant point to do this. For example, to get a mountain and the foreground in front of it all in focus, I'd focus on the mountain. We learned in photography class, however, that this isn't the best way to get everything in focus. Instead is a technique called hyperfocusing, which sounds pretty technical, but it's actually not all that difficult.

The principle behind hyperfocusing is this: the range of a scene that your lens can focus on the most clearly extends 1/3 in front of and 2/3 behind the point in the scene that you focus on (aka the focal point). In order to decide on a focal point, you should pick a point that is 1/3 of the way from the closest point that you want to have in focus in your photo to the most distant point.

The following two photos of seven evenly spaced plant pots illustrate this principle.

 

In the first photo above, I used a shallow depth of field (large aperture and long focal length) to make the areas that are in focus easier for you to see. The flower hanging down on the side of the second pot was my focal point. Notice that the photo quickly goes out of focus both in front and in back of the flower, but that the focus is better on the pots behind the flower than it is on the one in front of it. For example, look at the third pot, and compare it to the first pot. The third pot is in better focus because it is behind the focal point (flower), even though it is the same distance away from the focal point as the first pot is. In fact, even the fourth pot is in better focus than the first one.

While the above photo illustrates the basic idea of hyperfocusing, it doesn't show you how to get the whole scene in focus. To accomplish that, in addition to hyperfocusing, you need to use a the greatest possible depth of field (smallest aperture and shortest focal length) possible. Doing this will maximize the amount of the scene that the lens can get into focus.

  

In the second photo, above, I focused on the same point, using a great depth of field so that as much of the photo as possible would be in focus. Notice how sharp it is from the closest pot to the furthest one. In addition, even the blinds way behind the focal point are in focus.Woo hoo.

Nora Ephron, Writer

I just watched an online interview with Nora Ephron, who wrote and directed Julie and Julia among other great, funny movies. Here are a couple of quotes from the interview about story-making:

“Someone once said that there are only two facts about your life: when you’re born and when you die and everything in between is how you choose to tell the story, or how someone else chooses to tell the story."

"My mother used to say, 'Everything is copy,' meaning that every event in your life will become a story."

Nora Ephron Interview

Pete’s Home Texaco

To passing tourists driving motor coaches and towing campers, Home Texaco is another stop on the road to paradise. It's where you refill your propane bottles before continuing on to Penrose Point or Joemma Beach, or top off your tank before heading home. If Pete’s Home Texaco were in the city, it wouldn’t be a gas station. With its view out across Jones Bay to Anderson Island to the East, it would be a fancy eatery or a luxury condominium complex. But in Home such views are taken for granted.

Home Texaco is the place to borrow a tool for an auto or tractor repair. Pete doesn’t get to do as many mechanic jobs as he might if his service station were in Tacoma, but he doesn’t mind. He likes the slow pace of life here and having friends for customers and customers for friends.

To locals, Home Texaco is a social hub. While filling your tank, you find out how far down Herron Road the County is going to be chip-sealing this week and when George and Leona’s 45th anniversary celebration will be. You already know it will be at the Longbranch Improvement Club. That's a given. Pete’s knowledge about the lives of those he serves makes him a better source of news on the Key Peninsula than any newspaper you could buy.

Pete is more of an ear-witness than an eye-witness because he hears about what happens to people rather than seeing it most of the time. But he did get to watch one of the most exciting events to occur on the Key Peninsula for the entire year of '96 when Jason Barns raced his '77  Trans Am up the Key Peninsula Highway –  Pete figures he was doing about 120 – careening down the patch of road that runs through Home and past Home Texaco. Here the road makes a 30-degree turn, a few feet from Pete’s doorway. When Jason tried to make the curve, the Trans Am rocked sideways onto two wheels and flipped. The car was wrecked. Jason walked away.

We all thought that would be the end of Jason’s racing, but six months later he was back to it. We just hoped we weren’t in his way the next time he flipped. Pete said that Jason’s wildness started when his mother died the year before. This kept folks from getting too mad at him, even though he was “an endangerment to the community.” But that’s what Pete does. In his own way, he helps everyone understand everyone else.

Contrast in Photography

In my black and white photography class, we're learning how to develop and print our own film. I took the class because it's a prerequisite for most of the other classes at the school. Much to my surprise I'm loving it, notwithstanding the need to stand in a darkened room with noxious chemicals for hours on end. Go figure.

Anyway, last week's lesson was about contrast. The more contrast, the more middle gray tones move to either white or black. The following pictures were printed (enlarged or whatever the heck they call it) with different contrast filters. These are physical filters made of colored plastic gel that magically affect the contrast of the photo being printed/enlarged.

The topmost photo shows the effect of a #1 contrast filter, which reduces the contrast. The second photo was created using a #2 filter, producing normal contrast. On the last three photos I used #s 3, 4, and 5 respectively, which as you can see, increase the contrast. The result of using five different contrast filters is five different "takes" on the same picture. Pick the one you like the best. You can do the same thing for digital photos in a photo editing program.