Bridgetown Swing

Last week we joined M's dad at his West Coast Swing convention. I took advantage of it to take a few pictures of dancers. Despite it not being the first time I still find it quite difficult to capture the right instant and nail the focus perfectly (in the dark, very large aperture and manual focus).

You can find a few more here.
Anyway, it was interesting to see him and M dance and also see what the "pros" would do.

Engaged

Where is my mind ?

Yesterday M had a dinner out with her dad. As they came back, she suggested we go out to MFNW (Music Fest North West). For a week, groups play every night for one hour each in 15ish concert halls around Portland, most of them around Burnside. I had a quick look at the (large) program and didn't recognize anything and figured it was expected as it would probably young underground alternative groups.

We headed to the Crystal ballroom to join Allen, but as we arrived it was sold out :(. We decided to walk on the direction back to home and pick a concert on the way. M picked the shows at Dante as she knew a song of the group that was on. We stopped by, payed 15$ each for 2.5 shows (6$ / showing). The group playing: The Moondoggies actually sounded quite good. The following group, Bobby Bare Jr. was really weird and honestly I didn't care for it.

The last one was a single, older guy with his guitar singing some bluesy, hardish, rough songs. We sounded really great. After 10 minutes I was commenting to M, that this guy really deserved to have a group with him and it would sound great. I checked again the program and saw the name "Black Francis". It didn't take me too long on wikipedia to realize that this was the guy I knew under Frank Black, formerly singer of... the Pixies... Yeah the purists will remind me that his old scene name was Black Francis... Anyway, I'll remember this night as the night I saw the singer of the Pixies for 6 bucks in a tiny room, 3 meters away :).

And yeah, he definitely would have sounded better with his band but still, he was great :). I didn't have my camera as Concert halls tend to not allow to take pictures, but this was apparently not a problem :(. So I only have phone pictures.

Portland Japanese Garden

Last weekend we had a looong saturday doing chores and finishing some long due home improvement. We bought a few boxes in order for me to store all my camera gear in orderly fashion and organize my desk.
We also bought a cabinet in order to store all the liquor instead of having it take counter space. We found a nice looking, cheap little wooden cabinet at Bed Bath and Beyond. Label said "Made In China, Easy to Assemble". I opened the box with enthusiasm until I realized that there was no assembly manual and we had taken what appeared to be the last box in the color we liked. After about 20 minutes staring at the disaster, spreading the pieces around, turning them, shuffling them, I decided I would go ahead without the instructions. It took me a while, a bit of trial and error, but my recent experience with Ikea furniture helped me figure out what some apparently weird parts were for. Success ! We now have a nice little cabinet full of booze awaiting happy thirsty guests.

We had enough with chores so we took it easy on sunday and Michelle suggested going to the Portland Japanese Garden. I had never been there and always wanted to. We found a very nice, soothing, aesthetic but slightly overcrowded garden. I really loved the place and definitely want to come back once fall colors have started. I took quite a lot of pictures, here are a few to give you an idea on how it looks like.

Peaceful


Reminds me Monet's garden


Swirly ?

You can find more samples here.

Chicago

Two weekends ago we had a 3 days long weekend thanks to Labor's day. On 09/09/09 we were going to attend Michelle's uncle wedding in Chicago so we flew a few days before and enjoyed some time visiting the city. I have to say I was not thrilled at the idea of spending 5 days in the midwest in just one city, but I actually really liked Chicago. The city architecture is fantastic, the skyscrapers and "the loop" area actually impressed me more than Manhattan. Apparently this is where all this frenzy of building tall things started, after the city suffered from a massive fire in 1871.

You get Gothic towers, glass towers, the Sears towers are still the second tallest building on earth (the view from atop is fantastic).

The Chicago Tribune building at sunset


View from the Sears Tower.

I enjoyed walking around and recognizing all the areas that were providing the background to one of my favorite movies ever: The Blues Brothers. I wished for a few seconds I could jump in an old cop car, and jump over the river using one of these mobile bridges as a ramp, with some loud blues playing: "sweet home Chicagoooo".


Or a little bit later listening to the Elevated Train (The El) passing buy, I couldn't help but remember Elwood's hotel room. This thing is really loud!


We stopped for an afternoon at the Art Institute and enjoyed the largest collection of impressionist paintings outside of France, and as Impressionism is my favorite painting's style we took our time. Their collection of Monet, Renoir and Van Gogh is worth the visit. We also spent some time in the modern art wings, and for most of it, neither of us really get it, but it's still interesting to look at.


When M saw this one, her first words were "that's my brain!". You can clearly see it on the picture :).

We also spent some time in Millenium Park and I really enjoyed "The Bean" (Cloud Gate), this large reflective metallic structure (kind of like a giant mercury bubble) shaped like a bean is exposed among many other large displays of modern public art. I enjoyed taking pictures of people taking pictures of their reflections.


We also tried the local food specialties including super duper extra thick stuffed Pizza (not bad, but not breathtaking) and steaks at Morton's (breathtaking, this was truly amazing).


I got to meet all M's family (on her mom side) and we had quite a nice time at the wedding, dancing to a great band's music in great company.

You can find more pictures of Chicago there (first series all in B&W) and pictures from the wedding here (I am changing my digital workflow and it seems I overexposed many quite a bit in post-processing and will probably do another round of corrections).

Edit: I did one round of corrections on the exposures, it should be a little bit less blindingly bright.