November 2019 Phlog: In Wisconsin by John Ritchie

In September we spent a week in Wisconsin. While there, we toured both Taliesin and House on the Rock (in the same day!). They were each fantastic in their own way.

Taliesin

While in Phoenix a year ago we toured Taliesin West. As with that time, we came away wanting to renovate our house. We love Frank Lloyd Wright’s simple but elegant architecture. My goal photographing Taliesin was to extract my own artistic images from the environment, not to document the place, consequently I don’t have many photographs. With the few I’ve published here, I emphasize the fabulous use of geometric shapes.

House On The Rock

House On The Rock is like touring a giant weird fantastic dream. I could spend days there, we didn’t even get through the whole thing in an afternoon and there’s so much fantastic visual clutter it’s overwhelming. The carousel alone is worth hours, and that’s even without being able to ride it! Of course they can’t let you do that, since, according to Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods” novel, it’s a gateway into the world of gods. I can believe it!

The photographic challenges in House On the Rock were to isolate the image from the visual clutter and the dim available light.

"October" 2019: Phlogging Pullman Photos by John Ritchie

Ok, it’s November, but this is still the October Phlog. At some point month creep will force me to roll a month, but not yet.

Early in October I had the opportunity to spend a week in Pullman Washington. I didn’t do a ton of photography there, but I did see some school buses with their butts hanging out.

Bus Butts

I went out early one morning (amidst flurries of snow) for a night-time photo shoot in downtown Pullman. I was not the only one out there.

Here are some of the other images I made.

September 2019 Phlog: The Ones That Squeezed Through by John Ritchie

Suddenly it’s the end of September and I haven’t published a Phlog yet. But this time it’s not because of a dry photo pipeline, it’s the opposite: I took around a thousand images this month and haven’t had time to process them. I’ve been on several shoots with friends, went on a trip or two, but have largely been stockpiling the images for later processing. My current processing lag is greater than a month these days, it looks like I need to continue streamlining my workflow. Here are a few that squeezed through the pipeline, mostly taken in August.

August 2019 Phlog: Newport, Salem and More! by John Ritchie

These are photographs from several different trips I made in August as well as some pictures I’ve been working this summer. Not pictured here are images I made at the Junction City Scandinavian Festival, which I felt needed their own blog article.

July 2019 Phlog: Lots of New Material (Finally!) by John Ritchie

June saw big changes in the John Ritchie world. I now have a lot more free time, I have a new camera, and I’m looking in new directions. This is good for photography and I hope to see big new things coming.

I’ve been on several photo shoots in June and July and here are some of the images I’ve made. I blogged separately about the Cat Park so I won’t repeat myself here.


There’s nothing quite as wholesome as Kids and Armaments. Here are a few photographs from a visit to some old bombers at the airport. Speaking of wholesome, I found a random bit of patriotism in my neighborhood. No, I don’t live in Arizona.


Always a sucker for anthropomorphism, a trip to Thompson’s Flour Mills gave me a chance meet new friends in unexpected places.


I did a little night photography of various kinds as well.


And finally, a couple days spent in Astoria were a lot of fun and a chance for some photographs.