North of Normal

Blue Evening Walk

Originally uploaded by briburt

Big changes are in the air these days, so I went up to Bellingham to visit one of my oldest and best friends. We went for a stroll down in a waterfront park near the marinas on Bellingham Bay, and of course I brought my camera and tripod with me to try to catch some of the magnificent clouds moving over as dusk set in. This is one of those shots. Hoped to capture some of the sadness that will overwhelm me when (as seems more and more likely) we leave the beauty of the Pacific Northwest for the East Coast.

I processed this in PhotoShop with the “Orton” effect — which essentially deepens the color saturation and softens the edges of things while simultaneously keeping some of the sharpness right next to the softness — so it is much more interesting than mere soft-focus photography. (Notice how the top of the fron streetlamp is quite sharp, yet the light itself is very soft.) The effect can be quite striking sometimes. (This particular photo made the top 500 photos in Flickr “Explore” for 10 November 2008.)