Muddy River

Multnomah Falls

Multnomah Falls, in the Columbia River Gorge, Oregon.

seated women

This Henry Moore sculpture was on display at Kew Gardens during my recent trip to London.

Featured on the Kew Gardens website the week of Jan 4, 2008.

Bayswater street

Just returned from a trip to London, where I took a photo or two, here's a night shot of
Queensway, in the Bayswater section of London

Sorting the Coffee Cherries

This is a photo from my trip with Equal Exchange to visit Coffee farmers in Chiapas. In it, the farmers are sorting the coffee cherries by placing them in a bucket of water. The cherries that float contain a flaw, and are discarded. The remaining will still need to be de-pulped, dried, and milled before it is ready for export.

Simojovel

A small city in the Mexican state of Chiapas. From a trip I took with Equal Exchange about a year ago to visit coffee producing cooperatives.

Philly coffeehouse

Stop by if you're in Philly. More places for coffee in Philly.

Great Falls on the Potomac

vineyards

Today, the topic for photo friday is analog, meaning they want no digital photos. While I do have boxes and albums filled with prints, I'm not sure my 6 year old scanner is quite up to up to the task. But here is a modest attempt.

This photo is from a few years back, taken on a trip to Australia. It's a vineyard in Hunter Valley, home to some great wines, and some very large spiders.

Cool

With this weeks Photo Friday theme being "cool", and with the weather turning warmer as we head into the dog days of summer, I thought I'd put in a couple of more Iceland photos.

I took these pictures on a trip outside of Reykjavik. I had signed up for a trip to see one of the glaciers. But as we headed inland, a fierce blizzard and white out conditions forced us to turn around. Instead we got a tour of the countryside, with the driver telling us stories of the places we passed.

We stopped at spot where the the tour guide wanted to show us a cave he knew. Apparently, some famous thieves had holed up a few hundred years ago to escape their pursuers. We got out of the van and started to follow a trail marked by large rocks. But the wind was blowing so hard you could bare stay on your feet. Then, one person got blown right off the trail, and we ended up heading back to the van.

Like much of Iceland, especially as you move away from the coast, the landscape was stark and forbidding. As far as you could see, no trees, no bushes, and certainly nothing man-made except for the van at our backs. Nothing but black, jagged volcanic rock and blowing snow. With nothing to judge by it became hardly possible to judge distances. I remember looking out at the landscape, and not being entirley sure whether I was looking at mountains far in the distance, or some nearby crags. A very humbling, and stunningly beautiful, area. These two pictures, scans of some slides I took, hardly do it justice.

Night in Ocean City