Airports Yesterday and Today

 

One of my final class projects for a photography class at Harvard was people on the go at airports (circa 1986). For the project I'd take the subway to Logan Airport and spend the nights in the terminals taking pictures of people traveling. I'd even sleep there at a gate and then take more pictures in the morning.  My reasoning was to get into the airport mode so that I could take pictures that reflected that feeling.

I remember that I had to 'push' TriX film to ASA 1600 and that I had a special 'continuous agitation' way to develop it.  I also used Ilford paper and special toners.  Basically, I came up with a special way to develop and print the film to capture the airport at night.  But even 'pushing' the film to 1600 I still had to take pictures at 1/15 of a second - which was a pretty slow shutter speed.

Anyway, the top nine images in this post are photos of photos that I took of the final project prints while I was in Maine. On my way home from Maine I spent a lot of time in Airports - I even slept on a bench in Dulles.  It got me thinking of this class project.  So when I got to Seattle I decided to try taking some new 'airport' photos with my digital camera.  I used my little Ricoh GRXIII - which actually has a pretty similar lens to one I used, back in the day, at Logan (Pentax K1000). The bottom 6 images are from the Seattle airport in 2025.

Right away with my digital camera I noticed that the images where WAY sharper and I did not have to 'push' the ISO either. However, I sort of liked the grainy black and white look of my 1980's airport pictures. So in iPhoto I used the black and white filters and made them comparable to the ones originally shot in black and white.  I like them much better this way.  But they are still WAY cleaner and more detailed.

However, I found the biggest difference between the late 1980s and 2025 was that these days I do not feel comfortable getting close to people in airports.  I think it might be related to the whole 911 thing and increased security in airports.  In any case, after I took just a few I chickened out and quit! 

Patrick

Sun Valley Fun

 

These are some 'outside' pictures from my time in Sun Valley. I got there in the late afternoon Friday and left on Sunday so there was only one full day to play outside.  But we made the most of it. In the morning we hiked up a fairly substantial hill - it was maybe 1000 feet high.  Then in the afternoon we drove over a really scary pass to a little canyon on a river where you could jump off of a cliff into a deep swimming hole.

Sun Valley is pretty much a desert and practically all the plants were unfamiliar to me. The town planners have managed to keep development confined to the valley so all the mountains and hills do not have houses on them.  These makes it much more scenic.  Once you leave town, or even if you just look up - it is the wild west.

Patrick

Sun Valley

 

On my way home from Maine I made a detour to Sun Valley, Idaho for a two day reunion with my college roommates. It was supposed to be a three day reunion but I had some travel woes getting there (think cancelled flights and an 8 1/2 hour flight in the extreme back middle seat from Logan to Dulles with a pit stop in Newark). But I got to Sun Valley eventually and it was all worth the travel woes.

What we did mostly was eat really good food and reminisce. The first night we ate a REALLY good home cooked meal on the deck of our fellow roommates house.  Scott cooked the steaks on the grill. The next night we ate at a fancy French restaurant.  In between meals we recreated. We climbed a mountain, played golf (I read while they played), and leaped from a cliff into a water hole in a river. 

It was all good fun and despite everyone looking a lot older than they did in college, no one has changed.

Patrick

View from the car on the car ride from Boise to Ketchum

Some final pictures from Maine

 

Our Maine vacation is now long over but lives on in photographs and memories.  Since we got back to Alaska I finished editing all my photos and these are the last of the 'ones that got away' - the pictures that for some reason I did not post in my earlier Maine blog posts.

I noticed that a lot of the photos are of the view of the row boats at the dock and thoroughfare from our house.  It is such a good view and I can't seem to resist taking more photos of the same view. Every time the light is a little bit different or there is fog, and I think, 'this time will be better than all the others'.  Of course it is not, but all of the photos of the row boats are good - if only slightly different from each other.

So I continue to take pictures of the same view and maybe one day I'll take such a killer, iconic image of the view that I will stop taking the same picture. Maybe. .. ..

Patrick

Little Tip Toe Mountain on Vinalhaven

The view from little Tip Toe