Spring - Fotoeins Fotografie

Spring light over Seattle and the Salish Sea

Above/featured: “Aurora and Mercer” – 4 Mar 2020 (X70).

A favourite place is Seattle, an American city in Washington state, only 2 to 3 hours by car from Vancouver, Canada. For two metropolitan regions close by proximity, their respective evolutions have created very different cities over time. I present below 12 places around Seattle in spring. In this part of the world, there’s every chance for overcast skies and showers, but I assure you of one thing: the light is very good when the sun is out. And when there’s abundant light, I’m all about the superposition of light, shadow, construction, and person.

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Seattle: Sand Point Sculptures (A Sound Garden)

Above/featured: On the Art Walk trail.

In northeast Seattle, the NOAA Art Walk is contained fully within the campus of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Western Regional Center (NOAA WRC), located at Sand Point next to Magnuson Park. Initially, I’d intended only to visit one sculpture from which a “fairly successful” local band got its name. I explored the entirety of the Art Walk on a breezy sunny early-spring morning for an easy peaceful walk on a trail hugging Lake Washington’s shoreline. Over a two- to three-hour period, I encountered only a handful of other visitors, some of whom may have been NOAA staff.

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Vienna: Othmar Schimkowitz sculptures in the capital

Above/featured: Musenhaus (Muse House), Linke Wienzeile in Vienna – 18 May 2018.

Early 20th-century European artist Othmar Schimkowitz was one of many key figures in Vienna Modernism, an art movement which celebrated its centennial in 2018 in the Austrian capital city. Schimkowitz was born in Hungary and became well-known in Vienna for his architectural sculptures. In 1898, he joined the (Vienna) Secession, a group of artists which included Josef Hoffmann, Gustav Klimt, Max Kurzweil, Carl Moll, Koloman Moser, and Joseph Maria Olbrich.

Sculptures by Schimkowitz are often seen in a variety of architectural creations by Otto Wagner. Here below are four Schimkowitz examples in Vienna; all are accessible with public transit from Wiener Linien (WL) transport authority.

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My Tirol: Stubai alpine valley

(Spring 2018.)

After the morning to and from Scharnitz, I returned to Innsbruck, and immediately headed south into the Stubai valley for the afternoon and early-evening. I had enough time to make a short walk in each of the towns Neustift and Fulpmes, but truth told, I would’ve preferred a minimum of one full day to appreciate more fully the spring-summer rhythms in the river valley and ascend the cable cars up both Kreuzjoch and Elfer, plus another day to the very end of the Stubai valley to Mutterbergalm, and up Schaufelspitze for views of the Stubaier Gletscher (Stubai Glacier) at “the top of Tirol.”

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My Cologne: wandering the streets in Ehrenfeld

For many, the German city of Cologne brings to mind the Cathedral, Karneval, and perfumed water.

For me, Cologne brings to mind great friends, tasty Turkish nibbles, football side 1. FC Köln, and Ehrenfeld.

My friend Y wanted to test her new camera on the streets, and when she suggested the Ehrenfeld neighbourhood, I readily agreed. My many visits to this city on the Rhine have frequently ended up in Ehrenfeld that’s largely Turkish and working class, an immigrant blue-collar area with which I readily identify and it’s why Ehrenfeld is my K-‘hood.

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