I recently went on a week long visit to Portland, Oregon, meeting up with my sister and the extended family. It was uncharacteristically warm and sunny the entire time (well, other than the trip to the coast).
I was a bit of a shutterbug during the trip – though I’m pretty lousy at the normal “holiday snaps” where the object is to take pictures of all the people doing all the silly things that people do when they’re being tourists. I go in more for macro photography, architecture, playing with light and texture, landscapes, and documenting the everloving heck out of museums (I take photos of the plaques, for cryin’ out loud). This photo (taken by my mom with my camera), where I’m sporting my Carbivore shirt at the Portland Japanese Garden, is one of the few that’s actually of people.
For being a group of seven adults and seven kids, we did quite a bit …
- Saw the Spruce Goose, which lives at the only air and space museum with a waterpark
- Visited the Tillamook Cheese Factory, which has got to be terribly creepy to work at, what with people staring at you all day
- Checked out the International Rose Test Garden
- Drank in the Portland Japanese Garden
- Got my feet wet in the freakin’ Pacific Ocean, which I hadn’t gotten to touch in years
- Sailed on the Columbia River (ok, ok, ‘motored’ … but it’s also a sailboat!)
Sadly, we didn’t quite make time for Powell’s (other than me visiting the micro-one in the airport) or the Portland Saturday Market, so there’s definitely reasons to go back
I’m still going through the 300+ photos that I took to see if any of them will make the cut for my photo prints shop. Other than giant cameras, that is the biggest trick I know of that professional photographers use – take a bajillion photos and some of them will come out right. A good chunk of them will only be for my personal enjoyment and for practice, due to restrictions by the park(s) involved, but I take photos primarily for my own joy anyway.
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I highly, highly recommend adding the Classical Chinese Garden to your itinerary next visit. I actually like it better than the Japanese Garden, although both are pretty great–the Chinese Garden is more intimate and has fantastic architecture, and also a lovely teahouse.
Like the Saturday Market, I found out about the Chinese Garden a bit too lateto get it onto the Official Plan Of Action, and my mom’s much more into the Japanese one, so it wasn’t feasible. … someday, Gadget, someday.