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Abandoned Shack, Blue Sky

By amy ross | Filed in scenery, shack

HPIM4410

Friday dawned bright and clear, so we headed over to Moscow for breakfast; on the way back, I stopped to snap my favorite scene again.

HPIM4402

I’m happier with the light in these, but I think I have to branch out into some new angles. Of course, that’s going to mean navigating the wheat.

HPIM4412

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Ruins

By amy ross | Filed in scenery, shack

abandoned shack

This is basically my favorite thing I have seen since I got here. It’s like, in my dreams, I imagined Idaho would be full of romantically ruined shacks in a sea of endless wheat fields, but I figured I was being silly and sentimental. And then, the very first day, we drove my (now familiar) route between Moscow and Pullman, and there it is! My dream made real, in all its rickety, shambling loveliness.

abandoned shack, gray day

It’s basically the world’s best photographic subject, and I admit, I’m tempted to just devote this entire blog to photos of this building — different angles, different light, different weather. Like Monet with the bran muffin series. (Already I wish I’d had better sky the day I took this.)

I don’t think I’ll be quite that neurotic, but don’t be surprised if you (I mean, the abstracted you, since no one is actually reading this, haha) see this image crop up a few more times. It might be a good way to measure the progress of my technique over the life of this blog.

abandoned shack, clearing day

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Compositions

By amy ross | Filed in scenery

boxes

I had an impromptu photo shoot on my way home from class. If you google images of Moscow, ID, you see a lot of beautiful nature and cutesy college town stuff: cafes and bookstores, the stately brick buildings on campus. And yeah, that’s all here, but I love that there’s some grittier stuff thrown into the mix. An old railroad runs right along the east side of the campus, and next to it a… well, I’m not sure what it is, exactly, but it seems like a store-house or depot of some kind? For wheat, maybe? I don’t know, but I was struck by all the mysterious boxes and machinery and whatnot.

I only wish this door had been in a more contrasting color.

blue door

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Rustic Landscape

By amy ross | Filed in scenery

Tolo Trail

View from the MFA kickoff party on Saturday.

I’m taking a class this semester on Gothic literature in the 19th Century, and the professor was talking the other day about the picturesque as a Gothic trope. The word is nowadays in such common use that it feels banal, but it’s interesting to think that it was introduced as a concept as late as 1782.

The basic idea is to look at the landscape from the perspective of a painter — what before me would look good in a frame? I find myself thinking that way a lot, though with reference to photography, not painting. It’s frustrating because, lacking a wide lens, there is so much less I can squeeze into a photo than what I can behold with my eye. I’m often shocked at how dwarfish and truncated my landscapes look when I finally upload them. Still, it’s what I came to this land for, to a great extent! So hopefully my technique will improve.

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Border Crossing

By amy ross | Filed in scenery

welcome to idaho

I’ve lived most of my life in Providence, RI, where we used to joke that you couldn’t go to the movies without leaving the state. Rhode Island, after all, is the littlest state in the union, and so it is necessarily cozy with its neighbors. When I made the decision to move out west for grad school, to the land of BIG states, I figured my days of crossing and recrossing state borders were over.

Then I looked up Moscow, ID — home to University of Idaho and my MFA program — on a map, and discover it is located about two feet from the Washington border.  And what else?  Turns out that the cheapest apartment I can find is seven miles over the border, in Pullman, WA.

So here I am, straddling worlds once again — classes in Idaho, apartment in Washington, groceries in Idaho, laundromat in Washington…  ah well, at least the drive comes with a spectacular view (see my header).

welcome to washington

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