The Dunes

May 14

One of my favorite memories with my friends was when we went to the dunes for a photography event with Viewfinders Seattle. I have never seen dunes in person, and it felt like we were on a whole different planet. But we were in our element. I felt my soul breathing. The dunes did smell like horse poop at night though- I never figured out why. Anyways, here are some pictures.

*These were taken with my Olympus camera. While I brought my professional camera to work the shoot, I used my Olympus camera to capture the memories. It has its own character- it can’t even focus precisely, but it gave these pictures a beautiful softness to them. I use it also to challenge myself to take pictures outside the comfort of my professional camera. Gen affectionately dubbed it “The Memories Camera”.

The trip there

Gen and Arthur stuffed me and Jonathan in the back of the car, and Gen snapped this shot of me. I have no idea how we fit as many things as we did into this car. It was quite impressive.

Conveniently, there was a Wendy’s in very close proximity to the dunes

The shoot

Gen and Arthur working with me to execute a vision I had. It’s looking great!

Mirror shots! Before Gen broke it, oops.

Broke the mirror, but it actually looked kind of cool, and the other creatives were really digging it too. Definitely worth the 7 years of bad luck

Gen in between shoots. The sunset was so, so beautiful and the moon peaking out made it all the more magical.

From left to right, Jonathan, Marco, and Arthur. Marco used to live in Seattle, but moved to Spokane so he lived near where the shoot was. It was awesome to see him after so long. He ended up letting us crash at his place.

Gen and Arthur dancing in front of the light set ups one of the photographers brought.

Post-Shoot

Marco’s apartments had a rooftop that was really photogenic and so Natalie and I pulled each other to the rooftop for a quick shoot.

Denny’s! We ordered a lot more food than we could eat.

Arthur getting stickers on his face by Gen.

Testing out the on-camera flash on Jonathan.

We went to a park and played with some sparklers. I really like this shot of Natalie.

Our shoes still had sand in it from the dunes. I kept finding sand everywhere for at least a week after we came home from the dunes

The trip home

The range of weather we experienced during the three hours of this trip was mind-blowing.

The sun broke through the rain for a few seconds and with the fog kissing it, the glow looked almost alien. I was sitting in the back but I was hurriedly rushing Arthur to snap a shot with the camera. Even pictures didn’t do this moment justice. It knocked the breath out of me.