Go to sleep

Add discarded or "street" mattresses to the list of things I find strangely beautiful. Not in a "Man, I'd like to curl up and nap on that piss-soaked thing" kind of way. It's more simply a love of the way the assumed softness of a onetime bed juxtaposes so wonderfully against the harsh method of disposal. A mattress isn't an easy thing to move by one's self. Often when they're placed in an alley they shows signs of the struggle it took to get them there - leaning at an odd angle or dragged to an awkward spot that's not out of the way but far enough right now.

Here's a song to listen to while you think about these images and who may have slept here once.

And here's another beautiful mattress on flickr. They're everywhere.

Sleep tight.

Urban renewal

I look forward to the arrival of the latest Urban Outfitters catalog every month, not because I need a new pair of ill-fitting jeans or another ironic t-shirt, but because the photography is usually so eye catching. There's a scrappy Ryan McGinley quality to the images of hipster girls and guys that I just love.

The catalog is never credited so it's a guess as to who is doing the shooting, and I never really bothered to investigate. Recently I came across some flickr pics that looked really similar to the style of some of the recent Urban catalogs and lo and behold, mystery solved.

Wai Lin Tse is the Barcelona-based photog behind the images above and in the Urban catalogs I've loved. Check out more of her stuff on her Web site and on flickr.

Fade to black and blue

My favorite new thing is to capture the sky with the last available daylight still in it so that it's not yet black, but instead a deep and glowing blue. Sometimes this is easier with a brilliant moon lighting the way, or a nearby city. It happens here in the northwest winter around 5 p.m. these days.

The top image from Lake Chelan is pretty emblematic of what I'm shooting for. The bottom photo of Traci, taken here in Seattle, is from several minutes before the peak time of day. But Henry was cold and we had to walk home.