Just arrived home this morning (12.30.02). I worked on photos most of the ride home. It was super relaxing. Brad (Ocala's dad) upgraded our tickets to the sleeper car so we had our own little private "room". Here are the shots from the train ride to Minneapolis. I will post shots from while I was there as well as the train ride back soon.

The return trip to Spokane was relaxing and easy. The sleeper car was really nice, if small. The privacy was much appreciated. The whole day of traveling that these pictures are from was suprisingly quite. Unfortunately the sun set before we had reached the mountains of Montana.

I took this while wandering around St. Anthony Main in Minneapolis over the Christmas holiday. I have taken this same shot several times, as it is an old haunt of mine. It has always said something about Minneapolis and my life there to me. Even though this one is in color, I consider it a sister image to the one I took of Lake Road in Southern Illinois.

When I first came to Minneapolis, I spent the two weeks before school started, wandering the city, not by car, but on foot. I wander through downtown, to St. Anthony Main and through the neighborhoods back there (I walked right by Ocala's house on the sidewalk in fact). It had always been in my nature to do this. People that knew me well, knew this about me. I was prone to spending my free time wandering places, exploring.

As school started, I soon got completely absorbed in it and the rat race that it was. I began to see that as what "city life" was. It wore on me. The city seemed dirt ridden and sick. One of my teachers at MCAD noticed my condition one day and after class asked me how I was. He paraphrased Virginia Wolfe by stating that all a writer needed to write was enough money to get by and "a room of one's own". He thought this applied very much to artists as well and encouraged me to find that kind of thing. I thought of the major change in my life in that I didn't "hike" anymore. That had always been my comfort and my grounding.

I took it up again the following Saturday with a new friend I had met only days before with the curious name of Ocala. Thus began a long friendship which eventually turned into more. I developed a way of looking at things at that time. It had always been a strong influence on me, but it gained a lot of validity then. It was that there was a wilderness that existed everywhere. The woods that I grew up in never really ended. In some shape and form they extended all the way to Minneapolis. Following the tracks in Minneapolis lead me to all kinds of interesting places and showed me a side of the city teeming with the wild that I needed. And so I see the two photos as sister images, two kinds of wilderness and two adventures on the verge of happening.

It's full of stars! ... wait... no.. make that bubbles.

I went down to the stone arch bridge on the river in downtown Minneapolis. I looked down at the ice river and snapped a few shots. Remembering the success I had had with close up shots of ice before, I thought I would give it another try.

I went down to the river and walked around on the edge of the ice for a while looking for abstract shots I could play with in photoshop. I took a bunch of really close up shots edging out onto the ice very carefully.

The monolith from 2001 came into mind as I stooped there on the ice staring into its depths. It was very hard, cold and much of it was solid black. Only a close look revealed the inner dimensions of it.

Another ice picture from my little macro ice series. This one is even closer in on the ice then the last one. The lens was practically touching the ice... well as close as I could get it to focus that is.

These are really hard to appreciate fully in this format (tiny on the website). I provided a couple of close up crops from the main picture. The detail on these is amazing... well at least to me : ). That is what is so cool about real life; the closer you look, the more there is to see.

Nature really is an amazingly complex system. These images came out with very little color. I tinted them to remove them from reality a little bit. It was my intent to do so as I took them. Where I could, I pulled out the color that was there, which was in some cases amazing.

There is still more of these to come. I will post another in the next few days. Have to space my photos out a bit, I am running low. : )

Just thought I would add another note: I actually like the cropping of the two bubbles better than the whole photo. It is a stronger more surreal image. It looks like an illustration about cell division.

Another from the ice series, sans bubbles.

This one is probably the most obvious one to be ice. I played around with it a lot and was coming up with some weird stuff, but in the end I preferred the image in its original form.

In search of winter...

I wandered up to Mt. Spokane yesterday. Winter has been mild (no snow) here in Spokane and overcast. I had an inkling that the mountain might be poking up through the clouds. Sure enough as I got up near the top, I found myself on the upper edge of the clouds.

It is certainly interesting living near mountains. I literally drove to winter. I was amused at that notion as I drove back. It felt like days had past with in one day. I started out the morning in something resembling August and was in December or January just after lunch.

The clouds came in and out. I was struck with the idea that whoever had created those Christmas specials (Rudolph, Frosty) must have lived near mountains and drew from that when creating what the north pole looked like. It was something about the color of the sky partly obscured by the top edge of the clouds that reminded me of those shows.

I plan to head back up there as much as I can. It is good to know, in this dismal weather, a sunny snow covered winter is just 30 minutes away.

Every time it snows, I find myself thinking about the power of sound. Snow deafens, it isolates. It makes you concentrate on the visceral. I found myself looking at what was immediately around me.

It is also intimate and safe. The whole world is suddenly padded for your safety.

Another close up shot from the weekend up on Mt. Spokane.

It snowed here a bit last week after I took these, but it didn't stay. Still hoping to see something resembling winter at my elevation.

A close up of lichen on the trees on Mt. Spokane. Looking back in the other pictures, it is interesting to think about all the hidden green in the predominantly blue pics.

Another of the ice photos from Minnesota. I had fun tinting the colors of this one in different directions. I brought up the saturation on the photo and the nurtured the colors I saw appearing a bit.

Birth of the Space Whale Embryo

The last and weirdest of the ice pics from Minneapolis' riverfront, this one is more of abstract painting than a photograph. Although I should quickly point out that it is just tinting and contrast changes. I had fun reacting to the shapes and textures that were there.

Same as it ever was... (Belated Birthday Post)

"Into the blue again, into the silent water... Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground...."

The world is my beautiful house. This is my beautiful life. How did I get here? My god, look at what I have done. Where does that highway go?

"same as it ever was... letting the days go by... water flowing under... letting the days go by.. here comes the twister.... same as it ever was..once in a lifetime..."

A dog eyes me cautiously, yet lazily, as I snap his picture in a walkway.

Well, its final. I am moving to LA. I have been hired by a company called Blur in Venice. It should be interesting. I stood on the beach and took it all in.

The day I left for the weekend my 19 yr old cat went blind. I found myself obsessed with sunlight staring down in the water. Cliche' I know, but things like that make you appreciate what you have.

Another shot from the pier at Venice Beach. I appreciated the quiet of that day. This picture really reminds me of that. Something about the texture of the water gives the illusion that this is a miniature to me.

Now for something a little different. I thought I would put up a little 3d work. 3d work is what pays for the photography for me, buys me nice cameras and pays the electric bill and that sort of thing. : )

This was meant to go up on Valentine's Day, but I had other things to deal with. I was asked by a company whether or not I could and would do "cute". I immediately said I would love to. Then I began to wonder myself if I was good at "cute".

So over a weekend I set out to rough out a cute scene. This was the result. It originally had two other characters... but time was limited and I realized I would rather devote my attention on the girl, which was my favorite of the three. I am planning on finishing it off as it is still rather rough. I want to do a series of little animations with her and another one of the characters in this scene. Kind of a character study of what little kids do when they watch tv.

Click here for a Quicktime "Turntable" of the scene. Be patient it takes a little while to download and you have to have quicktime installed. There isn't any animation, just a spin around of the scene. You can see who she is falling in love with.

Check out the Gorillaz. (The band on the TV)

"White" in red where the grass is greener.

Since this is my last week in Spokane I thought it would be cool to show some of the first pictures I took here with my camera.

When I first got my camera, I spent the first few weeks heading down to Riverside Park before sunset everyday after work. I hiked mostly through an area that had been ravaged by a fire years before. I wanted to explore the idea of regrowth after such an event. Here a young sapling sprouts from the remains of other evergreens.

A river (Spokane or Little Spokane River, not sure which this part is) runs through the area where the fire took place. The fire actually jumped it. As the days went by I began to explore the riverbank. I began with the idea of capturing the brilliant sunsets reflected in the river as the fire must have been when it reached the river.

These shots I took completely on different days. I was trying to catch the many colors the sky was during the days I was there. The sunset each day on the hill which can be seen in the picture from yesterdays post.

The sky slowly visited each range of the spectrum before its color faded and it quietly exited to give the stars their time. It was silent and remarkable. I will always envy the colors of the skies here. I have never seen anything like it.

With the trees gone the smaller plants have a chance to flourish...

... along a trail....

...in the bare branches....

.... or on the edge of the riverbank.

I had intended these to be the last images I posted before leaving Spokane, but as it is, I forgot and was on the road to LA. Thought they were a good farewell to the area.

Both were taken on the same day as the sun set in one view and the moon rose from another.

A potted plant takes the sobriety test early in the morning by the backdoor to work while the power is out.

A windy day makes palm trees a hazard.

A discarded polaroid in the grass.

We wandered around Venice,CA this afternoon. There is a skate park on the beach.

This extremely young tiny fellow knew his way around a board and was right at home among the swarm of skaters.

I am hoping on getting down there with a camera a lot, as it is where I eat lunch most days.

A privacy fence, they are all over here and with the crowds you can understand why.

A windy chilly day at the beach at lunch.

This is a new favorite. Just a quick shot I took to document the yellow growth on the cement. The composition looked nice to me with the fence breaking through diagonally. For me what saves it is the one yellow/red leaf that offsets all the colors.

VW Vans are everywhere in the neighborhood near work. This particular orange one caught my eye on several occasions when I didn't have my camera. Finally with camera in hand I got this shot early in the morning. I cropped it from the original, thought the composition was better this way.

Bubbles near the Santa Monica Pier.

I love bounced light. This is the door to a closed down restaruant.

A post with some history.

Outside of work, I appreciated the texture of the sign.

We've turned the weekend routine of doing laundry into a pleasant weekly ritual. In that rat race of everything it is actually a comfort to have some rituals. We go to a laundry mat and have been going early in the morning and getting coffee and a bagel for the wait. While our clothes spin away in the antiquated machines we sit and talk about whatever comes to mind. I have found myself looking forward to it each week.

On a side note, after a few comments about wondering what I looked like. It got me thinking about doing an "about" page. I was happy to point out a place where I actually do show up in the pictures and I appreciated the comment, but I decided I didn't want to put up such a page. Seemed to undermine why I started doing this blog in the first place. (I am worried this is going to sound like arguing, when really it just brought up a train of thought) The whole page is about me. Every picture is a self portrait in a way, a very real way. I grew up in a fashion that always made me feel like I was an intergral part of the environment and vice versa. The Forgotten Grain title was based around that feeling... you know.. when you are a little kid and you are moving.. or just going on a car trip with your parents and you look back at your house and watch it go... you appreciate it in a whole different light. You even notice things you never did before. This site just gave me a way of looking back at them again, those moments. Its funny but I bet I frequent this site more than all others combined. : ) Staring at the pictures of the tracks where I grew up when I feel homesick or the picture of Cal everyday because... well ... just because.

I really appreciate all the comments lately. I have been amazed and suprised anyone even looks at these besides myself. I always feel like I take pictures that are only interesting to myself. I just realized yesterday that two of my all time favorite photoblogs have links to mine. What a compliment! It made me realize I need to update my links section. : ) I went immediately and revoted for them at photoblogs.org. You should too. They are perpetualkarma and shutterbabe.org. Another one of my favorites is waytoblue.org. At any rate thanks all.

Ride home from work the other day.

Another picture on the way home from work. I am always on my way home at what photographers call "the golden hour", so its hard to resist the urge to snap a few. : )

I was looking for a photo I took a couple years ago the other day and while I was browsing through them I found a lot of others I took long before forgottengrain ever existed that I thought deserved a little screen time.

A fish with a slow shutter speed at the Minnesota Zoo.

Moss growing in the bumper of an abandon car in rural Minnesota. This is another snapshot from the past. Honestly the idea of it is mostly why I like it, the picture could have been better. : )

I do like how you can see ocala and I in the bumper reflections and some of the big expansive field too.

At the riverfront in downtown Spokane.

A hood ornament with my old camera in a junk yard north of Spokane. I loved the variation of color in the hood.

I wandered around that junkyard for sometime. It had a lot of inspiration for texture work. I always love abandoned cars and houses. It reminds me of where I grew up. There were old farm houses everywhere.

A friend of mine and I carefully crossed the collapsed floor of one such house miles away from anywhere. In one far side of a room was a table and chair. On the table was an old corroded pistol and a jar of empty bullets. There was a book about the county I grew up in called "Bloody Williamson". I never read it, but it was supposed to be about the days of prohibition and how the mob from Chicago brewed all the alcohol in the backwoods where I grew up. Evidence of it was everywhere. It always seemed like when prohibition was repealed they must have just dropped everything and left. At that same house a boat was still tied to the pier in a small pond. It sank the minute my friend touched it. I have no idea how it managed to stay afloat all that time. It was a bizarre and memorable moment.

These cars reminded me of even older ones abandoned in a field near my house back then. The way they were left made them ideal for playing through chase scenes for hours. Imagining shooting out the glass that was already gone.....I'll stop now, I could go on for hours. : ) ah childhood...

Peace sign in pavement down by venice beach, complete with green drinking straw.

Everyday down at the beach new graffiti goes up. It is really cool. Makes me wonder how many coats are on those walls.

The glow of the beach sand on the shimmer of the paint.

Poor tree, but I liked the effect that time and growth has had on the letters.

Bounced light on a door to a closed down restaurant.

This tree was amazing. The bark was flowing over the whole surface. I didn't expect this picture to turn out, but as it is, its a favorite.

Weather from the ocean is quite interesting here. The clouds behave differently than what I am used to.

Ocala and I wandered out into the mountains near Malibu today. It was good to get away from the rush of things.

And then down to the beach to watch the surfers and scare the birds. :)

It was an overcast day, so I don't think the photos turned out so well, but I did like this shot of all the birds in flight. No birds were harmed or photoshop-ed in during the making of this shot. : )

The sunset on a building across the alley behind our apartment.

A discarded sign on the sidewalk.

When I was a little kid I used to sit and stare into the grass by my feet and try to imagine what it would be like to be tiny crawling though that environment. How different the world would be and how private and secret it could be as well.

Dodge the poop.

This is part of a plastic fire hydrant that had been painted over. I found the texture of the paint that couldn't hold its grip on the plastic interesting and thought it best to capture and preserve it for future generations. : )

A million things happening at once at an intersection on the way home from work and again I see myself going in two directions.

Never underestimate the power of wearing a costume on the sexually repressed male, but enough about me... We went to the Ren Fair!!

The other day Ocala and I went out to eat with some friends and as we were walking across the street we could hear very well the hum of the power lines. Reminded everyone of the anime "Serial Experiments: Lain".

Nine of us camped out at Black Rock campground in Joshua Tree National Park this weekend. We all had a lot of fun. Thanks to all my friends for putting up with my constant wandering off and snapping photos. : )

I wandered down to the beach one night on a break from working late and the soft cyan glowing "AT O" spoke to me.

Its the most awesome thing. I noticed a couple of weeks ago that a mourning dove has chosen a pot on our steps/entryway to nest. I was astounded when I first saw it. We just sat there a foot away from one another blinking in silence. Our neighbor who shares the same steps says that the same thing happened last year and they had three hatchlings. For now we are all just careful not to disturb it with all our comings and goings.

A night at the beach.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. It will probably be that way for a little while. Work has had me really busy and I haven't had time to go out and shoot anything. Things should calm down soon.

The babies have hatched and are growing quickly.

Shot this today, five days after the one above. Now that they have their feathers growing in they have been spending today stretching their wings. Won't be long before they are off.

Afta kept very close watch from the screen door over the young birds as they grew.

She was very excited as they began to explore around the porch, hopping across the chairs.

And with that, they were gone. I felt like Tony Soprano watching the ducks fly away as I stared into the "empty" pot that served as their nest.

Another shot on the way back. We were near a town called Gilroy, CA which smelled intensely of garlic.

We all stared quitely out the windows for a while on the drive back and listened to music as vineyards scrolled by.

I always love telephone poles in landscapes. I know I said something similar on here before, but I just love the contrast of technology and nature that they instill in the photograph.

Spent the day wandering around the docks down in Long Beach a few weeks back looking for inspiration on a project I have been thinking about doing.

The sky was dark and saturated that day and the buildings seemed to pop out in the viewfinder of my camera ( a polarizer emphasized the effect all the more). I wanted to catch that with the photographs. The water tower seemed to glow like a beacon in the sky. I thought this one was a strange composition, the way the telephone poles line up with the lit side of the building and divide it evenly in perspective. The building had interesting lion heads for decoration in rows on both fronts of the structure. Just realized I don't have a picture of them ready. I will have to search back through my photos and post one. : )

Even across the dock the water tower still caught my attention. Shot this one through a hole in a fence. The most interesting places were guarded by fences. Isn't that always the way.

We went hiking in Malibu's hills again last weekend. Ocala had her first run in with a rattle snake. Quite a new experience for her. She spotted it right before I step on it. After a bit of hissing and rattling it left us in peace. (Its not in the pic, incase you're lookin) : )

"I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." - Thoreau from Walden

I accidentally did this to one of my pictures while trying to recover it from being well under exposed. It reminded me of ink drawings I used to do when I just got into college. In fact I would mistake it for one if I didn't know better. It gave me an urge to dig out my old sketch books. I found myself looking at how far I had come since then. In a ten year old notebook I had written several quotes from Andreas Deja that I had heard from a documentary on the making of the Little Mermaid. Funny that he was at my work just a couple of weeks ago giving the animators tips.

I could never afford a camera back then. I drew everything, which was an adventure in itself, but once in a while I wish I could go back and hand that me a camera just to see what pictures he would take. I wonder what I would think of my pictures from now back then.

I would venture to guess that I would be really excited by what I have managed to do and equally disappointed that I wasn't out photographing right now and every moment.

Some flowers from the Malibu hike a couple weekends back.

Things have been slow lately photo wise. You might have noticed. Work/life has kept me super busy. So I decided to dig back through the archives for a bit, back to before there was ever a forgottengrain.com and show some of my photos from days gone by.

It was actually a lot of fun to do. There are a lot of places and times I miss in my collection. Plus it gave me a bit of encouragement, looking back at old work and actually liking some of it. A lot of them (probably all) were taken with rinky dink little cameras from here and there and that was fun to see too. One downside to having a new spiffy digital slr is that everybody tends to compliment the camera... I miss the "you took that with that!" days. Now people tend to see my camera and nods as if my camera knows how to take good pictures all by itself. : )

This first pic is from the north shore of Minnesota along Lake Superior three years ago on one particularly wonderful day when fog rolled in just as we reached Grand Marais (you will see several more photos from that one day before we are through). It is a very dear place to Ocala and I. We escaped to there from time to time, especially early in our relationship. We were rather punkish back then and seemed somewhat isolated and out of place, but something about it felt like home. We have made a goal to move back there someday.

I took this while hiking up in Malibu a few weekends back.

Monkeys, Tigers and Bears! ... ..Oh my?

Ocala and I went to the San Diego Zoo over the weekend. Thought it would be a good break. We wandered around leisurely and looked at the animals. Zoos always depress me a little. Growing up where almost every wild animal I saw was ... well... wild, it still sits strange with me to see so many animals caged. I mean no offense against any of the Zoo peoples, in fact I have a great respect for them and the animals all seemed happy.

It was funny to see the interaction of people with the animals, because we all know that is a big part of going to the zoo.. people watching. Even seeing how the indigenous animal life was fun to watch interacting with these animals for elsewhere. It must be mating season for ducks, there were ducklings everywhere.

(Tips hat to Bob Hope)

A well walked sidewalk lit by different colors of filtered light along the path to monkeys. I know it isn't an animal, but the environment at the zoo is part of the experience.

The hippo pond was interesting. I liked this shot from the top of the surface. I appreciate the strange structures interwoven with "natural" forms that you find at a zoo.

I remember the first time I saw a display like this. The experience stayed with me. Every time I saw a pond I wondered what it would be like to see underneath the surface.

A couple of ducklings swim over the back of and then under the watchful eye of the resident hippo.

The boars roaming around for food were about the only animal active in the heat of midday.

Unfortunately a couple of the aviaries were closed.

A bear contemplates his surroundings.

Hyenas take a break from the heat and lift their heads up as a passerby whistles.

I had to wait on some renders at work so I went out and explored around Venice to pass the time. I ended up catching the sunset.

Some more shots from wandering down to the beach. Birds wander up and down as the waves come in, searching for anything the water might have uncovered or brought.

I found myself interested in the textures that presented themselves as the wave went in and out. The sand changed so drastically over the course of the wave coming up and retreating that I could have taken an image every 60th of a second and each would have looked like a completely different surface.

Its weird to go down at the beach and see these signs up all over the place inbetween the crowds and crowds of people swimming.

Its the case all down the beach. Orange flags dot the landscape into the distance.

This boat was resting along the shore in one of the canals in Venice, CA. I liked the bounced light on the interior of the boat.

A duck wading through the Venice Canals.

Photographically speaking, I have been having a hard time finding my feet out here in LA. I tend to want to take pictures of rural type areas since that is what I grew up in. I miss the driving out into the boonies and seeing the most unexpected stuff. I went out to the beach yesterday to think about it, camera in hand of course. I ended up along the shore line by LAX airport... I was lured by the smoke stacks on the horizon.

Taking pictures on the beach is hard. Been trying not to inundate this website with a bunch of blue pictures. It is hard because in a lot of shots the main composition is the same. Always three horizontal elements... sky, water, sand. It is hard not to catch that in every shot.

You can thin them out or make them immense depending on your angle, but they are almost always there. And being where I am, I can't wait for winter to give a different feel to any particular place, its blue skys and sun year round.

I try and get myself out of always taking the same shot, force myself to look around and explain the experience smaller. I was kind of happy with the airplane and highway cone shots in this regard. I managed to escape the beach's horizontal restraints.