IrwinFoto

A gallery of photos by Mike Irwin

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  • Old Tumbler

    Old Tumbler | East Wenatchee, WA | March 2020

    [Good morning. I’ve restarted this blog’s daily posts for a temporary run (two weeks? a month?) during the virus crisis. I’m curious how far I can wander within the confines of home and yard. Expect lots of still-life and pooch pics.]

    The ordinary now catches our attention. What we took for granted a month ago has new status. Everyday objects — sunlight, breezes, sleeping dog, seedlings, tap water, the mailman — have transformed into domestic wonders. Maybe we’ll change, too, as this imposed distance nudges us to (more…)

  • Cow with Wires

    Cow with Wires | Mansfield, WA | March 2020

    After a year of daily postings, IrwinFoto365 ends with this image and my sincere thanks for clicking here everyday.

    My college photo instructor always advised, “When in doubt, shoot the cow.” He believed cows were kindhearted creatures beloved by everyone. So if we happened across a bovine — no matter where, no matter when — we should photograph it without hesitation.

    That sort of explains this final photo in a year-long project to show you where I go, how I see and, for better or worse, what I think. Together we covered a lot of the big, wide world (botany, geology, ornithology, meteorology, just plain weirdology), but also looked closely at what’s right in front of us (art, bugs, dogs, toes, food, flowers, and even a few people).

    Your comments were mostly encouraging, and for those I’m grateful. Some were more, um, constructive: “What the hell’s this supposed to be?” or “Does every damn thing have to teach a damn lesson?”

    All in all, I learned much from my wandering. For instance, five hours in (more…)

  • Hay Sheds

    Hay Sheds | Moses Lake, WA | March 2020

    Growers here export thousands of tons of hay to Asian beef producers. Shiploads of what’s essentially tall grass link local farmers to those expensive steaks favored by Tokyo execs. (My total knowledge of global economics is now exhausted.) Ag experts would say the hay bales are storage/transport devices for solar energy. How else to get good ol’ Columbia Basin sunshine into trans-Pacific livestock? Some of us tinfoil-hat wearers see (more…)

  • Ghost Hand

    Ghost Hand | Moses Lake, WA | March 2020

    A voodoo practitioner in New Orleans once told me that spirits shed parts as they fade from the physical realm. I imagined ears and hands and buttocks as detached, transparent wisps blowing across parking lots. “Ectoplasm needn’t take human form,” she said. “Look for vapors in dark corners of empty rooms. There’s your dearly departed.” Now the virus reshaping our lives has produced a new type of litter — discarded vinyl gloves and wadded sanitizer wipes — that appears as (more…)

  • Painted Tunnel

    Painted Tunnel | Trinidad, WA | March 2020

    This tunnel cuts through a wall of railroad fill that’s topped by busy east-west tracks. Years ago I sat in my truck and watched a train slowly chug over this portal on its way to big cities in the Midwest. What I thought was a cloud of locomotive smoke at the tunnel entrance turned out to be hornets — a swirling swarm of angry buggers. After the train passed, the cloud disappeared back into the tunnel’s black interior. Today I pause again before driving through this shadowy shaft. What hazards lurk out of sight? Dog’s ball on the stairway. Semi driver texting at the wheel. Coronavirus on a friendly handshake. I make sure the windows are rolled up tight, turn on the truck lights and (more…)

  • Time Frame

    Time Frame | Lamoine, WA | March 2020

    Dryland farmers in the early 1900s seeded hope on their horizons. I imagine them standing on hills of scattered brush, eyeing rock beds 100 feet deep, wondering when the next rain cloud might appear, and nodding, “Sure, I can grow something here.” They dug a well, built a (more…)

  • Road Cut

    Road Cut | Chelan Falls, WA | March 2020

    Essentially the road curls along a wide ledge sliced into solid rock. As I marvel at the cut’s workmanship — precise, tidy — I’m also keenly aware that this high-up highway traces the fine line between cruising carefree and veering into the void. Some drivers would relax into the moment and enjoy the scenery. But, as I do most days, I focus on (more…)

  • Bridge

    Bridge | Chelan Falls, WA | March 2020

    Things that take us from here to there, that connect us across wide divides, give us reasons to hope. Airplanes and trains, all types of bridges, certain songs and speeches, a phone call from dear Aunt Betty — they all reach beyond where we stand to where we could be, maybe to where we should be. I like this bridge for its classic arched design and how it gracefully spans one of the world’s most powerful rivers. But it also spans time (it’s nearly 60 years old), politics (it connects two counties), biology (it curves over salmon runs), physics (it’s a continuous-steel through-truss tied-arch structure, whatever that is) and food (it’s the fastest route to (more…)

  • Boulder

    Boulder | McNeil Canyon, WA | March 2020

    I want to personally thank the glacier for its visit here 18,000 years ago and the gift it left on the ridge. Seen from the highway, this bus-sized boulder sits tiny in the distance but big in my imagination. The huge rock and its thousands of fellow erratics were some of the area’s earliest immigrants, transported here by a Canadian ice sheet that deposited its, ahem, droppings on an otherwise (more…)

  • Dress

    Dress | Wenatchee, WA | March 2020

    Every time I pass this dress shop, I’m reminded of how much I don’t know. It’s a window, literally, to another culture, another world, where glittery gowns herald milestone rituals for young women stepping into new roles. Quinceañaras, proms, graduations, weddings — the landmarks of (more…)