2016 Children's Festival

The annual Island Rec Children's Festival, held at the County Fairgrounds, is one of my favorite events of the year. I love photographing kids! This year it was on May 7, and I covered it for the San Juan Islands Journal, our local print newspaper.

A special feature of this year's festival was the appearance of some of the people helping with the upcoming first annual Hill of Thrills Soap Box Race, also sponsored by Island Rec.

Washington State Ferries #1 -- M/V Samish

In this first post on Washington State ferries serving the San Juan Islands, I'd like to feature the newest addition to the fleet, the M/V Samish. The photo above and the next few, in fact, were all taken of the Samish on its official maiden voyage on June 14, 2015, as the ferry entered Friday Harbor. It was escorted into the harbor by Sentinel, the new fire boat of San Juan Island Fire District #3.

I must admit, I find the Samish a particularly handsome ferry. I love its stately lines. Here are a few shots of the ferry front as it rested at dock in Friday Harbor on September 24, 2015.

There's something especially magical about a night ferry. Here's the Samish arriving and docking at Friday Harbor on September 26, 2015, on the night of the full moon but one. I cheated a bit on the photo of the moon over the ferry: That's the exact size and position of the moon as it appeared, but to get the right exposure, I took a separate shot of it and pasted it in place.

The photos above were actually from a practice shoot of mine for the next night, September 27, the night of the blood moon. The sun set a bit later on that night, so I got to shoot the ferry in the not-quite-dark for a different effect. Here again, for the final photo, a shot of the moon at the same size was pasted into place in the exact position it appeared in the original photo.

Finally, here are a few detail shots -- a name sign, the anchor, and one of the towers. Notice the twin horns on the tower. These are what produce the Samish's distinctive two-tone blast -- the only one heard in the San Juan Islands. When we hear that, we know it's the Samish!

What We're Reading

Reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey. Photo by Aaron Shepard.

Being an author and publisher as well as a photographer, one of my pet projects is to take candid shots of people reading books in public. Later, if you zoom into the cover, you can sometimes easily identify the book being read. Other times, you might see only bits of the title or author's name, and then identifying the book becomes a game. A little searching on Amazon is usually enough to find a match for the cover.

Here are some of the shots I've taken around the Port of Friday Harbor -- most of them in the past year -- with the books identified in the captions.

Reading A Summer Affair, by Elin Hilderbrand. Photo by Aaron Shepard.

Reading Read Between the Lines, by Jo Knowles. Photo by Aaron Shepard.

Reading The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger. Photo by Aaron Shepard.

Reading A Dog's Purpose, by W. Bruce Cameron. Photo by Aaron Shepard.

Reading The Plantagenets, by Bruce Jones. Photo by Aaron Shepard.

Reading The Miniaturist, by Jessie Burton. Photo by Aaron Shepard.

Reading All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr. Photo by Aaron Shepard.

Wait! That last one doesn't show anything readable on the cover! Wondering how I identified it? By zooming in far enough, I was able to read text on the page, which I then Googled. Talk about reading over someone's shoulder!

Finally, here's a photo and close-up with a book I couldn't identify. If you can help, please tell me in the comments!

Photo by Aaron Shepard.