Cherries of the Dawgs

If you follow my blog, you may know I’ve been having a problem taking a good day off to go shoot some photos. Last Friday I went up to Seattle, rain or shine and received mostly shine and no rain! I had two main goals for the trip: the cherry trees at University of Washington and shot of the full moon rising over the city. I ended up with a lot of good images, so I’m breaking the trip up into several posts. Today – shots from the University of Washington.

I am a graduate of UW. I remember the cherry trees from those four springs 30 years ago, but never found the time to photograph them when I was in school. It seemed it was time to do so. With that goal in mind, I headed straight up I5 to the 45th Street exit in Seattle. I parked in the northern lot ($15 to park – boy has the price of parking risen in the past 30 years!) and headed to the quad. The cherry trees were even more glorious than I remembered. It was in between classes when I arrived, so there was a lot of foot traffic. But after about 10 minutes, most the students were inside, and I was able to get a few compositions without a lot of people. The sky was full of low clouds, so I tried to keep the sky out of my compositions.

Eventually I wandered over to Red Square and took some shots of the Suzzallo Library, including the one below showing the Broken Obelisk sculpture (with Suzzallo in the background).

Besides the cherry trees, another shot I’ve wanted to capture for a long time is one of Suzzallo’s reading room. I entered the library and went up the Grand Staircase to the reading room. Upon entering the room, the silence was intimidating. There were a number of students studying, and I feared my shutter noise would echo throughout the entire room. As it turned out, the shutter noise wasn’t too bad, but the zipper on my camera bag was loud (earning me a sharp look from the nearest student). I quickly shot a couple of series of exposures for HDR processing and got out of there before a librarian showed up.

By the time I left the library, the sun had come out. I walked around campus and eventually headed back to the cherry trees on the quad. After more shots (made more difficult by many more people being present, including several other photographers), I went back to the car and retrieved my partner for the day – our Newfoundland, Carson. Carson and I then walked around while I took a few more photos.

The UW mascot is the Husky, and UW teams, students, and alumni are fondly known as the Dawgs. But Carson was certainly the top dog on campus that day! After the cherry trees, I venture there were more photographs taken of Carson than anything else, with at least 4 students asking to take his picture (perhaps understandable, as Carson is an impressive dog, weighing in at 150 pounds).

Hope you like these shots of the University of Washington campus. More from Seattle to come shortly.

Broken Obelisk, perhaps not a Chariot of the Gods, but a pretty cool looking pyramid in my opinion.

A 4-image HDR rendering of the Suzzallo Reading Room

Cherry trees are not confined to the Quad; here are some on the side of Suzzallo.

Close up on one of the Quad's trees.

One more shot of the cherry trees on the Quad.