More on Portland

Well we had a fantastic photowalk yesterday. About 40 of us met at 2pm at Pioneer Square and then made our way down to the Waterfront where we shot participants in the Porland Iditarod who were hanging out and partying down by the Hawthorne Bridge.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Iditarod in Portland, basically it's a bunch of crazy (and I suspect a few drunk) teams that race through the streets of Portland. It's based on the Alaskan Iditarod where they use dogs and dog sleds. Apparently Portland doesn't allow dogs to pull the participants so they attached themselves to shopping carts and ran through the City pulling them all.

I read in the Oregonian (Portland's newspaper) this morning that one of the participants was hit by a car when he ran across the Hawthorne Bridge into traffic. Not only did he break his leg but he was cited by the police for failure to yield to an automobile.

After shooting folks from the Iditarod we made our way up the waterfront to the Portland Saturday Market. It was a nice break as it had been raining hard on us down on the waterfront.

From there we took a beer/food break at a local bar and then made our way back out to shoot around the Pearl District (one of Portland's art districts) and then down to the train station and up and over the Broadway Bridge before taking a train back downtown.

It was great to finally meet a bunch of people I've met online in person. Charlie Owen from Microsoft made the three hour drive down from Seattle to come shoot with us. Squid Vicious who is a good pal from Zooomr made the walk. And I was especially glad to finally meet Ar'alani in person. Ara is one of the most talented Portland photographers around. I've really been impressed with her work and it was great to finally meet her in person. I love shooting bridges and she has my favorite bridge shot on Flickr. Check out her "my favorites" set to see some spectacular photographs. It was also nice to finally meet Bryan Pearson who I've seen around online a lot.

There were lots more of great people who I met (I'm sorry if I'm not so good at remembering everyone's name). We had a great walk and a great time hanging out with a bunch of photogeeks.

If you were on the walk and have shots up please tag them photowalking03012008. If you have a set of images from the walk please post a link in the comments and I'll try and update this post. Will Wolff-Myren has a set up here already. Charlie Owen also has a set up here. Squid Vicious has a set up here.

After our photowalk I took a tiny little nap to rest up for more shooting later last night. I did a solo walk mostly around the Pearl District later and ended up at the SP Wine Bar where at midnight I finally called it a day with a great burger with wine.

I'm blown away at how much of a neon paradise Portland is. I've been collecting neon imagery for a while and one of the big reasons that I wanted to come to Portland is because I'd heard it is so rich in neon. I've shot so many new signs to add to my collection.

My favorite signs so far have been the "Made in Oregon" sign and the Palms Motel sign out on Interstate. We didn't make it out to Interstate last night, but I'm going to head out there after dinner tonight to shoot it.

The food in Portland is amazing. We had a great breakfast yesterday at Mother's Cafe (a great breakfast spot built around the theme of mom) and an even better breakfast this morning at Bijou Cafe. We also stopped in at Voodoo Donuts which is the best donut shop I've ever been too. They put Krispy Creme to shame with classics like the peanut butter oreo donut. All I can say is hopefully I'm burning off as many calories photowalking here as I am putting on with all the great food.

This morning after breakfast we went up to the Pittock Mansion to shoot there. Pittock Mansion is a mansion built on top of a hill overlooking Portland and had some great architecture.

I'm really enjoying my visit to Portland. So far I've taken 2,837 photographs. I usually keep and finish about 10% of my photos so I imagine I'll probably have a good collection of 300-400 finished photos by the time I'm done with this weekend. I'm trying not to spend too much time processing photos while I'm here because I want to get as much shooting time as I can. I'll have lots of Portland shots up in the next few weeks though.

I love how clean Portland is. The air is clean. The streets are clean. And cool brisk weather is perfect for keeping you cooled down all day as you make your way around the City.