Portland in November Days 1-3: A Little Bit of Everything

Almost two years ago now I was sitting at a Christmas dinner lost in thought about how much I wanted to go somewhere - anywhere, really. I’d always had a dream of incorporating travel and destination work into my business, but hadn’t yet figured out how to feasibly do it. It suddenly clicked that contrary to what I’d been thinking, I didn’t necessarily need a 5 year multistep plan to make this happen (especially since it would be primarily based off of hypotheticals), rather I should just book something, start somewhere, and learn as I went. So I immediately booked a flight to Portland, OR because I remembered my aunt saying she was curious how I would photograph her city.

And here we are, almost two years later, with a combined month’s worth of immersion into Portland life. Even during my first week there, the city somehow felt familiar, and now it feels like a home away from home.

I left Asheville too early to even think about what time it was, but that meant I arrived in Portland at lunchtime with almost a full Thanksgiving day ahead of me, which I spent eating and catching up with my cousins. That evening I got to participate in their tradition of going to the movies on Thanksgiving night, thoroughly enjoying the new Fantastic Beasts film (the leather recliners certainly didn’t hurt.)

Pardon my repetition, but my very favorite part about vacations - and work vacations - is being able to take slow mornings to simply read and drink my coffee. Since Alex was once against tasked with feeding and taking care of the cats, I wanted to at least bring back a little souvenir, and what better than a bag of freshly roasted coffee beans? Naturally, I couldn’t just pick a place, a job like this required some “scientific testing,” so I had him send me a list of roasters he wanted to try, spent the week “testing” each one, and then picked up the caffeine beans on my last day. As it turned out, the first place I went, Heart Coffee Roasters, was the winner. I’m enjoying the fruits of that experiment as I type.

I’ve been photographing my cousins for several years now, but lately, rather than just candidly capturing their character, we’ve added an extra layer to their personality portraits as they’ve wanted to be in costume. The costumes they chose were definitely characteristic though. After coffee, I met my family downtown where the square was haunted both by a werewolf and the Angel of Death. As with my GLT photoshoots, I wanted to take this opportunity to add variety to the photos, playing around with slow shutter speed to create movement and, as always, a prism to reflect onto their portraits interesting textures from the surrounding buildings.

Since we assumed Russian Teahouses didn’t allow wolves and death angels into their humble abodes (thinking back, I’m not sure that was a safe assumption) the girls changed and we went on our merry way to tea.

In truth, this was a tea put on by the Heathman, complete with dishes hailing from the chef’s own grandmother’s recipes. Always in search of the most “authentic” fare, I enjoyed the Georgian Caravan tea “vnagladku” (with sweets) taking the waitress’s advice and sweetening the drink with their house-made jam. After only coffee, tea and a vodka cocktail that morning, I was more than ready to chow down. While the tasty morsels didn’t exactly fill me up, every one of the Buterbrodi (open faced sandwiches), Blini, Peroshki (potato bread) and assorted desserts was delicious.

As we ate, we talked about normal stuff, like eating crickets, and listened as my aunt and uncle’s friends (who had joined us for tea) regaled us with stories from their travels. We finished the evening watching the tree lighting in Pioneer Square with thousands of our closest friends.

Saturday morning dawned, the most important day of my trip. I spent the hour bus right thinking back to the first time I met Jeannie and Anne, that first week in Portland two years previous when fate brought us together. I tell this story so often because it still blows my mind how all of this came about. I’d emailed quite a few Portland wedding vendors only hearing back from one in that instance - Steve from A Beautiful Ceremony NW. It just so happened that he had a last minute elopement that Friday and they didn’t have a photographer. I happily offered my services. That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship not only with Jen and John (who have connected me with numerous people in Portland as well as their family in Ireland for photoshoots!) but also with Jeannie and Anne who served as their witnesses. I did Jeannie and Anne’s engagement photos that same first trip, spent an evening with them last fall taking family photos and capturing Jeannie’s mother’s birthday celebration, met up with them last spring to talk about wedding photography and finally this trip got to capture their beautiful celebration.

I’d spent so much time with them in the course of my time in Portland that I truly felt like I was photographing for good friends. Not to mention, this was one of the most beautiful weddings I’ve ever captured, not simply for the location (Clarklewis) and aesthetics, but because of the overwhelming outpouring of love for the couple that every single guest in attendance shared.

I’m sure I’ll talk ad nauseam about their ceremony in future blog posts, so suffice it to say that I feel incredibly lucky to have gotten to witness and participate in the celebration of these two warmhearted people. I also got to catch up with Jen and John again and thank them for all of their help!

Apparently not satisfied with photographing for 6 hours straight, I left my 30lb pack at the restaurant and set off with my film camera in hand to shoot a roll of black and white, my favorite way to decompress. However, I got not even halfway across the Hawthorne Bridge when the camera batteries died, and while I managed to sneak in a few extra frames by setting up the shot and quickly turning the camera on to shoot the photo before it died again (this only worked every 5 or so tries), I eventually had to give up. Though I’d planned to take the bus straight from dinner, I couldn’t pass up the saturated colors of the overcast evening, so I picked up my packed, took out my digital camera, and “went to town” as I walked into town.

I finished up what turned out to be one of the best days I’d had in a good while with a delicious meal at Thai Peacock. Noodles are good in all circumstances, but perfectly cooked Pad Thai with crispy trout after a very long day of photography really hit the spot. As I took the bus back to the house, I reflected once again on what an amazing journey it’s been: from that first feeling that Portland was the place to start, to this day capturing the love of two people I would never have gotten to be friends with had I not taken the initial plunge. Sometimes things happen slower than you want them to, but now that I’m on the other side enjoying the fruits of all my hard work, I can see that every bit of it was worth it for a day like this.