Fresh Snow at Gasworks Park, Seattle- Tyler Westcott Photography

Fresh Snow at Gasworks Park, Seattle

Back in December (2008) we had a weekend of very pretty, light snowfall before the city got buried for two weeks. Since snow-covered streets around Seattle were a new sight for me, I decided to head to Gasworks Park to investigate and take some photos. I've been trying to make more and more use of my Large Format camera, so I figured this was a good opportunity to try. Since the color palette was pretty muted I decided to shoot some Kodak TMAX 100 black and white film anticipating I'd be working in black and white even if I shot digitally.

What I didn't entirely anticipate was that this park was incredibly busy that day with people tobogganing down the hills on the light dusting of snow. The place where I set up here was quiet when I started setting up but soon became the base of a toboggan run and I felt my time was limited. Since I had a little trouble with the front tilt to get the foreground path and the old gasworks plant all in focus, I decided to to the opposite and through the tilt backwards a bit to limit the plane of focus to one that cut through the old plant. The objective anyway, was to keep the plant fairly sharp while throwing the foreground well out of focus (similar to the technique used to create tilt-shift miniature fakes).

I still have a ton to learn with my Tachihara, but I do find it a lot of fun to shoot, even if you can't help but feel self-consious with a darkcloth over your head at the base of a toboggan run.

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