Zen Garden Portland Japanese Garden Portland, Oregon

It’s been two weeks, and I needed to check on the irises in the Portland Japanese Garden. There is no sign of buds yet, so I’ll need to make a return visit later this month.

I haven’t done any reasonable amount of photography recently, and the Japanese Garden is always a cure for what ails me. During the morning Members Only hours, the garden is quiet – mostly occupied by other photographers silently fussing with their tripod-mounted equipment. I don’t like hauling around a tripod – and I’m not trying for pro-quality photos anyway. For me a morning trip to the garden is the chance to practice looking and seeing. It’s one of my favorite places for studying light and shadow – something I’ll need to be good at for my SoFoBoMo project this year. In fact, I photographed with my SoFoBoMo project in mind – and created a new Monochrome Gallery in my Japanese Garden folder. It was nice to spend a little time composing and photographing at a relaxed pace.

As I usually do, I spent about 90 minutes walking the garden. I was a bit earlier than usual and left the garden just before the Saturday crowd started to arrive. I was actually a little surprised there weren’t more people attending the members only time as it felt like a summer morning. But plenty of people were coming up the hill as I walked back to my car. It was already quite warm, and I had to open the sunroof and windows as I drove through Washington Park and back to Beaverton.