These images are from trips I made this past month to Southwest and central Eastern Washington. A mix of landscape, architecture, and abstract.

Lately, I’ve been looking at artworks by painter Andy Ecclesshall and photographer/painter Saul Leiter. The subject concept I had in mind for these trips was “atmosphere”.

“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely, or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature, and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As longs as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.”
— Anne Frank, Diary of a Young Girl

Located next to the Columbia River, just seven miles southwest of Quincy WA, Quincy Lakes State Wildlife Area is one of my favorite places for hiking and photography. There are numerous trails throughout the 12 square miles of lakes, waterfalls, mesas, benches, box canyons, and potholes.

"Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find that going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity..."
– John Muir

"It's not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves."
– Edmund Hillary

“If gold has been prized because it is the most inert element, changeless and incorruptible, water is prized for the opposite reason -- its fluidity, mobility, changeability that make it a necessity and a metaphor for life itself. To value gold over water is to value economy over ecology, that which can be locked up over that which connects all things.”
— Rebecca Solnit, Storming the Gates of Paradise

“I think over again my adventures.
My fears,
those small ones that seemed so big.
For all the things I had to get,
and to reach.
But there is only one great thing;
the only thing…
To live
to see the great day that dawns
and the light that fills the world.”
— old Inuit poem

“It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanates from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”
― John Muir

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”
— Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“Flowers are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities in the world.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Landscapes of great wonder and beauty lie under our feet and all around us. They are discovered in tunnels in the ground, the heart of flowers, the hollows of trees, fresh-water ponds, seaweed jungles between tides, and even drops of water. Life in these hidden worlds is more startling in reality than anything we can imagine. How could this earth of ours, which is only a speck in the heavens, have so much variety of life, so many curious and exciting creatures?"
— Walt Disney

“Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.”
— Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds

“But the love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only home we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need — if only we had the eyes to see. Original sin, the true original sin, is the blind destruction for the sake of greed of this natural paradise which lies all around us — if only we were worthy of it.”

— Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

“Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed. We need wilderness preserved - as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds - because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed. We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.”

— Wallace Stegner

"A city is not gauged by its length and width, but by the broadness of its vision and the height of its dreams."
— Herb Caen

“This world is but a canvas to our imagination.”
— Henry David Thoreau

“The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.”
— Frank Lloyd Wright

A recent trip included my spending several hours in Port Gamble, WA on the Olympic Peninsula. Established in 1853, it was a lumber milling and shipping center. Port Gamble is listed on the National Register of Historic Districts.

Federal Center South — also known as the Oxbow Building — is the Northwest Regional HQ for the US Army Corps of Engineers and also houses offices for the Government Services Administration. Designed by Zimmer-Gunsul-Frasca Architects during the Barack Obama Administration, it was first occupied in December 2012. At that time, 600 people worked in this building.

"Imagination is the liberty of the mind. It is intrepid and eager, and the extreme of its achievement lies in abstraction."
— Wallace Stevens

“Photographs are often treated as important moments. But really they are little fragments and souvenirs of an unfinished world.”
— Saul Leiter

I recently visited Yellowstone National Park for the first time for just one day. I am definitely going back! I spent the most time taking photos at the Grand Prismatic Spring. All of these shots were taken there.

“Photography is the art of observation.  It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place…  I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”
— Elliot Erwitt

As a kid, I used to spend time each summer on the wheat farm that my Mennonite grandfather Joe Schrag homesteaded in 1904 twenty miles west of Ritzville, WA. As we drove through the countryside back then, I used to wonder about the abandoned farm buildings that I would see. Who lived in these homes, why did they leave, and where did they go?

In 1904, most farms were family enterprises and farmers lived on their land. Since then, many smaller farms have been consolidated into larger sections, and those families have abandoned their homesteads. Also, in 1904 it was a day-and-a-half long trip to Ritzville and back by horse drawn wagon. Now a twenty minute drive to town, many farmers live in town and commute to their farms.

I'd been thinking about a project of photo documenting these structures as they are disappearing from the landscape. A Schrag family reunion in 2019 inspired me to get started. In 2018 I had purchased a drone and it's the perfect tool for accessing and photographing these structures. My wife's comment: "not much left but the skeletons..." gave me the idea for the title.

Some of these properties were the homes of relatives of mine.

Northern State Psychiatric Hospital is a historic hospital campus in Sedro-Woolley, Washington. It was opened in 1912 and closed in 1973. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

These are photos of the farm buildings used during the hospital’s self-sustaining past.

A few years ago I bought a Phantom 4 drone. After learning some shooting and editing techniques, these are the first for me to post.

These 4K videos are linked from my YouTube account. You may have to adjust the display settings (gear icon at lower right of video display frame) to get the best resolution.