Saturday Market - Fashion of Its Own

My circle of friends is from a mix of different culture and region. My view for life and things in general is not All American though I have lived here for almost 30 years. Apparently this has something to do with my cultural background where my primary perception and understanding are originated and rooted. I have learned a lot about American culture since I lived here, but it is still limited in comparison with the mainstream majority. It is not me who should be here talking about American culture, but I am giving it a try based on what I know.

When my non-Oregonian friends think of Eugene, they instantly mentioned hippies. When Saturday market is addressed, tie-dye becomes the subject. When I show them 5^th Street marketplace, “isn’t that where Nike originally started?” Over the years when I live here, these are the stereotype conversation that I encountered. Our European friends particularly wanted to visit Eugene Saturday Market because they want to see hippies.

I have worked with a 'real' hippie in an office and had business encounters with some. My hippie co-worker does not use a clock, she relies on sunrise and sunset to tell the time. She is a medicine woman herself and does not take any medicine from the counter. She carries a super long hair and dresses very plainly. No make-up, no artificial addition to her natural body. She does not drink coffee, only herbal tea and plain water. My conclusion is, they like everything natural; they are counter-cultural in regard to industrial civilization; they believe in hand-made work, organic food and down to earth outlook.

Northwest has vast green and beautiful nature where nature lovers want to be. Comparing the Saturday market between Portland and Eugene. Portland is more organized and structured. Eugene has heavy hippie influence, more organic and natural. As the population of real hippies are diminishing, the spirit of freedom and naturalism remains strong and is vividly exhibited at the market.

I would say, the lady pictured is a good example. She wears a one of the kind skirt that she may have made herself or from other hand-made source. Transportation is a bike, soul food is the guitar and violin.  Bike generates no pollution and music pleases the soul, all natural.

It must have something to do with my former career training. Whenever I am window browsing in the streets, my attention is always on apparels, colors, trends and of course something to my personal liking. I am not a frequent visitor to Saturday Market because I am not into the world of organics and local crafts. But, I am intrigued by the diversity and creativity displayed here.

Eugene Saturday market is loaded with gifted artisans and their unique handwork pieces. Every booth has a style of its own. And, almost all the vendors are dressed to fit their own theme and style that I found impressive. There is no on-going trend here, no style influence of any kind. It's all own creation and own style. If I want to give is a name, I call it Unique styles.

The man with a hat with western flare, but then instead of a cowboy bandana, the red scarf almost looks more like the one used by boy scouts...

This little girl's mother is selling kids clothes and she is the onsite model.  She is a classic cutie, I could not help but follow her with my camera. Except that the market is full of merchandise and the background is quite cluttered. I replaced the background with a painted texture so that her outfit will pop better. Maybe you can, I cannot tell exactly what style is this without talking to the creator herself.

This boy caught my eyes the moment when he showed up. It seems to me that his parents have a booth in the market and he was just there wandering around. I took great interest in his outfit and followed him wherever he went. Finally I got this shot that I like, but the background is just a small circus.

I tried to remove the background, but it is a bit work that I would rather not to spend too much time on it. Photoshop 2014 has a new feature to pick out the main subject instantly, but it is not so easy if the subject is bombarded with multitude in the background. So I lightened the background with a texture. At least you can see him 

better. I tried to analyze his outlet one by one from head to toe, but I cannot. I really don't have enough western cultural background to solve the puzzle.  I think it is more an eastern European style, but I cannot be sure. 

Then, here came a small crew of Ukrainian teenagers who were distributing post cards for their upcoming concert. Their bright and colorful traditional costume has certainly drawn everyone's attention. They remind me of the costumes I saw in Estonia and Russia. Not a surprise as these three countries are very geographically and historically related. I cannot tell one from the other. I cannot tell a Malaysian to an Indonesian either even though they are all Asians.

It is quite interesting how geography impacts history and affects our civilization. It determines how we live, how we utilize our natural resource and how an ethnic group of people is formed. I have noticed myself that Asian ethnic kids grown up in western society have more fair skin than those living in Asia. I think it is caused by geographic resource which includes food, water and such. American-born Asian kids have also a 'reformed' look that is quite easy to be distinguished from native Asians.

A nine year old girl in a hot pink demure dress was selling the greeting cards she hand-drew herself! She was surely standing out in the crowd when the majority is wearing unique and extraordinary apparels. She is your All American girl, contemporary and conservative. I was really impressed by her work and her independence.

I myself have always been interested in making greeting cards, but other than making a few for gifts, I have not done much of anything. She is here to be my inspiration.

I am only showing a few images to explain the diversified styles at Eugene Saturday market. You can stand on a street corner and capture a whole world of unique fashion, one of a kind. This Saturday Market is no longer just a hippie market, it is full of creativity and surprise. Tie-dye is still popular but no longer a dominating style. It is everything and all possibilities.

True grit – Pretentious – Natural

Growing up in Taiwan, I saw some legendary aged trees, but nothing like what I see here in Northwest. It takes me a long time to distinguish fir from cedar, and to determine if it is an aspen or birch. Last year our rear neighbor’s 20 feet cedar landed on our deck railing and dent our railing. That was a little scare, but our two-year old deck bounced right back.  I did not feel threatened. If not for recent snow storm incident, I have no clue what impact may cause from a 50 feet fallen tree.

Up high

Trees and greens make this region unique and attractive to people who enjoy being surrounded by nature. Nature is beautiful, loving and also dangerous sometimes. 

Two more oak trees adjoining to the fallen one can cause potential hazard in future snow storms and we were alerted to cut them down. It is quite expensive to cut down trees and I can never figure out why till I watched this logging event. 

This guy was high up in the tree for more than three hours all together.  He may have come down once to take a short break and that’s all. With my 300mm lens, he looks that tiny, you can imagine how high he was.

It is quite a dangerous endeavor. He has to climb up the tree, set up his work station between the trees with chains saw equipped, with channel of ropes (to convey the removals) and belted himself to the tree he is cutting. Then, he started to cut a few feet each time from top, tie the limb off the tree and lowered it down to the ground, re-stationed himself on a lower tier and cut another piece. 

Cowboy roper

There is quite a maneuver between each fragment of the work. He has to be a climber, a roper, a gymnastic. a mechanic and be quick to respond the unexpected hazard. 

Just by watching, I can feel my nerve is constantly restrained and I held on my breath whenever he was doing the cutting. If any section of the tree broke unexpectedly, he could easily fall with it.  

We are tiny and our life fragile in front of these big trees.

The guy is apparently enjoying what he was doing. Every time when I came out to check on him, he would put out a big smile. I adore his spirit and I prayed that all things went well and it did.....

Life on tree

Early in the morning with a hint of sunshine. I was out testing the temperature before I headed out for a walk. I opened the door and saw a commotion, the whole flock of turkeys took over our street, male and female. It was a Turk invasion. There were at least 15-20 of them right in front of our house.

Catwalk models (gals)?

Scottish pipers (guys)?

I ran back inside to grab my camera. As I came closer, they were slowly scattered,
but I was able to snap a few shots for fun.

It is spring time when all creature are active pursuing their mates. Gals were walking down the catwalk and guys are having their macho exhibits. Looking pretty funny and entertaining actually.

A friend often said, these are useless creatures. Other than pulling my flower starters from my yard and make a mess. I have to agree that I found no use for them, no, I take it back. They come around in spring and completely disappeared at Thanksgiving time. I wonder why..... I know they got to be created for a purpose.

Another pretender : Opening a drawer, I spotted a tiny SPIDER inside a divider. I have to admit that out of fear, I wanted to take its life instantly so it would not crawl into other space, but it moved so fast that I could not catch up. Instead, I quickly removed everything from the divider to isolate IT. Guess that? IT coiled itself into a ball faking death. Immediately when my finger were reaching close to IT, IT was ready to run again. A tiny spider has a brain and knows the art of war. Aren't you amazed? Instead of crushing him to claim my victory, I decided to send him down the toilet. But, if he comes back again, I won't make the same mistake twice.....

Spring is here. It is hard not to take some flower pictures. There is also a reason that I love to take flower pictures.  They are created to be pretty, but they don't go out of their way to promote it. We treat them nicely with water and sunshine, they appreciate and return with beauty for us to enjoy. They don't have to show off. We are naturally attracted to and discover them.

Calla Lily and Clematis are my favorite. They are common flowers, but I find their quiet confidence and understated beauty very appealing. For this reason, I did not want to do any post processing, no texture either. I like them to look natural and truthful.

Tree guy prompts my admiration. Turkeys make me laugh. Spider makes me sneer. Flowers make me smile, from the heart.

Self-Discovery & Self Awareness

My focus is on portrait shots this week.  My grandson is usually my target but he lives in Seattle now. When I get to see him every once a while, it was brief and he was so active, I could barely have my camera ready and he was onto something else.  So I can only either photo myself or my husband….

I felt so uncomfortable when I first took my own picture last week. Once the debut was on board, it gets easier.  I used flash last week and I thought to try natural light this time.  There is considerable amount of light coming to our master bathroom through a large window.  The window is way up high above the large mirror panel, so the light is toned down from the distance and becomes soft. Convenient enough, there is the large mirror that I can take my own pictures.

It was a cloudy day and the filtered light was not completely ideal, but OK for some experiments. I posted myself in front of the mirror in various angles and used remote control to fire the shots. When I downloaded the first group of shots, I was surprised at what’s on my computer screen. I saw myself calm, content, and look pretty good. I did not necessarily smile in all shots, but I am happy with what I see. Where is that girl who was blamed by the grade school teacher because she did not smile and why my family so often reminded me to smile in front of camera? Well, I went back for many more shots, I made all kind of goofy looks, happy, mad, sad, you name it.  And, I am amused by myself. I feel free and I feel good about myself.

What? I don't believe it!

Had enough fun on my own expense, I made the proposal to take my husband’s portrait photos. He is so used to be in front of my camera because I carry the camera in the family, so an easy Yes.  I took some of his shots around the house (focused on facial expressions) and viewed them on computer screen.  I am looking at this guy every day, but I have never observed so thoroughly through the pictures. He is a super nice guy. When comes to pictures, he tends to look goofy. I have seen enough of them, so I wanted him to be a bit more serious and try different expressions and he did it well. We were both surprised to see his different look from the screen, more serious but not stern; shows more masculine characteristics but still  easy-going. I can tell that he seemed to suddenly be more aware of himself and his outlook.

My husband is very causal and laid-back.  He would go to any gatherings with the same couple of his favorite chamois shirts. If I want him to dress up a little, he would say, just pick one and I will wear it.  When I suggested that we go to the park for his portraits, he chose to wear dress shirt and sweater vest, the preppy look.  It was a sunny day but very cold.  Too bad that he had to add the jacket for the comfort. I selected a few locations with nice light condition and background, and I got quite a few shots that I really like and so does he.

Many people say they are not photogenic, so do I.  My younger daughter is very photogenic and I often wonder where she got that from... My photography work this week has taught me that we can all be photogenic if we want to. I learned that we will all look good if we just let our genuine inside and personality shown on our face. Either if it is a grin, a curled lip, a raised eyebrow, a fury stare or a piercing look. In my opinion, as long as the true emotion and feeling are honestly transmitted, it looks real and it looks natural from photography point of view.

A side note. I don’t like cheesy smiles and that short moment of artificial emotion. Cheesy smiles can be cute on little kids, but they can get into a habit to put out cheesy smiles if they grow up to cheese-smile in front of the family. And remember, such cheesy smiles will stretch the skin unnaturally and generate lines and wrinkles without us even know about it.