The Pacific Northwest is no Netherlands, at least when it comes to geography. (And try as we might, we are nowhere near Holland’s bike culture.) But we do like to grow tulips! The Skagit Valley in Washington is the epicenter of tulip cultivation in the US and hosts an annual Tulip Festival. Here in Oregon we have the Wooden Shoe Farm outside of Woodburn. It also hosts an annual tulip festival. I had only been once before in 2019. They didn’t hold one in 2020 for obvious reasons, so that gave us more impetus to go this year.
And thousands and thousands of flowers in bloom with the Cascade Mountains and Mount Hood as a backdrop is highly photogenic. I knew that I wanted to bring my Minolta SR-T 101 35mm SLR camera with the prime MC Rokkor PG 50mm f/1.4 plus the Celtic 135mm f/3.5, but what film? I was hoping to shoot more slide film, but Citizens Photo still hasn’t found another supplier for the mounts, and clouds were supposed to roll in. So I went with the next-best thing: Kodak Ektar 100. I had it already loaded in the SR-T 101 from the Willamette Falls excursion, so that helped.
We got to Wooden Shoe around 4 PM, giving us a couple hours to hang out. There was a decent amount of people, but people were masked up and the large size of the farm meant that folks were spread out. I shot over a roll, trying as many different angles as possible. I was hoping for a better showing of Mount Hood, but the cloudy/hazy skies made it look indistinct. Not only that, there was a parking area on the west side of the farm, meaning that any shot of the mountain was going to also have a bunch of cars in it. Ugh. I’m guessing that they don’t let people park there in the morning so that the early bird photographers could get their tulip sunrise shots in. But why not give this option to those folk who aren’t going to get up at 4 AM for the perfect shot?
Anyways, it was a fun afternoon, and I got some good shots. Take a look at the dynamic flickr album below, or click here.
Urban Adventure League 