Surf rescue of family, Willapa Bay, Wa.

Surf rescue of a family whose canoe capsized on the Willapa Bay just off the south end of Long Island. Read about it on the Observer, more in next weeks edition

-DKM

Ups and downs at the District IV track & field championships, Vancouver, Wa.

-DKM

Grand opening of Garden of Surging Waves, for the Daily Astorian

Grand opening of Chinese heritage park in Astoria, Ore., shot on assignment for the DA

-DKM

Tern and cormorant colonies, East Sand Island, Or.

Some of you may remember my adventures on West Sand Island a few weeks back (if not you can CLICK HERE). It was a quiet, peaceful, mostly empty place. Last week I was among a contingent that went out to East Sand Island to view the colonies of Caspian terns and cormorants. A very different experience.

The tern colony is under examination due to the fact that they are eating an inordinate amount of juvenile salmon, which you can see clearly below. All these photos were taken from bird blinds set up in the colonies.

And then there's the cormorant colony, which we had to "sneak up on"

And crawl through long man-made tunnels to get to

Dante forgot this level of hell when writing the Inferno (I'm still covered in bug bites). When crawling through the dark on your hands and knees it's a bit unnerving to hear the dinosaur-like sounds of these birds all around you.

-DKM

On Streets of Roses, pt. 16

Last weekend was a goof ol' fashioned PDX street photography weekend for me and my lady. We drove over Friday night and got there just in time for a showing of the new Vivian Maier movie, which was great. The next two days were spent walking around the city and making photos. We started out on the street car, which I had never been on.

A little later in the evening we took the light rail to the Rose Quarter to check out the scene prior to the Blazers playoff game.

After the crowds disappeared into the arena we hopped back on the light rail, where we noticed a large number of high schoolers in prom clothes. We found out that there were multiple proms taking place near the waterfront.

The next day we returned to the waterfront on a warm weather day and ended up back downtown before calling it a weekend.

Going into the weekend I had spent some time obsessing over Japanese street shooter Daido Moriyama and was intrigued at how he makes excellent photos using a point and shoot camera. The good people at Hollywood Camera in PDX gave me an old P&S — a Canon AF35 from 1983 — for free. So I bought a cheap roll of film to see if it worked, and I was pleasantly surprised.

-DKM