Stompin’ Grounds, the Early Years

The first few years in Portland were difficult. We moved four times in the first six months before settling in a tiny house in SE Portland’s Creston neighborhood. I worked for a pizza restaurant for a while, and then opened my own chain of espresso stands. Time was at a premium. The camera came out for the occasional hiking trip (which the dog enjoyed immensely which the dog enjoyed immensely) in the Columbia Gorge, the coast, or Mount Hood. I got the negatives printed on 4x6 color paper, and put the best ones in scrap books where they remain to this day.

Sometime in the early 1990’s, I noticed the colorful evening skies over Portland. The mad rush to the waterfront to catch a sunset over the skyline became a regular activity.

I bought a medium format camera called a “Hasselblad” in 1997. My end goal was to move up to large format cameras, like Ansel Adams used, but I had no darkroom, and my little house had no reasonable place to put one. So, I took the next best step, and moved to the larger 6cm x 6cm negative size. I use primarily slide film at that time, but I put the occasional roll of negative film through the “Blad”. More importantly, I began to understand the quality of light, and the ins and outs of black and white.

But, pretty skylines, and an expensive camera do not a photographer make. My struggles with composition within the confines of a single 80mm lens (the equivalent of 50mm on 35mm cameras), and the pitfalls of using an entirely mechanical camera, i.e., external metering, difficulty focusing in dim light, and just plain old forgetfulness (I sometimes forgot to focus), fueled my desire to just get it right. I visited the same places over and over, trying to get the definitive shot, only to have my hopes dashed when I got the film back from the lab. Clearly, I needed more help.

I turned to magazines and books. I subscribed to titles such as Outdoor Photographer, Popular Photography, and Peterson’s Photographic. I bought technical books, both amateur and professional. I began slowly to understand composition. I fell in love with Portland’s bridges, specifically the Hawthorne and Saint Johns. I developed an eye for something I call “Slow Zen.” This was born out of the use of standard focal length lenses, and (later) the amount of time it takes to compose a large format photograph. With a busy life, and the requirements of family and work ever nagging, the only time I could slow down was while I was taking pictures. I wanted also to reflect this idea of Slow Zen in the photographs. I shunned the extreme wide-angle photos that had become popular, and I focused on detail within a scene as well as the scene itself. I also ratcheted down the contrast, and let the pictures breathe. I now have wide-angle lenses, buy none of them are super-wides.

That little fuzzball of a puppy from the previous post grew up to be quite the dog. Smart and loyal, but with major, money-consuming health issues, he was my constant companion.

These are examples of my early work from Portland. The use of slide film, with its 4-stop* exposure range, renders the darker areas as silhouettes when brighter portions are properly exposed.

The Four Brothers, Taft, Oregon ©1998/2026 Gary l. Quay

I was rather proud of these pictures at the time. Sunsets are hard to capture using a handheld light meter. The widespread adoption of digital technology, with up to 15 stops of tonal range, makes images like these less palatable to 21st century tastes.

*What is a “stop”? Think of it in terms of the amount of light it takes to create a certain tone on a negative or digital sensor. Each stop is a doubling of that amount. The word derives from f/stops, which are the numbers used to set apertures on camera lenses.

My explorations into black and white photography also began in those early years. I find it to be more expressive than color.