Seems like so long ago, especially since Kylie and I drove to Nashville today, but I was in Portland yesterday for a quick day trip. Portland is a photographer's dream with so much character and an amazing backdrop to create images, and this is why this trip was a tragedy. I brought my D700 hoping I'd have a chance to give it a good workout, but the photography gods frowned on me this day; I only had a few minutes before dinner and a short time afterwards in the dark to walk around and grab some images. Portland is definitely on my short list of cities to return to in the near future for more of a photo safari. Not many this time, but here's a few.

This was the cool display wall behind the check-in desk at my hotel. Pretty crafty use of old half bottles of wine.

Speaking of hotels, I've gotta give a shout out to the Hotel Vintage Plaza and their fantastic customer service. They called while I was en route to the airport to let me know I had - ahem - left my Macbook Pro laptop in my room, and then they escorted it in a town car to the airport for a sweet reunion before my flight left. [insert slow-mo video of me running towards the driver as he extends my precious laptop towards me as he gets out of the car with the song "Reunited" playing as a soundtrack.] Besides, with cool boutique decor (see image above and below), a free wine happy hour and a killer location in downtown Portland, how can you not like this place?

Normally I wouldn't get too excited about an image like the one below, but the way the lighting came together serendipitously makes this one a keeper. It was actually very dark on this street, but I noticed when cars would drive by on the street, the lights from the headlights would provide great lighting on this scooter. So, I waited for a few seconds for a car to pass in each direction at the same time, and voila! BTW, for any photographer types reading this, the image below was taken at ISO 2000 with the 85mm f/1.4 lens at f/1.8 at 1/60th of a second. Pretty good noise performance, eh?

This art gallery was closed when I walked by, but I thought this view through a window screen made for pretty intersting art on its own.