Kodak Gold 200 film, Pentax 105R camera. I recently went looking through some old photos for personal reasons and found the shots I took an a bicycle tour of the Olympic Peninsula in 1992. I was surprised that some of them were better than I would have even hoped.  Sure, I look at some of the images and wonder what the heck I was thinking in terms of composition, but I still managed to capture some images I want to post here.

The Pentax camera was a pretty cool point and shoot with lots of cools features, including 5 flash modes, programmable interval shooting, a macro and super macro mode, both auto advance AND multiple exposures (most film cameras had one or the other), exposure compensation, date stamps, and more. All of this was in a small camera that could be used with one hand. I remember I took some shots while riding the bike on this trip and they came out OK.

This image was taken from the Space Needle. I budgeted in an extra day at the start of the trip* and was rewarded with gorgeous weather for a day trip in Seattle. I visited the fish market, and stopped in what was then the biggest Starbucks, which had just gone public with an IPO that very month. 1992 was a culturally ascendant time for Seattle which seemed to be everywhere in the popular culture. Besides the Starbuck’s IPO, Nirvana’s Nevermind and Pearl Jam’s Ten had both been released in 1991. The movie Singles came out in September of 1992 and Frasier’s first season was 1993.** None of which had anything to do with my trip. I just went because the tour fit into my schedule and sounded promising.

* Back then, airlines often offered lower fares if your round-trip required a Saturday sleepover. It was a low-tech way to charge different fares for business and recreational travelers.

** Also in 1991, George Costanze referred to Seattle as “the pesto of cities.”

I rode the monorail to the Space Needle and went to the top. I understand you cannot always see Mt. Rainier from here. Atmospheric conditions often prevent such views. I put a bit more of the foreground in the shot, but there was an obstruction. Most of my shots from the Space Needle have it – I vaguely remember dealing with it but cannot remember if it was a fence or something else.  I just cropped it out after I scanned this from the negative yesterday.