Yakima County on Film Calendar

When people think about the State of Washington, they often think of Seattle with thick clouds, lots of rain and plenty of green and grey. Yakima County is located on the western side of “Eastern Washington,” also known as Central Washington. Yakima County has a total area of 4,311 square miles and is the second-largest county in Washington. This part of Washington is not like the western portion of the state. There is 300 days of sunshine, plenty of brown and most of our water comes from reservoirs that have collected winter snow melt off and is used for irrigation. While Yakima County is the area where I grew up, after high school I moved away and lived in multiple states as well as living on the west side of Washington. A few years ago, I moved back and have found that Yakima County is a region that has a diverse area of topography, population and diversity. Located within Yakima County is the second largest Volcano (Mt. Adams) in Washington State, a major producer of the nation’s Hops plant, large tracks of orchards (including apples, cherries, peaches) several wine regions, the 15th largest Native American Reservation in the nation, forest’s, grasslands, desert, lakes, and everything in between. I decided to show Yakima County as I know see it. Highlighted in the images are both the Beauty and the blight, the forest and the sagebrush, as well as places that are often overlooked or underseen. I made several day trips across the county and exposed about 25 rolls of film. Most of this project was done while during the Covid-19 pandemic but social distancing was not a problem as I tend to go places where people are not. In this project I shot everything on 35mm film, using a Canon Rebel ti with a 50mm fixed lens. All of the shots were in Black and white and I only used Ilford HP5 Plus 400 speed film.