Welcome to Portland Ground

I created Portland Ground to share the beautiful photons of the Portland area with people here in the Northwest and around the planet.

Portland Ground is a geo-photo-documentary. Each of the 1454 images here is connected to one of the 75 odd neighborhoods or places I've visited. It's my effort to do street photography in a way that pleases me, and captures the rough edges and the beautiful sides of Portland Oregon.

My goal is to provide you with freshly ground Portland Ground every day. I'd like to hear your comments, so send an e-mail.   

I encourage you to use my images on your blog or web site, so long as you provide a link to "www.portlandground.com" and a text credit. If you like what you see here, hyperlinking is how you say "thanks." I thank you in turn.

Read the Creative Commons License for licensing details if you want 'em, read this page for more detail, and contact me with questions. I almost never bite, and am always happy to be flexible and to try to meet specific needs.

For commercial licensing or to purchase a print please contact me here.

Thanks for visiting Portland Ground!

Miles Hochstein


Frequently Asked Questions and the Answers Who Love Them

Q. "Who are you?"

A. Here's my current cover story. Documented Life

Q. "Why do you do this?"

A. It all begins with light. I like light of every flavor, shape and kind. And I appreciate the ground and the sky, and the way they dance together. I enjoy walking around and watching the light bouncing off the earth and the buildings and shapes, and I enjoy watching the people as they move through it. So let us raise a glass to the light.

Then there is Portland, beautiful funky so-very-much-not-Los Angeles Portland, a place that, seems perpetually foreign to me. I grew up in the 1970s in the Hollywood Hills beneath the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles. I first came to Portland for college in 1977. When I left I carried memories of Portland's exotic appearance with me wherever I lived. I didn't plan to return, but I held it in memory. Then, as my spouse and I began to think of where we should raise our children, both of our minds turned to Portland. I began to plot and plan a documentary of the city I never quite finished exploring in the early 1980s

So it came to pass that, when I finally moved back to Portland in 2002, after about 2 decades away, I was just as thrilled as I had been long ago by the strange look and feel of Portland. It was now a familiar exotic locale, littered lightly with memories of my college days, and yet my years away made possible the delight of discovery and rediscovery. Portland Ground has been a very satisfying project for me.

Q. "So you like Portland?"

When my spouse and I moved here in 2002 with our children, then 2 and 5, we were "between jobs" and otherwise unencumbered. We could have moved anywhere in the United States to seek work, a community, and a place to raise our young children. We concluded that Portland Oregon was the place we should be (Seattle, Ann Arbor and Vancouver B.C. were on our short list). We have no regrets about the choice.

Q. "Will you photograph my neighborhood, building or place of business?"

A. I love to hear about interesting homes, buildings, businesses, walking streets and environments and welcome suggestions and requests.

Q. "I don't feel you've fairly represented my neighborhood or favorite place."

A. I agree! Every weekend or two, and sometimes on a weekday after work, I steal a few hours from my spouse and children and explore a new or familiar area of the city. As I travel about my eye is drawn to the run down, the atypical, the strange, the old and the unusual. I find that the scruffy gritty and grimey stuff is at least as interesting as the expensive new and shiny stuff. To label the images that I find with the name of a neighborhood, as I do, is, in a sense, unfair to the neighborhood. The neighborhood designations are meant simply to tell you where the images were found, not to suggest that the images are typical of the neighborhood. On the other hand, for fellow seekers of the kinds of things that I appreciate, perhaps the photolog does provide a guide to the kinds of sights that a neighborhood offers?

Q. "May I license an image or purchase a print?"

A. Yes. Please contact me to discuss.

Q. "May I use an image on my website?"

A. Yes. I encourage you to do so under the terms of my Creative Commons License with a credit and link to http://www.portlandground.com/... so people can find more pictures if they want them. Click here for detail on how to use an image on your blog or website.

Q. "Will you remove an image from your site?"

A. I value the good will of the community so let me know if you have a problem with an image on this site.

Q. "What's with the ads? Some photoblogs offer nice blank space around the images, the better to contemplate their beauty."

A. I used to be troubled by the ads, but now I accept them as a way to cover the costs of maintaining a web site. I hope they don't interfere with your enjoyment of the images.

Q. "What equipment and tools do you use?"

Of course I probably don't have to tell you that the specific tools are ultimately not important. You already knew that. The fact is, you can do great things with a point-and-shoot and some very basic tools. But, in short, I use a Canon 10d with various lenses including my favorite, a wide angle zoom that goes down to 12mm. I usually shoot in Canon RAW format, download to my homemade Windows XP Athlon based computer, process RAW to TIFF in Capture One LE 3.7, then Photoshop (it's a verb) the images (applying various magic that pleases me), downsize and save to JPEG, upload to my server and pump it out to the world with Movable Type running on a Linux server at Behosting. If you have other technical questions I'm happy to answer them.

Q. "What's the single most important tool in your box?"

That's easy: Photoshop. The rest, as the sages say, is commentary. Learn to use it well and you will be a god of light. Learn to use it well and it doesn't matter what camera, lens, computer or other software you use. I'm still learning, but Photoshop (or Gimp?) is the key to photographic expression.

Q. Portland GROUND? What's that about?

Explanation 1

ground ground get a ground, I get a ground.....
the ground on which we stand
hold your ground in the daily grind
ground glass ground round
ground coffee ground pepper
ground flour ground corn
ground keeper ground sweeper
ground water ground deliver
ground floor ground game
ground ball ground out
ground up ground down
ground loop signal ground
floating ground power ground
shaky ground shifting ground
ground zero on the underground
hit the ground running and run to ground
groundless fear groundless complaint groundless hope
air to ground, ground to air, ground to ground
electric ground battle ground stomping ground
sacred ground playground bass ground still resound
burial ground holy ground all around
seeking common ground on the fairground merry-go-round
well grounded dream and totally grounded teen
grounded flight and ground control
ground of being still unseen

Any questions?


Explanation 2

Long ago in Portland a dear friend wrote a little tiny column in the college paper: Ground Watch. Every week she would report briefly on how the ground was doing, a sentence or two, no more. Then she moved away, then I moved away, then years and, yes, decades passed. One day I decided to call a web site "Portland Ground", and then, some time later, I realized that she had given me that word, and that she was one of the people who had taught me to notice the little things that other people may not think are important. Ground Watch lives, in my own way, in Portland Ground. Thanks G.

Post Script: Portland Ground is proud to present the 28th (or so) Anniversary Edition of Ground Watch - Exclusively on Portland Ground.

Ground Watch

"We have frost, now. If you stop on a frosty sidewalk and get really close, nose-to-nose, with the frost, you will see that it is made up of amazing ice-crystal jewels. The thought of crushing them may stop you in your tracks. So don't try this until you're almost home, so someone can look out of the window and see your dilemma and come to rescue you."

G.0., Winter 2005-2006


Q. "Anything I can do to help your project of documenting all of Portland?"

Since the launch of Portland Ground in late 2004, it has been wonderful to discover the enthusiasm that many of us share for Portland Oregon.

Portland Ground is a labor of love. Here's how you can support my ongoing effort to document our place on this earth.

1) Link to Portland Ground on your blog or web page. Your links are Portland Ground's life blood. Thank you!

2) Use a Portland Ground image under the Creative Commons license (look to right) with credit to "Miles Hochstein / Portland Ground" and with a link back to Portland Ground. That's right, I encourage you to copy, so long as it's noncommercial and you give credit, and you link back to www.portlandground.com . Read the Creative Commons license ("Some Rights Reserved") on the right and e-mail me if you have questions.



3) Tell me how you found Portland Ground.

4) Tell me how to improve it.

5) Tell me about places I should photograph.

6) Tell me about specific images you see on Portland Ground that you like.

Your comments and feedback are one of the things that makes this worthwhile.

Thanks!
Miles Hochstein