Joshua Trujillo Photojournalist

Huskies and their undies

2009-06-13T14:16:00.001-07:00

The semester is ending, summer is coming, so how does a University of Washington student celebrate?

Well, recently about 700 students stripped to their underwear and ran wild through campus in the third annual Undie Run.

The clothes students shed were gathered by Washington Student Public Interest Research Group and donated to Union Gospel Mission in Pioneer Square.

Search engines and seach lights

2009-06-03T23:22:00.000-07:00

The Space Needle becomes a beacon for Microsoft's new search engine Bing.

Pacific Northwest Ballet

2009-05-30T09:57:00.000-07:00

To see more of my photos from the Pacific Northwest Ballet dress rehearsal click here.

25 million hugs

2009-05-30T09:45:00.000-07:00

Below is a video I did for Seattlepi.com about an Indian woman they call the "Hugging Saint."

Read more here.

Penguins

2009-05-18T00:10:00.001-07:00

1811 Eastlake, home

2009-03-31T19:24:00.000-07:00

Nathaniel Porter, a resident at 1811 Eastlake - a home for people with chronic alcohol addiction - shows off his living quarters. Operated by the Downtown Emergency Service Center, the home offers residents a place to live safely while continuing to consume alcohol. A University of Washington study found the home saved taxpayers more than $4 million in 12 months because fewer residents visited emergency rooms, spent time in jail or relied on other social services.

Moving North Seattle's Concrete Elephant

2009-03-27T07:29:00.000-07:00

Driving along Aurora Avenue North yesterday and saw that bizarre concrete elephant being removed from its perch above Aurora. Reporter Casey McNerthney had also seen the pachyderm coming down while driving and stopped. Together we produced this short video.

Burial

2009-03-25T19:25:00.000-07:00

King County Deaths

2009-03-17T10:33:00.000-07:00

Browsing the final edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer this morning and noticed this:

I am going to miss working for the Print P-I.

University District grafitti

2009-03-14T15:29:00.000-07:00

Graffiti seems to have appeared overnight on the former Tubs spa in Seattle's University District. The building has been vacant for a couple of years but was kept relatively clear of grafitti; until recently. One nearby resident said he saw graffiti artists on scaffolding in the middle of the day and assumed they had permission to paint the building.

The Seattle P-I eclipses the moon

2009-03-11T10:45:00.000-07:00

I have always wanted to photograph a full moon behind my newspaper's giant neon globe.

The likely closure of the Post-Intelligencer newspaper, last night's full moon, the clear sky and a serious need for some solitude on the water prompted me to finally make that happen.

The challenge was to align the globe with the rising moon: One needs to be on the water, with a long, fast and heavy lens. An inflatable kayak launched at nearby Myrtle Edwards Park got me into position. A compass, a GPS and a lunar azimuth table helped me place the kayak to catch the moon rising behind the globe.

A few minutes after the 7:15 p.m. moonrise, the two globes were aligned perfectly and I began making photographs. The challenge was to hold my position in a kayak in 10 knot winds, 500 yards offshore, while holding about $8,000 worth of camera and lens.

Here is the result:

Edith Macefield's last stand still stands

2009-03-11T10:44:00.000-07:00

A while back I posted photos and a story about Edith Macefield, a Ballard woman who refused an offer of $1 million from a developer for her small home. She became a Seattle legend as the building rose around the defiant and elderly woman.

In June of 2008 she passed away and left her humble abode to the foreman of the construction site.

The building is now complete and the tenants, including LA Fitness and Trader Joes have moved in. Edith's former industrial neighborhood of warehouses and vacant lots is now populated by people in workout clothes who buy organic and drive Range Rovers.

Here is today's story.

Edith's house is squeezed between towering concrete walls of development.

A Range Rover takes the spot where Edith used to park her little blue car.

Ms. Macefield's handicapped parking sign sits with a pile of recycling and trash in her yard.

Restaurante Machiavelli

2009-02-25T19:35:00.000-08:00

The Word: Scale

2009-02-25T19:32:00.000-08:00

scale
Pronunciation: \ˈskāl\
Function: noun

1 a: either pan or tray of a balance b: a beam that is supported freely in the center and has two pans of equal weight suspended from its ends —usually used in plural2: an instrument or machine for weighing

Getaways: Fishing on the Hoh River

2009-02-25T19:27:00.000-08:00

www.joshuatrujillo.com

2009-02-16T00:04:00.000-08:00

The impending closure of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper where I work has prompted me to build a portfolio-style website. Suddenly marketing my work has elevated to the top of the list of importance. I made this website from scratch a while back and dramatically revamped and updated the site over the last few days.

Check it out and let me know what you think:

www.joshuatrujillo.com

Year of the Ox

2009-02-03T19:25:00.001-08:00

Mother, daughter and history

2009-02-03T18:53:00.000-08:00

Fumiko Hayashida and her daughter Natalie Ong were removed from their home in March 1942, along with 225 other Japanese-Americans during World War II. Under order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, they were marched to the Eagledale Ferry Dock on Bainbridge Island on their way to internment camps in Idaho and California.

A Seattle Post-Intelligencer photographer was there to document the mother and her young daughter as they were led off the ferry and onto railroad cars. The photo has become an icon of a troubled time for Japanese Americans.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer photo

Seattle school board: shutting down schools

2009-02-03T18:28:00.000-08:00

It is rare that a journalist gets an adrenaline rush covering a meeting. But a recent Seattle Public School Board meeting was passionate, rowdy and a bit unruly as the board of directors took on the issue of school closures.

Seattle has lopsided enrollment, with some parts of town filled to capacity and others struggling to seat students. The schools that were closed were largely in poorer parts of town with large minority populations.

Seattle housing market

2009-01-28T18:19:00.001-08:00

The housing market in Seattle is being devastated by falling prices and stalled construction.

MLK Day, Seattle 2009

2009-01-22T21:44:00.001-08:00

Inaguration celebration

2009-01-22T17:00:00.000-08:00

FOR SALE:

2009-01-21T15:56:00.000-08:00

used nwsppr, rusting globe, 170 journalists
dysfunctional JOA, lots of history, cond 3+
bkn laptops, dmgd cameras, 206-448-8000

January 2009, The Flood

2009-01-21T15:47:00.000-08:00

Record-breaking rainfall and snow caused flooding across Western Washington, shutting down all highway passes over the Cascades and Interstate 5, south of Seattle, effectively cutting off the Puget Sound region from the rest of the United States.

Midnight, 2009

2009-01-06T19:00:00.000-08:00

Private trash pickup

2008-12-30T15:31:00.001-08:00

After three weeks of no trash pickup in Seattle because of a significant snowstorm, this entrepreneurial guy started his own trash pickup.

Wind

2008-12-30T15:27:00.000-08:00

Wind ripped a sailboat from its dock on Lake Union in Seattle. The boat was swinging wildly, hitting other boats as two men tried to secure it.

Trash, going on its third week of no pickup in Seattle, blows around the street.

Stranded at SeaTac International

2008-12-30T15:16:00.000-08:00

The Pacific Northwest's most significant snowstorm in decades wreaked havoc at SeaTac International Airport days before Christmas. Travelers were stranded for days, sleeping in the airport as the airlines ran out of de-icing fluid. Is spent an entire day wandering the terminal myself, waiting for a flight for my wife and kids to depart.

Bus wreck: High drama over I-5

2008-12-29T10:50:00.000-08:00

Moth sailboats

2008-12-15T12:37:00.001-08:00

A new type of sailboat has been seen in Puget Sound, gliding above the surface of the water near Shilshole Bay Marina in Seattle. The moth sailboats, with two foils mounted underneath, seem to be flying above the surface of the water as they rise out of the water when up to speed.

Timberline Lodge, Mt. Hood, Oregon

2008-12-15T12:23:00.000-08:00

The Timberline Lodge, built on Mt. Hood in Oregon, was one of the projects initiated under President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration during the depression of the 1930s. With the modern economy in tatters, my newspaper felt it fitting to do a story revisiting one of the Northwest more well-known WPA projects.

Small Business Scene: Seattle Stained Glass

2008-12-07T19:34:00.000-08:00

Closing a public school: Students react

2008-12-07T19:30:00.000-08:00

University of Washington Volleyball: Dive

2008-12-07T19:27:00.000-08:00

Christmas caroling

2008-12-07T19:23:00.000-08:00

Mourning

2008-12-07T15:19:00.000-08:00

Photographing people suffering always feels weird. It is strange to point your camera at people in a time of raw emotion and pain. I always try to work with compassion and understanding, realizing that ultimately my job is to convey the devastation and pain that acts of violence create. Only when society witnesses and understands a problem do we act to fix it.

I really dislike photographing people in pain. I feel awkward, out of place and like I am intruding.

Understanding that, I received a note from a reader of the newspaper that made me feel better about the odd situation I was in recently after a father of three kids killed their mother and then apparently fled to Mexico:

"I live three houses from Noemi and Angel; I knew them only casually, but I know the children rather well. I have watched them grow up, waited at bus stops with them, watched them skate with my children, and it was their wailing I heard Sunday afternoon. My strongest feelings about this horrible event are with regards to their safety and comfort. Thank you so much for showing the respect you did last evening as the family mourned. I was impressed by your graceful handling of a very difficult situation.

I have been complaining about the other news crews, so I thought it best to also commend where it is warranted. Thank you again for your decorum, and your photo of the vigil is powerful and authentic."

Karina Blanco Lopez, 15, (center right) and her aunt Rosalba Naranjo (center left) - gather in front of the home where Noemi Lopez, Karina's mother, was found stabbed to death. Noemi's ex-husband and Karina’s father, Jose Angel Blanco, was charged with first-degree murder in the domestic violence slaying of his ex wife and likely fled to Mexico. Photographed on December 2, 2008 in Seattle. (Photo/Seattle Post-Intelligencer/Joshua Trujillo)

Penguin

2008-11-28T17:08:00.001-08:00

Mercer Mess

2008-11-21T17:19:00.001-08:00

Seattle gets drunk on Obama

2008-11-13T16:15:00.001-08:00

Snoqualmie River flooding

2008-11-13T00:47:00.000-08:00

Wavehounds Surf Shop

2008-11-11T16:20:00.000-08:00

City Vac & Sew

2008-11-11T16:08:00.000-08:00

Big Bad Joe Daher works on a vintage sewing machine at his shop on Aurora.

Election night

2008-11-05T01:52:00.001-08:00

Democratic Heaquarters chaos

2008-11-02T17:26:00.000-08:00

Leah Eister-Hargrave, right, works on shredding lists of voters contact information as her children Wyatt, 8 months, and Ruby, 4, assist their mother on Sunday November 2, 2008 at the campaign headquarters for Barack Obama and the Democrats in Seattle. Staff and volunteers, including David Colman, left, were furiously trying to call potential voters to remind them of the election and to lobby for Democratic candidates.

Fake Anthrax

2008-10-30T15:45:00.000-07:00

Last night I was working in the office when news editor Candace Heckman, who sits next to the photo desk, opened a package that contained a white powdery substance labeled "anthrax sample".

We called to report the envelope and the FBI and firefighters with space suits showed up. The second floor of our newspaper was evacuated.

The whole thing turned out to be some type of publicity stunt by some attention-hungry guy in California. He was arrested around the time we opened our package. He had sent many of these to other news organizations around the country and was quickly tracked down. He maintained a blog that, well, is not that hard to trace ownership to. Even for journalists without all the resources of the FBI.

Here is his site: www.terrorblog.us

The envelope with a return address.
The contents: A DVD with Colin Powell, the words "Anthrax: Shock and Awe Terror" and a package of what likely will turn out to be sugar.

Boeing strike, day 52

2008-10-27T20:40:00.000-07:00

Makah Indian reservation

2008-10-27T16:53:00.000-07:00

Candidate as art

2008-10-22T14:05:00.001-07:00

Residents of a home recently repainted their graffiti-covered garage door with an image of presidential candidate Barack Obama after receiving a letter of complaint from the City of Seattle. The door was covered for about the past 3 years with an image of a space woman until a large graffiti was painted over that image. The residents of the home then painted a large red circle and slash over that graffiti which prompted a complaint from the City of Seattle.

Last Sunday artist Shelly Farnham covered the door and the graffiti with the image of Obama. The choice to paint Obama on the garage door was not deeply political said house resident Peter Brown. "It is a spray paint spider web," he said because only the worst kind of tagger would paint on "this cool art of a ridiculously popular figure."

Read the residents' blog post about the garage door here.

B.S.

2008-10-22T14:00:00.000-07:00

Nate Eddings wears "glasses" to make a political statement at a political rally in Tacoma.

Barrels

2008-10-21T14:13:00.000-07:00

Dark Lord of the Sith takes a break

2008-10-21T14:11:00.000-07:00

Joe Biden visits Washington State

2008-10-19T22:49:00.000-07:00

Sound Transit Light Rail: First Ride

2008-10-09T17:52:00.000-07:00

U.S. Senator Patty Murray embraces regional civic leader Jim Ellis, who led a charge in the 1960s for mass transit in the Seattle area.

Bradley Enghaus, a journalist for a community newspaper, rides aboard Sound Transit's Link Light Rail train through the Rainier Valley.

Sound Transit's Link Light Rail train

Christian evangelsit

2008-10-09T17:39:00.001-07:00

Check your expectations and prejudices at the door when you are a photojournalist. I was to photograph a Christian evangelist and pastor at a local Seattle church for a story on evangelist's opinions of Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. I guess I expected a grandfatherly man with greying hair and powerful opinions.

Who I met instead was 29-year-old Pastor Leah Klug, an energetic young Christian willing to share her opinion and explain in-depth that evangelists are not a uniform bunch.

I guess that being the son of a preacher led me to expect something else.

Washington State Gubernatorial Debate

2008-10-09T17:35:00.000-07:00

Dino Rossi and Chris Gregoire meet for the first time in the 2008 election. The hotly-contested Washington State race is mirroring the 2004 contest which was the closest major election in U.S. history. Gregoire won by 200 votes.

Debate watching

2008-10-09T17:25:00.000-07:00

Supporters of candidate and congressman Dave Reichert watch the second presidential debate at the Reichert campaign headquarters in Bellevue.

Candidate Barack Obama speaks on television while surrounded by John McCain signs.

From left, Theresa Keith, David Doud, Brendan Woodward, Daniel Ryder and James Foxcurran react to a comment during the debate

Flying with a stunt pilot

2008-09-10T19:15:00.001-07:00

Bumbershoot 2008

2008-09-01T22:43:00.000-07:00

Just finished a weekend of covering Bumbershoot, Seattle's end of summer arts and music festival.

Where's the puck

2008-09-01T20:02:00.001-07:00

Workers spread concrete on the floor of the new Kent Events Center, new home of the Seattle thunderbirds hockey team.

"Ask Me Why I'm Naked"

2008-08-30T22:57:00.000-07:00

Employees from Lush handmade cosmetics caused quite a stir when they distributed literature wearing only aprons and flip flops. The six women walked around Westlake Park during the lunch hour downtown, surprising more than a few people when they realized the women were only wearing aprons, and showing off the rest.

81st Brigade deployment picnic

2008-08-28T20:53:00.000-07:00

Washington National Guard's 81st Brigade will deploy to Iraq for one year soon. The Brigade had a farewell picnic in Auburn.

Steaming

2008-08-25T23:00:00.000-07:00

The NOAA ship Okeanos Explorer

Photosynth

2008-08-20T22:26:00.000-07:00

I was able to play with some new Microsoft software today before it was released. The software is called Photosynth and takes many 2D images and blends them into a 3D image. It is cool but a photographer definitely needs to shoot differently in order to allow the software to align the photos. You must download a plugin for the software to work and it does not yet work on Mac.

Screaming Angel

2008-08-06T16:14:00.000-07:00

A U.S. Navy Blue Angels F-18 screams over the mast of my sailboat during an airshow over Lake Washington in Seattle.

Guadalupe Journey: Devotion, faith

2008-07-14T05:05:00.000-07:00

A group of Catholics from New Mexico is following a 12 foot-tall, 4,000 pound statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patron saint of the Americas. The statue is traveling from Mexico City, where it was made by reknown artist Gogy Farias. The route is the Camino Real, the historic road linking Mexico City with the northern outpost of Santa Fe.

Here are some photos from the trip. To see many more go here: www.guadalupejourney.blogspot.com

Foundry for an icon

2008-07-11T21:46:00.000-07:00

Buenas noches Mexico

2008-07-10T19:08:00.000-07:00

Soliders lower the flag at night- and it gets tangled on the pole.

Pyramids

2008-07-10T18:38:00.001-07:00

Today we played tourist

Buenos dias Mexico

2008-07-10T06:27:00.000-07:00

Mexican soliders raise the flag in the Zocalo this morning.

Mexico City military parade

2008-07-09T18:21:00.000-07:00

I am in Mexico City for a story I am working on. As my taxi pulled up to my hotel I saw this huge gathering of thousands of military school students in the Zocalo, Mexico's main square. I ran into the hotel and quickly checked in, ran up to my room and threw my bag on the bed and ran back out to the Zocalo to make pictures.

United States Coast Guard Eagle

2008-07-02T09:16:00.001-07:00

The Eagle was a war prize taken from Germany after World War II and is now the U.S. maritime services only active sailing vessel. The boat is almost a football field long, carries a crew of almost 200 and sails all over the globe as a training vessel and icon of the United States Coast Guard.

Gay Pride Parade, NYC

2008-06-30T21:17:00.000-07:00

New York City hosted one of the largest Gay Pride events in the world, a parade down 5th Avenue. It happened to start in front of my hotel.

New York City

2008-06-30T21:04:00.001-07:00

I visited New York to receive an award from Hearst Newspapers last week. In my spare time I saw the tourist sites, the site of the World Trade Center and was rained on by a torrential downpour.

Just married

2008-06-25T23:43:00.001-07:00

Air guitar competition

2008-06-23T23:20:00.001-07:00

Solstice parade

2008-06-22T13:41:00.000-07:00

70 years of marriage

2008-06-22T10:53:00.000-07:00

Sylvia and Harold Jones have been married for 70 years. President Bush even sent them a note recognizing their long marriage. Read the Seattle Post-Intelligencer story about the couple.

Boeing's U.S. Air Force tanker contract

2008-06-18T18:26:00.001-07:00

Boeing was awarded a contract to build a fleet of U.S. Air Force refueling tankers. Then a conflict of interest voided the contract. Then the Air Force awarded the $35 billion contract to Boeing competitor EADS, a European company that owns Airbus. Then Boeing protested. And today congressional investigators granted Boeing a protest and will reexamine the contract. It is a huge local story that is hard to illustrate. I spent the majority of my day trying to find celebrating machinists union members or other Boeing workers that have been hoping their employer would win the contract. Well, there were few workers at the union hall and none were celebrating in a way that was obvious in a photograph. So I talked to Boeing officials and was allowed to photograph the 767 assembly line, the place were the Air Force tankers would be built if Boeing eventually gets the contract.

Edith Macefield: 1921 - 2008

2008-06-17T17:52:00.000-07:00

On Sunday Edith Macefield died. She was the Seattle woman who refused to sell her home of 42 years to developers. So what did the developers do. They built an LA Fitness and Trader Joes around her small home. She became a hero among those that like older Seattle; the funky one where blue-collar folks worked hard and not having the fanciest things was not a shame. She refused the developers offer of $1 million because she said "I don't want to move. I don't need the money. Money doesn't mean anything."

Edith Macefield's 108 year-old Ballard cottage.

A visitor from Poland stops to take photos of the home, an American curiosity recommended to see while visiting the U.S. "Capitalism has lots of advantages but it does not care about people; just money, improvements and steps forward" said the visitor while looking at the home wedged between towering concrete walls.

Flowers left on the fence to her home.

Mariners and a near miss

2008-06-14T21:12:00.000-07:00

Last night the Seattle Mariners lost to the Washington Nationals.And Mariners pitcher R.A. Dickey didn't do too well.

And Jose Lopez broke a bat.

The Nationals bobbled a ball and allowed the Mariners on base.

Ichiro hit and scored.

A few foul balls were hit.

And one nearly killed me. Fortunately I moved fast. The ball left a mark in a metal panel immediately behind my head. It was a line drive.

Traffic cone

2008-06-12T23:19:00.001-07:00

Bus

2008-06-12T22:08:00.000-07:00

Creature advertising agency art director Lara Papadakis checks out the completed artwork she designed for the side of a vintage Volkswagen van on Thursday June 12, 2008 in front of Creature's office in Seattle. As part of an ad campaign for Pacifico, a Mexican beer popular with the surfing crowd in Mexico, 19 of the vintage buses were restored and artwork was created by 19 artists and hand-painted on the vehicles. "This is closer to fine art than marketing," said Papadakis. The fleet of 19 buses are mostly Type II Split Window versions of the popular vehicles from 1958 thru 1967.

Nude model and art

2008-06-09T20:00:00.000-07:00

Robert Treat has been modeling for local artists and art courses at Seattle's many universities and art schools for 25 years.

Needle, moon

2008-06-07T12:37:00.000-07:00

Every photographer in Seattle needs to photograph the Space Needle at least every few months.

Veggie

2008-06-07T12:33:00.001-07:00

CO poisoning

2008-06-07T12:23:00.000-07:00

Nine people, including three police officers, were taken to hospitals after a van was left running in a garage, filling a house with dangerous gasses. Three people were in critical condition.

Fall from grace

2008-06-07T12:09:00.001-07:00

Joe Pace was on the 1978 NBA championship team, the Washington Bullets. His team defeated the Seattle SuperSonics.

He had fame, money, glory and an NBA Championship ring. Then he was injured and turned to booze and drugs. He pawned his championship ring. His life fell apart and he has been living on the streets for years now.

A few years ago he returned to the streets of Seattle, where he was last cheered by thousands of fans during that 1978 NBA Championship game.

Joe Pace walks the streets of downtown Seattle.

Lake City Farmers Market opening

2008-06-05T23:33:00.000-07:00

New Wing Luke Museum

2008-05-28T18:20:00.000-07:00

Letter Cloud

The Word: Green

2008-05-28T18:14:00.000-07:00

Green
1.color intermediate in the spectrum between yellow and blue, an effect of light with a wavelength between 500 and 570 nm; found in nature as the color of most grasses and leaves while growing, of some fruits while ripening, and of the sea.

2.environmentally sound or beneficial: recycling.

Northwest Folklife Festival shooting

2008-05-28T17:45:00.001-07:00

I was enjoying a peaceful Saturday afternoon with my two-year-old daughter, my wife, our newborn daughter and my father-in-law listening to music and eating elephant ears at the Northwest Folklife Festival.

Then "POP!"

Either it was a firework or a gunshot and I don't want my children near either so I scooped up my two-year-old and grabbed my wife's hand and said lets get out of here. She had the new baby in a sling and jumped up with a look of fear in her face.

We were up and out of there before those sitting on the grass closer to the actual violence realized what happened. And that was fortunate for us because when I looked back it was a mad stamped of frightened people.

We left so quick that our stroller stayed behind, swallowed by the mad sea of people.

Once my family was far enough away I told my wife to keep going and I turned around. The journalist in me turned on. This wasn't just another shooting. This was a shooting at a crowded and peaceful cultural event in non-violent Seattle.

Three people were hit by the bullet from that single pop, a Glock 9mm pulled out during a fight. The owner, apparently a mentally unstable man with a drug problem who somehow managed to get a concealed weapon permit.

Spring

2008-05-05T19:13:00.000-07:00

It appears Spring is finally here.

Seattle's Squirrelman, redux

2008-05-05T18:58:00.000-07:00

I recently paid a visit to Seattle's Squirrelman at his new home on an 80 acre spread in Skagit County. Seattle's treehouse-dwelling homeless man captured the city's attention when his neighbors came together and supported him when he faced eviction from his cobbled-together home in a tree under Interstate 5. He was given an RV and then a place to park it atop a hill in Skagit County. Some said he had a "million-dollar view" from his treetop-perch in Seattle. Well, he again has a million dollar view.

Aztec dancers

2008-04-30T15:31:00.001-07:00

Spring snow

2008-04-23T17:44:00.000-07:00

Elvis

2008-04-23T17:41:00.000-07:00

Parking lot attendants

2008-04-23T17:34:00.000-07:00

Mexico vs China

2008-04-17T15:02:00.001-07:00

Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu

2008-04-15T16:40:00.000-07:00

280 foot-long banner

2008-04-14T19:00:00.001-07:00

Flagmaker Carol Anderson was commissioned to make a 280' by 17" "homeward bound" banner for a U.S. Navy ship