SEQUIM — Though photographer Ross Hamilton has lost most of his eyesight, he retains another type of vision.
The places he loves most, places he has documented over the past four decades, are imprinted onto his soul.
One such spot is just two miles from Hamilton’s Sequim home. Wrapped in sparkling snow, it starts off The Olympic Peninsula 2011, his seventh annual wall calendar.
It’s a hymn to the mountains, waters and forest.
Railroad Bridge Park, at the west end of Hendrickson Road outside Sequim, was where Hamilton chose to go one morning in January 2009.
Snow had fallen the night before, and dawn had brought the brilliant blue sky this town is known for.
The resulting photograph, Hamilton joked, “was all Sandy’s fault.”
Path to the picture
He’s crediting Sandy Frankfurth, his longtime friend and agent, who called on that sunny morning to suggest a walk and some photo-taking.
Once at the park, “he knew exactly where he wanted to take that picture from,” Frankfurth recalled.
“It pays to get familiar with a place over 40 years,” Hamilton said.
In a sense, that familiarity stands in for the photographer’s sight, which glaucoma has eroded over the past several years.
The photo of Railroad Bridge over a snowy-banked Dungeness River is the calendar’s January tableau, and the opener for a diverse collection of pictures selected from Hamilton’s body of work.
Beneath each photo is a quotation, selected by Frankfurth.
January’s comes from John Boswell: “Winter, a lingering season, is a time to gather golden moments, embark upon a sentimental journey, and enjoy every idle hour.”
Hamilton knows that “lingering” well. So for February, he chose a California-esque picture of the beach at Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend, with its Point Wilson lighthouse punctuating a wide swath of sand.
“By the time February rolls around, we are so through with winter,” Hamilton said.
His antidote is a walk on that beach, on one of those cloudless afternoons that come up suddenly amid a series of dreary days.
And for February, Frankfurth chose a lighthearted reminder from Kahlil Gibran:
“Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet, and the winds long to play with your hair.”
These days Hamilton, 68, is beach-walking and mountain-hiking with a friend he met 57 years ago.
His family and the family of Kathy Barnes were both vacationing in Montana; Hamilton and Barnes were about 11.
“We met alongside a river, and we just hit it off,” he remembers.
The two families rendezvoused in summers after that, but then they lost touch.
Call from a childhood friend
One day a few years ago, Barnes was passing through Port Angeles, and while waiting to board the MV Coho ferry to Victoria, she phoned Hamilton.
Barnes has lived on Hamilton’s street in Sequim for two years now. When they take hikes together, she serves as his eyes.
“I can see light and shape,” said Hamilton, but “I get in trouble in the shadows . . . I’m fine in familiar territory, but it’s really tricky when I’m not.”
Much of that territory is represented in the 2011 calendar, in images that capture moments of classically Olympic beauty.
October’s shot is of bright gold bigleaf maples on Black Diamond Road just south of Port Angeles.
June is sunrise on Hurricane Ridge.
August’s view is of Hart Lake, a place Hamilton’s father marveled over.
Oliver Hamilton worked on a trail crew around the lake in the 1930s, and on his days off, went fishing there.
One time he paid out his 90-foot line, all the way — and could still see the salmon-egg bait on the end of it through the lake’s translucent water.
The quotation below the Hart Lake photo is from Albert Einstein:
“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”
Long collaboration
About two months from now, Hamilton and Frankfurth will start work on the calendar for 2012.
After they’ve selected the photographs and quotations, they’ll send it all to Sequim designer Ruth Marcus in March, and to the printer in Mukilteo in April.
Hamilton said he has the calendar designed locally and printed relatively nearby so “we can control the quality. I’ve never taken shortcuts with it.”
At Thanksgiving this year, Hamilton and Frankfurth reflected on their long-standing collaboration.
“We’re grateful to the people who’ve supported us through the years,” including the retailers who stock the calendars, Frankfurth said.
The 2011 calendar sells for $17.95, “and I can’t bring myself to raise it any higher,” Hamilton added.
The calendars are available at bookstores, gift shops and grocery stores across the North Olympic Peninsula, and at the Olympic National Park Visitor Center at 3002 Mount Angeles Road in Port Angeles.
Hamilton also has a website, www.RossHamiltonPhotography.com, with a gallery of photos and the stories behind them.
Recently a woman in Iowa e-mailed him about it.
“I just spent an enjoyable 30 minutes on your website,” she wrote.
Hamilton doesn’t know whether she’s ever visited the Peninsula; the simple “thank you,” however, was “so refreshing.”
The 2011 calendar is the photographer’s own way of giving thanks.
“It’s an expression of gratitude, for the beautiful world we have, and the privilege to live close” to the mountains, Hamilton said.
“People travel from around the world to see this place.
“We get to experience it through all four seasons.”
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3550 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
