Photography

BETTINA HANSEN / THE SEATTLE TIMES

'Mama Love', center, is a magnet for hugs at Fourth Avenue and Pine Street near Westlake Park in Seattle. Her real name, Angela Maria Seven Thunders Favré, is all but forgotten to her many admirers. She provides spiritual guidance, support and security to the young crowd that hangs out around the park.

INTERACTIVE: Hungry clubgoers crowd around a Monster Dog stand after the bars close on 10th Avenue and East Pike Street in the Capitol Hill neighborhood after the bars close in early January, 2013. For $5, a Seattle-style hot dog, veggie or meat, with cream cheese and caramelized onions is a comforting end to a night at the bars.

BETTINA HANSEN / THE SEATTLE TIMES

The afternoon action at Dur Dur Café, a tea room and restaurant that is a hub for Seattle's Somali Cabdriver community at East Cherry Street and 23rd Avenue South, swings from raucous games of dominoes to evening prayers in front of a poster of Mecca.

INTERACTIVE: Shoppers pick produce under a wind-whipped blue tarp at Hau Hau Market near the intersection of 12th Avenue South and South Jackson Street, in the center of the Chinatown International District known as Little Saigon. Customers drive from as far away as Tacoma and Bellingham for the cheap but high-quality fruits and vegetables, some unavailable at mainstream stores.

Seattle Times staff photographer Bettina Hansen discusses why she used a Horizon panoramic 35-mm film camera for the story rather than her usual equipment of choice-- a Canon DSLR. Read the story here.

INTERACTIVE
Left: The intersection of Western Avenue and Virginia Street is the back side of Pike Place Market and beginning of Victor Steinbrueck Park, an interesting cross-section of tourists, working folks, and locals hanging out. "We call it 'Native Park', " said a young Native American man through glazed eyes, who declined to have his picture taken.

Middle: "I miss my kid a lot," lamented Albert Green as he hung out at Victor Steinbrueck Park. "I had a wife, had a son. I miss it." Polio in his early childhood left him in a wheelchair, and drug and alcohol abuse landed him in prison, estranging him from his family. After being homeless for about seven years, he now lives in assisted housing near the space needle, and can be seen doing daredevil wheelies through traffic down Virginia Street, skidding to a stop at the park, three or four times a day.

Right: Magic Waters, 63, sells his wares and handmade paraphernalia on the overlook behind Pike Place Market. "This is where we come to drink, fight, fall in love, all that," he said. The view of Puget Sound and the city skyline is a fitting backdrop for their activities. "The Olympics, even though you can't really see them, you know they're there. The sunset here over West Seattle when it's a clear summer night or a clear cold winter night, and you got a full moon up in the sky, it's like, so beautiful. The water is so peaceful and calming. Even when it's rainy and snowy, it's really really nice out here. In rasta, we say irie. It's like, the best it could possibly be. So it's really, really, an irie type place here."

BETTINA HANSEN / THE SEATTLE TIMES

The lunch crowd crush of Amazon employees and workers from nearby offices wait to cross the street at Westlake Avenue and Denny Way, as seen through the metal address numbers, 2202.

INTERACTIVE
Left: Scalpers talk prices before the Seahawks' last home game of the season against the St. Louis Rams on December 30, 2012.

Middle: Tracy Baublits parks his blue and green camper before each game at the intersection of South King Street and Occidental Avenue South. For the last five or six years, he parked it right in front of the stadium, but Seattle Police wouldn't let him this year. Here he sets up his remote controlled car with an effigy of the St. Louis Rams attached to the tail. Baublits usually doesn't make it in to the game until about the second quarter, but he is a devoted season ticket holder. "Since we were in the Super Bowl, I've only missed three games. And one of them I was in the ER. One of them I gave to my son, one of them I gave to my daughter, and I've been to every other game since."

Right: "Once I get my mind off money and just playing the sax, it makes for a whole lot better day," said Tony Mack, 51, of Seattle, as he plays his saxophone with a funky accompaniment blaring from a speaker. He's out for nearly every Seahawks, Sounders, Mariners game and Farmers' Market. "When I had to work I couldn't play. Now I'm not working, so I can play. It's either no time and no money or no money and no time, you know, one or the other. Wish I could put those two together."