The genre entitled "legal artwork" generally consists of a) pillars; b) Lady Justice; and c) scales.  T he entire collection is, shall we say, less than inspired.
     Enter Stan Morse of Chelan, a Washington lawyer who has traveled around the state, camera in hand, capturing images from the legal arena in a manner that is decidedly more compelling.  Morse's courthouses -- both interior and exterior shots -- are nothing less than works of art.
     The cover shot on the WSBA's just-released Resources directory was donated by the multi-talented Morse, who has been writing and taking pictures for 15 years.
     He first began writing around 1982, publishing stories in The Good Fruit Grower in Yakima, The Seattle Weekly, and one in Compass magazine in the Tacoma News Tribune on a wheelchair hiking trail.
     It occurred to him that these magazines might also want photos to accompany his stories, so he picked up three Ansel Adams books and started studying.  "They teach you some very elemental concepts like f-stops, aperture speed, and how the film reacts," Morse said.
     In this Resources cover, the Chelan County Courthouse posed the usual staging problems.  He had to cover up an antenna on the roof with a tree branch in the foreground, and make sure that the new courthouse next door didn't show.
     "The image was very much like choosing  a jury," he explained.  "I couldn't choose my courthouse but I could eliminate what I didn't like."
     In 1984, Morse moved to Redmond to practice business, family and personal injury law.  Missing his Chelan home, he thought it would be neat to have a photo of Central Washington on his office wall.  So he went to Waterville in Douglas County and photographed the courthouse from the side, covered with shadows from the trees, and with a simple picnic table in front.  It remains his favorite picture, and was a close second for this year's Resources cover.
     "What more captures the spirit of that early pioneer energy, of what was supposed to be the center of community pride -- the county courthouse.  In Jefferson county, and in Lincoln, Garfield and Columbia, they really outdid themselves.  They were making a statement."
     So he expanded his courthouse photos into a celebration of Washington State's Centennial in 1989 with "Centennial Courthouse" -- a photography exhibit of state courthouses that was exhibited in six county courthouses as well as the Legislature.  He financed the exhibit himself, and would like to eventually give the collection to a historical society.
     He has moved back to Chelan and is taking a sabbatical from work to concentrate on writing.
     He recently returned from a 3 1/2 month trip to Australia where he did some research for his next project -- writing a book about traveling around the world in a wheelchair.  He broke his back in a skiing accident in 1971 at the age of 17.  The Australian trip helped him learn how to navigate train travel and home stays.
     "I wanted to know if I was going to be comfortable before I took off for six months," he said.  He plans to leave in September for a six-month adventure.
     He's also nearly finished with a 37,000-word short novel, and has begun another novel about a female prosecutor in a fictional central Washington county called "Cascadia."