Living in Colorado

17. October 2023 · Comments Off on Living in Colorado · Categories: Colorado, General

So we arrived in Colorado nearly a month ago and have moved into rental accommodation near our new house – that is still being built.

I’m going to capture a load of pictures of the house build and will post some images in the coming month, right now it’s basically a hole in the ground. They are currently working on plumbing and will finish the floor next week and start framing.

Bizarrely, we’ve been told that the house will be finished by the end of February – which is great, for us it can’t come fast enough.

For the last month we’ve spent most of our time learning the area, finding out where the shops are, and testing out a load of restaurants for when visitors come and see us.

So far everything has been fantastic, the weather is amazing (hot) and the sky is pretty much blue with sun every day (nothing like Washington State).

Every now and then we get an amazing sunset, and tonight was one of those moments. We jumped int he car and drove a mile to our new house and took the following picture from what will the front of the house, looking out the Study French doors (basically by our front door and porch).

Now you won’t believe me when I say there is no photoshop here, this is what it looked like – I’ve NEVER seen anything like this and wanted to share the view with everyone, hence the posting tonight.

Enjoy…

And look for more postings in the coming months.

Museum of Flight – Again…

27. May 2016 · Comments Off on Museum of Flight – Again… · Categories: General, Photography · Tags:

I know I’ve been to the Museum of Flight a few times, and yes I know that I keep taking the same pictures.  But here’s the thing, I don’t care, I love the place 🙂

Last weekend we went back again as we had family in town and as usually it was fantastic.  Of course many of the plains remain the same and some don’t change position but it’s always to try and get a different perspective or a new shot.

As usual I turned up with a tripod (much to the frustration of other photographers who didn’t bother) and got some great shots.  In total I took 400 pictures (or just over) and out of those ended up with 50 I really like.  I won’t bore you with all 50 here :-), so I just picked 10 to share.

We also went to a new “Space” exhibit and went inside a space shuttle – which is huge!  Unfortunately they don’t let you go in the cabin (which would have been fun) but it’s still pretty impressive just how massive the thing is.  We also went into Air Force One, or at least the version of Air Force One that Kennedy used.  I always think it’s fun to check out where Jacky O took a crap 🙂

The cockpit image image is actually Air Force One and this came out well when you consider I shot this through a perspex screen.

They also have a great bridge that spans the major road by the Museum, that links some of the buildings together, and while on the bridge Abi did one of her cheer moves (called a Scorpion I think) so I shot that and like the image with the bridge disappearing behind her – so at least that’s a new pic.

There was also one pic where I lied on the floor looking straight up – people were walking past looking at me like I’m an idiot (which of course I am), but the image came out great – love that one too.

Another one I liked was a closeup of an Engine.  It’s a pretty old engine full of brass pipes and tubes but again came our really well.

Anyway a really nice few hours out, if you haven’t been I really recommend it.

Space Needle, Pike Place Market & Kirkland

14. May 2016 · Comments Off on Space Needle, Pike Place Market & Kirkland · Categories: General, Photography · Tags: , ,

Friday turned out to be a really beautiful day and as we had family (Regan) in town I decided to take a day off work and go out and enjoy the weather.  We all voted and picked Seattle as the location thinking the view from the Space Needle would fantastic.

So first we hit Pike Place Market.  The temperature was over 80 degrees and the tourists were out in force but we had a great time walking through the Market grabbing pics along the way.  I love the flowers, fruit and veg stalls and took a load of pics at each.  We found an interesting pasta stall and I got some great close up shots of pasta, I can see some of these making great wallpapers.

We walked past the gum wall which was recently cleaned and found that people had once again started to “decorate” the alley (much I’m sure to everyones delight – I don’t think anyone wanted Seattle to remove all the gum).

Then it was onto the Space Needle.  Now I’ve taken so many pictures of the Needle it’s difficult to come up with something new or interesting.  I got one shot I quite liked standing below the needle looking up and a couple of others getting the needles reflection in the “Experience Music Project” (EMP) building.

As expected the views from the top of the needle were amazing.  You could see for miles and even Mount Rainer was super clear.

To end the day, we finished up in Kirkland grabbing some Seattle Hot Dogs (you definitely need to try a Seattle dog if you never have) and then spent some time sitting by Lake Washington.

I took (as usual) a TON of pics, I’m just posting a few here today.

Really pleased I took the day off as I’m typing this on Saturday morning and it’s raining outside – you gotta love Seattle weather!

 

Christmas Card Pic Time

13. December 2015 · Comments Off on Christmas Card Pic Time · Categories: General

So here we are super close to the Holiday’s (that’s Christmas for those of you in England), and we needed some new pics to put on our cards.

In the past this has been a pretty painful experience for everyone. I wanted to create some nice pics for Lisa (so the pressure was one) and James and Abi were made to clean up and pose for pictures (which they hated).

However, over the last few years I’be got a lot faster at capturing these types of images and this year I wanted to be especially quick as we were planning on taking the pictures outside in the rain! Redmond town center has a nice Christmas tree and we thought it would be nice to shoot the kids in front of that. As you would expect the weather was crappy with a light rain coming down the whole time.

To make this super fast I grabbed my Fuji X100T camera which is a fixed focal length (35mm) camera so I couldn’t zoom in or out with he camera. This made me “zoom with my feet” and enabled me to quickly position the kids in front of the tree and grab the shot.

Obviously it was dark out (these shots were taken around 6pm), so I needed some light on their faces. Now I could have gone nuts and got out any number of lights and light modifiers but I again chose to go really simple. I grabbed a single Nissan i40 speed light that I triggered off camera using an infrared trigger. The camera, light and trigger all fitted in my coat pocket and were super easy to set up and use.

I just held the light at arms length off to my left pointing in the general direction of James and Abi and took the shot.

Each image took around 15 seconds and we captured the shots we wanted super fast. James’ girlfriend Bale was with us and he wanted a couple of shots with him and her and we captured those really quickly too!

Lisa was pleased with the images and James and Abi were happy as they didn’t have to stand in the rain for a long time (something that would have been the case a couple of years ago). I’ve clearly come a long way.

Anyway here are the three images that are going on the cards.

Seattle Trip

30. May 2015 · Comments Off on Seattle Trip · Categories: General

It’s funny how when you live really close to a place how frequently you visit. I guess you keep telling yourself “I’ll go another day!” I lived 30 miles from London in the UK for many years and I never went into the city!

Well Seattle is kinda the same. We live no distance at all (it takes about 20 minutes to drive in) and we hardly ever go.

However recently we had some family visitors and we planned a day in the city. The weather was going to be beautiful so I grabbed my camera and off we went.

I had recently brought a new 18-135 lens for our upcoming Orlando vacation and decided to take the lens and check it out. Now it’s not that fast (f/3.5 when shooting at 18mm and drops down to f/5.6 as you zoom in) but the image quality seemed pretty good and as an all weather lens, it seemed a great choice for a family vacation.

As I’m a sucker for ultra wide lenses, I also took along my 14mm f/2.8 so I had some nice wide glass if I needed it.

I won’t bore you with all the family pictures (you will get enough of those when I go to Florida) so I just picked some nice pictures of the city.

I have to say I was REALLY pleased with the new lens. Sure yes it’s not as sharp as some of the primes I have, but being able to just point and shoot without having to keep changing lenses was great.

Lisa is not the most “patient” wife when I’m out with a lot of gear, so I’m adapting and trying to have to photographer persona’s.

There’s the version of me that takes loads of gear and spends lots of time taking the same image from different points of view with different glass, and there’s the husband who grabs the shot with one lens and moves on.

It was a lovely day and I got some nice shots of the city.

Looking forward to really putting the new lens through its paces when we go on our vacation.

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