Downtown Park Waterfall – Bellevue

11. November 2012 · Comments Off on Downtown Park Waterfall – Bellevue · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , , ,

So for tonights picture I thought I’d post another image from yesterday’s visit to Bellevue’s Downtown Park.  As I mentioned in yesterdays posting the park has this rather wide waterfall and as you can see in the image below I wasn’t kidding.

I was walking towards the waterfall when I saw the red glow of the setting sun on the water.  I got all giddy excited and ran over to set up the tripod and this was one of the shots I got.  I put a really dark filter on the front of the lens (called a Neutral Density Filter) that restricts light without adding a color cast.  this allowed me to take a pretty slow shutter shot even with bright sunlight on the subject.  This gave the water a nice “ribbon” look as it went over the fall.  I couldn’t have got this effect without the filter, the water would have either been stopped in motion (which I think doesn’t look as cool) or the image would have been blown out.

Above the fall you can see the skyline of some of the tall buildings in Bellevue.  There was an unsightly crane in the image but that was pretty quick to remove with Photoshop (we don’t want no ugly cranes).  While there I met someone who is on my photo course and we had a long talk about the images we are all capturing.

Pretty much right in front of the waterfall is the ice rink.  This was stopping the sun from hitting more of the falls, which is a bit of a pity but I still think I got a nice shot.  Hopefully you agree.

Master Chief introduced Carter to his new girlfriend today, Carter described her to me as a bit of a troll which I thought was pretty rude until I saw the picture!

Downtown Park – Bellevue

10. November 2012 · Comments Off on Downtown Park – Bellevue · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

This afternoon I decided to go out with the camera and grab some pictures and I thought I’d try somewhere different.   So I went to Bellevue Downtown Park.  This is a really nice park in the middle of the city of Bellevue, right next to the Bell Square Mall.  I know this park pretty well as when we moved to America, Microsoft put us up in an apartment block right next to the park (and the Mall).  Obviously Lisa spent her first three months in the Mall (cost me a fortune!)

Anyway, back to the park.  The park is basically a large expanse of grass surrounded by a walking path that’s lit up with stone lamps.  There’s also a number of water features around the paths, and at one end is this pretty cool really wide waterfall.  Around Thanksgiving the city of Bellevue also open up an ice skating rink right by the waterfall and when I was there they were setting it all up.

I got there around 4pm just before sunset and took a load of pictures before the sun actually went down.  Then the lights in the park came on and I took a load more with the park all lit up.  So I have quite a few images to post.

This first image is actually the very last one I took.  This was taken right next to the ice rink (you can’t see it, it’s off to my right) at the base of some stairs by the waterfall.  I love this image and think the way the trees are all lit up looks great and the stairs kind of lead the eye up and out of the picture.  The city in the background is pretty cool too and you can see one end of the waterfall to the right.  It took a few attempts to get this as people kept coming down the stairs.  But in the end the patience paid off and I got a great shot.

Master Chief decided to “ride the bison” this afternoon.  I don’t think Carter was very impressed!

Night Market – Seattle

09. November 2012 · Comments Off on Night Market – Seattle · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

I was looking through my picture back log this evening looking for something to post and came across this picture of Pike Place Market at night.  Now I’ve never posted this one before (duh) and I can’t remember why!  When I took this I did take a tighter shot of the Public Market sign and posted that, but this one is the whole market with nobody in the image – and you never see that!

I actually drove into Seattle just to take some pictures, it was just after 9pm (as you can see from the big clock) and the place was pretty deserted.  There were a few people out and about going to restaurants and pubs etc., and some where even there with cameras doing the same as me.  The nice thing was that I could drive right into Pike Place and park on the road (in fact I’m parked directly behind where I stood when I took this picture).

There were a few people in shot and cars kept going down the street so I had to time the picture to get it empty and I think it was really worth it.  The neon signage looked great and I loved the purple lights on the wall of the building above the market.  Of course a beautiful blue sky helps as well.

For post processing I just popped this into Photoshop and gave it a little sharpen, then applied a little targeted blurring to give it that glamour glow look and added a vignette.  The finished image came our really well.

Carter lost Master Chief today so went looking for him.  Eventually he found him sitting on a Totem Pole!

Alki Pier – Seattle

08. November 2012 · Comments Off on Alki Pier – Seattle · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , , ,

Tonight I’m taking you back to sunrise at Alki.  The sky was really pretty and we had taken loads of pictures of the cityscape I was looking for something different.  Just further up the beach was this little pier hanging out over Elliott Bay.  There were actually a few people standing on the pier when I took this and they kind-a ruined the picture. So I hit Photoshop and now they’re gone.

This image was all about timing.  I really wanted the ferry in the right of the picture to have a counter point to look at (so it just wasn’t only about the pier) and I had to bide my time for the ferry to get in the right place.   I was lucky that the other people on the pier weren’t moving around too much so I got the shot.  There are so many things that make this picture nice, I love the sky, the reds are really pretty.  The boat and the pier are great (they were the things that attracted me to the shot in the first place) and I love the rocks under the pier and the waves lapping against the shore.

All in all I like this one and feel getting up at a stupid hour on a day off was actually worth the effort.

I think the guys were watching some Disney films today and insisted on both sucking the same spaghetti, it’s kind of Carter and the Tramp!

Japanese Gazebo – Seattle

07. November 2012 · Comments Off on Japanese Gazebo – Seattle · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , , ,

Today’s image was again taken at the Japanese Gardens in Seattle.  I was walking around the lake looking for interesting subjects and I came across this rickety gazebo built against a tree and standing in the water.

I immediately thought this would be interesting as the texture on the tree and the bamboo used to build the gazebo looked really good.  So I started taking some pictures.  Unfortunately it was pretty dark under the gazebo, there was a lot of shade so this wasn’t really a surprise, but i really wanted to show the latice work in the roof.  So I again resorted to HDR (I love this).  I captured three images each with a different exposure.  One was correctly exposed, one was over exposed by two stops and one was under by two stops.  Then I used Photomatix to merge the three images together to get the picture below.

This came out really well.  The shadows were brought out and you can really see the roof of the gazebo and the texture in the wood.  The water looked nice too and I even got some of the stones in the picture in the bottom left corner.  So I’m quite pleased with this one.

After too much candy the guys decided to just enjoy some gum today.

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