Split Leap – Redmond

06. December 2012 · Comments Off on Split Leap – Redmond · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

I have to say I am truly amazed with what the human body can do.  I watch Abi train for her gymnastic meets and the way her body bends is just unbelievable.  She works really hard at it too bless her, she puts hours and hours into practice and comes home bruised and cut up with ridiculous calluses all over her hands.

I’ve mentioned before that one of my favorite events to watch her in is the floor.  The flips and jumps and cartwheels are so alien to me, if I tried any of them I’d be spending the week in hospital.  When Abi trains and does the splits her legs go beyond straight out.  She will sit up on the floor with one leg out in front of her and the other one back behind with her foot raised up on a couple of mats.  My eyes water just watching.  But this level of flexibility is necessary on the floor to allow her to achieve moves like tonight’s split leap picture.

She runs across the floor and leaps up and it’s very impressive.  I tried to catch that perfect moment when her legs are straight in front and behind and while she achieved it, I missed the shot.  She works very hard as well to maintain perfectly straight toes and hold her hands in that “special” gymnast way and you can see she achieved that in the image.  Unfortunately she only gets one chance to show me doing this at a meet and I’m not allowed into the gym to shoot her when she practices.

She was moving pretty quickly and in truth there is a little motion blur in her face in this shot.  Her feet have a lot more motion blur but I really liked this in the shot as it gave the image the feeling of movement and speed.  What I got right was the composition and am pleased with that.

I’ll keep trying to catch that perfect moment bit for the time being I’m happy with this one.

The guys have played with this horse before, only last time it was the “other end”.  This time they decided to ride on top.

Climbing Wall – Redmond

05. December 2012 · Comments Off on Climbing Wall – Redmond · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

I left work tonight a little early at 5pm but it was already dark outside.  But, and this is a huge but, it wasn’t raining.  So I thought I’d try and take a picture on the way home.  At first I figured I’d drive into Redmond Town Center and see if I could get a nice shot of the city lights (they light all the trees around the shops and it looks very pretty).  But on the way I had another idea.

In Marymoor Park they have this huge rock climbing structure.  Now I knew it wan’t lit at night so knew it would be very dark, but I had an idea.  So I parked up in Marymoor and grabbed my camera bag and tripod and walked over the the climbing wall.  The wall is a pretty impressive structure, almost a piece of art actually, all angles and overhangs and it’s also enclosed in a high metal fence that goes all the way round.  I’m not sure what the fence is for but the gate was open so I went in and set up.

I put the camera on the tripod and set it on a 30 second exposure with a relatively small aperture, so when I took a picture you couldn’t really see any details in the structure at all, it was basically in silhouette.  Then I got out my flashlight and when I pressed the shutter, I started to paint the climbing wall with the light.  The result is tonights image.

The flashlight I used is an LED light, pretty strong but the color of the light was very different to the ambient light being thrown from the distant street lamps.  So the wall had a blue hue, which actually looked pretty good.

I took quite a few pictures as I was having problem focussing on the wall before I pressed the shutter.  It was so dark the camera couldn’t find focus.  So there I was in the dark shining a flashlight on the wall.  It must have looked pretty odd.  Some women was standing outside the fence with her dogs, I think she wanted to come inside but was concerned that there was some strage dude with a flashlight – I sure she couldn’t see or understand what I was doing.

Anyway the end result came out pretty well.  I liked the sky above and you can make out the fence and near by buildings and trees.  I also like the fact that the street lamp was throwing orange light and the flashlight blue – this is normally a photographers nightmare but here I think it added to the image.   Well at least it’s different (which is what Lisa usually say’s when she doesn’t like the picture).

Don’t know how this happened but Master Chief got trappend in a huge candle holder!  Took him ages to get out.

Tree Lights – Redmond

04. December 2012 · Comments Off on Tree Lights – Redmond · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

I mentioned in a posting the other day that over the weekend Lisa, Abi and I attended the “Redmond Lights” event.  By the town hall they had this massive tree (and I really mean it was huge) covered with lights.  There were loads of normal lights and some that appeared to animate, I guess because of the size of the tree it was just impressive.

Anyway I took a few shots of this tree from different points of view.  When I got home Lisa and I looked at the pictures and a heated discussion ensued over which image was best.  I think in the end we got it down to two pictures, this one below and another that had another large tree in the foreground that was beautifully lit up with orange lights.  In the end we couldn’t agree on the best image so I followed a tried and trusted approach to pick the right one to post.

So here is Lisa’s favorite picture.

Obviously its pretty dark outside so I had to put the camera on a tripod and capture the image with a long exposure.  I should state that if I didn’t do that, one of two things would have happened.  Either everything would have been very very dark (except for the lights) or everything would have been very blurry.

Having said that of course you can see the people under the tree are very blurry as they are all walking around.  I did my best to clean them up but if I made any more modifications it would have looked very fake.

One thing that struck me was the color of the sky in this image compared with the color of the sky in other ones.  If I stood further back, the sky was blue and black, but when I was closer the sky had an almost orange hue.  The reason for this is the tree to the left.  This was covered in orange light and the closer I got to the tree the more light spilled into the camera and affected the ambiant sky color (wow how technical is that!)

I have to say that this month is proving to be the hardest month of the year.  It’s really not because of a lack of desire to go out and take pictures, it just that when I leave the office at the end of the day it’s totally black outside and raining.  But I only have 27 days to go (can’t believe that) and I really want to end on a high! So I checked with Lisa and have been assured that this weekend we have nothing planned and I’m going out to shoot loads of pictures no matter what.

The guys decided to do some wall climbing tonight.  They did pretty well too.

Night Reflection – Bellevue

03. December 2012 · Comments Off on Night Reflection – Bellevue · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

The weather out side is not great at the moment – well I do live in Seattle so what do you expect?  Anyway we are getting a lot of rain right now so I’m having to be “creative” finding new pictures to post.  Tonight is no exception so we are going back to warmer/dryer evenings in Bellevue Downtown Park.

This picture was taken in the park after sunset.  They have this large expanse of grass in the middle of the park and all around the grass is this long curved walking path.  Next to the path is a collection of small ponds (really it’s a water feature) that also goes around the park.  Well I found that if I stood in a specific place I could capture the path, some of the water and reflections of the larger buildings in downtown in the water.

As the sky had this great blue color (remember this is after the sunset) and the lights around the park were on and the buildings were lit up I got a great composition and I think a nice picture.  Hopefully you like it too.

I’d start hoping for nice or at least dry weather or you are going to get some pretty poor pics for the remainder of December.

I spoke to Carter tonight and he said he felt on top of the world!  No idea why.

Abi’s Floor Routine – Redmond

02. December 2012 · Comments Off on Abi’s Floor Routine – Redmond · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

So I know I take a lot of landscapes, in fact I post more landscapes than anything else, and I’ve stated in the past that I like to shoot vista’s more than portraits as you don’t have to talk to a sunset or interesting view.  I think (not sure) I’ve also stated that Abi is very into gymnastics, in fact she’s in a “Rec-Opt” (which I’m told stands for Recreational Optionals) program at her local gym.  She’s been learning all her routines for the last 6 months in preparation for the competition meets she’s now attending.  As a girl gymnast she obviously does her obligatory four events Beam, Uneven Bars, Vault and Floor.

Well today was her second meet.  This one was at her own gym too so we didn’t have to travel too far to see her in action.  This is a tough sport though, not only for the participants but also for the spectators.  Abi works out 3 times a week putting in many hours in the gym to get better, and today I had to sit through 6 hours of gymnastics to see my daughter for less than 3 minutes.  It was brutal!  But I have to say worth it as my little girl was amazing.

This is now dad bragging time so you are going to have to just put up with this (nope I’m not apologizing).  111 kids turned up today in her event, and 18 were in her age category and skill level.  Abi got 8.9 on the beam and came 6th, she got 9.25 on the floor and came 2nd, she got 8.8 in the vault and came 5th and 8.8 on the bars and came 3rd.  Overall she came 4th, and her team came 3rd.

She works really hard at this and I have to say I was very proud of her.  I like watching all the events but my favorites are the beam and floor.  They last the longest and to me look the hardest to do.  The trouble with taking pictures at these events is that the lighting is terrible and there are always people in the way.  Also the kids move very fast so that with low light means that getting focus and no motion blur is really hard.

For tonight’s picture I decided to post this one of her about to start her floor routine.  You can see the concentration in her face and she did REALLY well.  When I see her tumbling across the floor doing her cartwheels and round off back hand spring I’m just amazed and again very proud.

Tonight the guys found some “Glassy Baby” candle holders to play with.  Apparently these are very popular – I’ve never heard of them.

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