Kayaks – Bainbridge Island

31. July 2012 · Comments Off on Kayaks – Bainbridge Island · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

While taking pictures at Fort Ward State Park on Bainbridge Island these three guys turned up with their Kayaks.  Chris and I sat and watched as they started to unload their cars with a load of gear.  I walked over and asked if it was OK if I took some pictures and they said it was fine.  They probably thought it was a little odd that some stranger wanted to photograph them but they said go ahead.

As we watched them set up their kayaks and store all their stuff we started to ask them why they needed so much “gear” and where they were going to.  They told us there plan was to paddle for a couple of hours – I think they said they were going to Blake Island State Park (but I could be wrong) where they were going to camp for the night – kind of a boys weekend away.

One of the three was moving away to California and this was his swan song trip with his mates.

Some of their “Stuff” consisted of cans of beer – quite a few in fact, so they were clearly going prepared.  While they were getting in the water they were trying to photograph each other, so I offered to take some shots and if they emailed me I could send them all the masters.  They liked this idea so took a copy of my business card.  That said I haven’t heard from them yet so a number of things could have happened.  Either they were eaten by orca’s on the paddle over, eaten by bears in the camp site, lost my card or just decided I was an idiot and not worth contacting.  I’m guessing it is probably the last one.

One of them had never been in a kayak before (the guy in the middle) and was a bit wobbly getting in the kayak.  But they did manage to paddle together for a group picture.  I hope they do email me as I got loads of pictures and I’m sure they’ll like them.

Carter and Master Chief were inspired tonight watching the synchronized diving, so they thought they’d give it a go.

Stones – Bainbridge Island

30. July 2012 · Comments Off on Stones – Bainbridge Island · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

Not much to post tonight as everyone has a “stones” on the beach picture, but I thought so what!  I want one too.  So while walking along the beach on Bainbridge Island, I stopped and shot directly down and got this image.  You can hopefully see that some of these stones are pretty big so can understand why walking along this beach with a huge camera bag and tripod could be a little “dangerous”.  But everything’s good, I got all my camera gear insured a few weeks ago so it’s safe no matter what happens.

This is not a particularly cleaver image, there’s no artificial light – just natural sunlight – it’s just a picture of stones.  Well actually it’s three pictures of stones HDR’d together to add a little “grunge” or detail to the image.  They had some areas where all the stones were the same size (ish) but I liked this one better with everything different, all slightly different colors.

There’s probably some sea life hiding in here somewhere but I just like the image.  There I now have my stone picture.

Master Chief and Carter were missing Maui today, so they decided to try and recreate it here in Redmond.

Birds – Bainbridge Island

29. July 2012 · Comments Off on Birds – Bainbridge Island · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

While on Bainbridge Island Chris and I headed over to Fort Ward State Park to see if we could get any cool pictures.  When you get there you find this long very stoney beach that’s pretty much covered with old tree trunks and drift wood.  There’s a boat ramp that leads you down to the beach so Chris and I grabbed our gear and walked down the ramp.

Along the beach we saw this wooden frame with loads of birds on the top, we thought it might make a nice picture and it didn’t seem that far away, so off we went.  There wasn’t a path to follow you just had to walk over all the stones and carrying all my camera gear I nearly went over a couple of times.  Also while at first it didn’t seem that far, it took us ages to get there (these things always seem closer than they are).

When we arrived at the wooden poles we set up the tripods and took some pictures.  I thought it might look cool if all the birds took off so I picked up a stone and threw it towards the structure to try and startle the birds into flight.  I was totally pathetic!  My stone didn’t even make it half way and the birds didn’t move at all.  I’m clearly getting very old, either that or I have totally unrealistic expectations over my athletic ability (probably both).

While I was attempting this I didn’t notice that the tide had started to come in and was already over the base of my tripod.  So we moved back a few feet, took some more pictures and headed back.  The water was really coming in fast and we only just made it back to the boat ramp before the beach was cut off.  I’m so pleased we made it, but I guess it would have been a more interesting story here if we had got wet, luckily though that didn’t happen.

I actually think the picture below came out OK, the water was pretty still but you still get the wobbly pole reflections in the water.  It was so peaceful there, really quite beautiful.  I left the beach quite jealous of all the homes with a beach view.

Lisa made some Potato Salad today and when she wasn’t looking Carter and Master Chief pinched some!

Bainbridge Ferry – Seattle

28. July 2012 · Comments Off on Bainbridge Ferry – Seattle · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

Today my photography buddy Chris Pearson and I decided to take a ferry from Seattle to Bainbridge Island and see what we could shoot.  So at 8am this morning I picked Chris up and we hit the road.  We got to Seattle pretty quickly, the roads were relatively empty at that time and drove to the ferry port.  We got there at the exactly right time to drive straight onto a waiting ferry and cross Elliott Bay.

I guess 8:30 in the morning on a Saturday is too early for most as the ferry was empty and we got the chance to take some shots of Seattle as we left, and Bainbridge as we arrived.  On the way over the sky was very overcast and it looked like it was about to rain, fortunately as the morning drew on it got warmer and warmer and blue sky even came out.

I got some really good pictures on Bainbridge Island and will post those in the coming week, but tonight’s picture was of the ferry as it approached Bainbridge to take us home to Seattle.  Chris and I parked up near the front of the line to get on the ferry and had time to walk down to the ferry port ramp where you drive from the Island onto the ferry.  I took this picture as the ferry was coming in.

I liked this image as I caught the ferry as it was about to turn towards dock and had the Seattle skyline in the background.  I also liked the depth of field in this picture too with the dock just out of focus.  It doesn’t look it here but it was quite warm by this time with blue sky poking through the clouds.

We had a really good day and I got a good dozen postable images, and for 6 hours that’s really good.

Here’s Carter enjoying a run on the beach.  Clearly the sand is very wet as his feet are sinking!

Bromeliad – Maui

27. July 2012 · Comments Off on Bromeliad – Maui · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

I was walking around the some of the fresh water ponds in Maui trying to get some pictures of water lilies.  I wanted a picture of the lily as in Maui they are just so perfect.  They flower and sit on the lily pad in the water and just look beautiful.  However all the lilies I could find had floated to the waters edge and didn’t look as nice – you can probably imagine the shot I wanted, that perfect flowered stem on a number of lily pads floating in the middle of a pond.  I did take some pictures but didn’t get the shot I was looking for.

To be honest I was just shooting other plants out of frustration, I mean I came out with the camera I didn’t want to go back with nothing.  But I didn’t think I would post anything.

When I got home I was going through my pictures and came across tonight’s image.  I had to look this plant up, it’s called a Bromeliad, or at least is from that family, as is the pineapple.

What caught my eye was the fact that this plant caught and held water and had small blooms in it’s center.  I looked up on the internet about these plants and it’s all incredibly boring so I won’t bore you here, but I think they look really interesting.  They do say that you shouldn’t shoot plants and flowers and add them to your portfolio as plants are expected to look beautiful, so if you do shoot one, it needs to be especially stunning or very different.  For me this plant falls into that second category.

I took a few pictures of the plant, some with the plant entirely in the shot and others like this one where I just catch part of the plant.  I really liked this composition, your eyes are drawn to the bottom right corner and I think it makes the plant interesting as you spend a couple of seconds looking at it asking yourself “what the heck is that”?

So definitely not a typical picture, but one I really liked.  Hope you like it too.

Here we can see Master Chief and Carter clearly not following the “rules” as laid down by the hotel pool!

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