I thought I’d post another shot from yesterday’s trip to the Seattle Japanese Gardens.  I have to say I’m actually pretty angry with myself as I’ve been doing this “picture a day” thing now for nearly a year and I’ve only just visited the place.  As you can see from the image below, it’s really pretty there, they have a small lake (it’s too big to call it a pond) with little streams or brooks flowing into it from the surrounding hills.

There are large rocks inside all the streams so you can jump from stone to stone to cross, this is if you can’t be bothered to walk to the nearest bridge.  Talking of bridges, there are loads of them and they are all also very cute.  You can imagine what they look like, small wooden curved bridges with handrails on each side.  The gardens are really well manicured and there are bushes and trees surrounding lake.  Some of the bushes are pruned like little banzai trees and look fantastic.

Also interspersed around the gardens are these Japanese stone lanterns – at least that’s what I think they are.  They too are really nice and add to the Japanese feel of the gardens.

At this time of year there are a load of fall colors.  Lots of reds and yellows and really deep greens.  While it wasn’t raining when I was there it was still pretty wet and that kind of made the grass and leaves look quite lush.

So, about the shot.  While I’ve been taking a lot of wide angle landscape pictures lately I’m still learning how to compose good images using ulta wide lenses (it’s not as easy as you’d think).  The most important thing to do (I think) is to get some good foreground interest in the image.  With the wide lenses you have to get very close to something so it takes a prominent position in the picture.  When I say close I mean with-in a foot.  This is what I tried to do in the image below.  The stone lantern looked really nice and I thought it would give the viewer something to start on before they view the rest of the garden.

While part of the lake is in this image it’s not really that important.  This one is really all about the stone lantern and the bushes and trees.  You can see that the sky was a little gray, but this did provide a nice soft light for pictures, it’s just a pity is wasn’t a little brighter.

This isn’t the last image I’ll post from here, and I’ll definitely be going back.  If you get the chance I really recommend checking it out.

The guys decided to make something tonight, so they got out the Lego. They made a nice little car, love the color!