This weekend Lisa and Abi flew down to San Diego to attend a gymnastics meet.  This left James and I to our own devices, which pretty much meant we stayed in bed each day until noon, watched loads of TV and ate out at our favorite restaurants (really, what did you expect).

But by Sunday afternoon even I was getting bored.  So I told James we were going out to take some pictures and grab some dinner.  It had been a fantastic weekend weather wise so I thought a sunset picture over Seattle might be nice.  James I suspect, thought this was a bad idea (he didn’t say anything of course) but when I said we could eat wherever he wanted he perked up a bit.  I think he wanted to go to the Metropolitan Grill, which for those who don’t know is an amazing steak house Seattle.

So off we went to Seattle, I even had a plan.  At first I thought we’d try Discovery Park and take some shots there, but there is a hell of a walk from the parking lot down to the beach and we just didn’t fancy that.  But on the way there we passed this large marina with a load of big fishing boats.  They looked amazing as we drove past so we turned round and went back.

I should also say that on the way to Seattle we spoke to Lisa and Abi on the phone and Lisa said we were NOT to go to the Met for dinner.  Abi and Lisa love it there too and they said it would be unfair. (This from the two jet setters where were having a great weekend away).  But James and I didn’t want to upset them so chose another location.  So we made a reservation at Daniels Broiler at 6:15 (for those who don’t know, Daniels is the other excellent steak house in Seattle – but it wasn’t the Met so we were good :-).

As a result we had around an hour to get some pictures before dinner and the marina looked perfect.

So we pulled over and started shooting.  While it was a clear night and was lovely and sunny earlier in the day it was really cold now that the sun was going down.  So James and I started working fast.  Also the red skies we get here at night don’t last very long at all (literally minutes), so we were taking pictures as fast as we could.

The first collection of shots were of the boat below.  It looked a lot older than some of the others and the sky above was really red.  I especially liked the reflection in the water.  This one was de-noised and I applied a NIK soft filter.

Next we found Silver Isle at the dock so I took a few shots.  In truth this one didn’t come out as nice so it required more processing.

We then moved further along the dock and like that, the sun was gone, along with the red sky.  But the lights all came on and started adding a warm glow to some of the boats.  Then I found this great view of a load of big fishing boats and got a great shot.  This really wasn’t processed at all.

At this point we needed to head to the restaurant.  Daniels Broiler is actually on Lake Union and when we got there we were a little early so I grabbed this picture below just outside.  This image too wasn’t really modified – just applied a vignette.