This morning I decided to get up nice and early (5:30) and drive over to west Seattle to capture a Seattle cityscape shot as the sun was coming up.

Now people joke all the time about Seattle weather, claiming it’s always raining and cold but that’s just not true.  In fact we get less rainfall in Seattle than New York and we usually get four great summer months of 80 plus degrees.  The difference with rain is that we get drizzle while New York get’s a downpour.  The rain here is usually so light that it’s rare to see someone from Seattle with an umbrella.

Having said that of course, when I woke up this morning it was chucking it down!  The rain was pretty heavy and for one fleeting moment I considered turning over and going back to sleep.  What changed my mind was that the weather changes really quickly and just because it was raining in Redmond didn’t mean it was in Seattle too, so I got up anyway.

There were no cars on the road and I got into Seattle in 20 minutes, it took another 20 to cross the West Seattle Bridge and pretty soon I was in Alki West Seattle.  By the time I parked up it was a little after 6am and still raining, so I sat in the car for another 20 minutes wondering why I wasn’t still in bed.

Eventually it started to ease up leaving me with our usually drizzle, so I grabbed my gear and headed over to one of the fishermen’s piers.  There were a few people there already all with rods over the side but I was the only idiot there with a camera.

What was good was that while I had drizzle over me, Seattle looked pretty clear.  Even better there was some great cloud cover over the city.

So I found a good spot and set up the tripod and stated shooting.  After about an hour the sun was starting to come up and the cloud and rain had reached the city.  The light turned pretty flat with no sunrise colors, just grey everywhere.  So it was time to go.

I thought I’d hang out in Alki for a while, grab some breakfast and see if things improved, but after a good hour and a half it was still horrid.  The rain was now heavier over Alki and the city and there was nothing in the sky except grey cloud.  So after an excellent breakfast at Alki’s cafe (I can definitely recommend the Crab Egg Benedict), I headed home.

In all I took around 100 pictures and only ended up with a few I liked.

My favorite was a small panorama of the city (two shots wide) with this great cloud over the taller buildings.  The cloud was pretty low and I think it created a good image – well worth the trip.  So that’s my first image below.

The next two where shots of the harbor port with all the cranes that are used to unload ships.  I liked the lights across the water on these ones.  The last image was ironically the first one I shot.  It shows the fisherman’s pier where I took the pano (no fishermen included – they were at the other end).

So not a load of keepers, but that’s what it’s like sometimes.  I’m really pleased with the pano and may print that one out (if Lisa lets me).

Ironically as I write this at 2pm, it’s completely dry outside – typical!  The sky’s still boring so I think I was lucky for the hour in the morning.

Hope you like the pics.