I had a conversation with someone at work today (Lucia) and was asked when I found time to capture the pictures I post.  I explained that I try to photograph whenever I can, be it during the day or on the way home from work.  I’ve even come home, had dinner and gone out again for a picture idea.  So to show it’s possible I took this picture of the windmill in Marymoor Park in Redmond on the way home tonight.

As we had a nice blue sky I thought the windmill might look good so I drove into Marymoor.  I grabbed the tripod and took a number of pictures of the windmill from different angles.  I really liked the tree that’s in the foreground and tried a few with that prominent in the picture with the windmill behind, but it just didn’t look right.  I also tried shooting the windmill from the other side with the sun as a back light, but as the sun was quite low in the sky I got LOADS of lens flare (a little is OK but too much ruins the image).

By far the best picture is the one I got below.  I would say that the detour on the way home cost me around 30 minutes.  The selection and processing of the picture around another 30.  So it goes to show everyone can do this.

To be fair (in case people didn’t read my earlier posts and realize this) I don’t take a picture every day, it just wouldn’t be possible.  So when I go to a good location I might take 3 or 4 that I like.  I then hang on to the ones I didn’t use that night and post them later.   When I first started this I didn’t have any back up pictures as the rule I set myself was that only pictures taken in 2012 could be posted.  But now 3 months in I have around 50.  The frustrating thing is that while I like the images when I take them and put them in my backlog, a couple of weeks later I’m not so keen!  Hence the reason why I’m always looking for something new to shoot.

Carter and his friends decided to play on a kids climbing frame today – they got to the top and got all excited, apparently it was quite high up.