Bears – Redmond

08. June 2012 · Comments Off on Bears – Redmond · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: ,

In the middle of Redmond Town Center is this seating area that surrounds a couple of fountains.   On the brick tiled flooring are three bear statues.  I took this picture quite late at night and nobody was around (no security guards either).  I wanted to bring out the texture in the brick floor and statues so this is an HDR image (what a surprise).

Obviously as this is late at night it’s a slow exposure, so you get to see the water almost frozen in time.  When I composed this I wanted the bears to be the primary subject, so I made them quite big in the frame.  In hindsight I wish I’d pulled back a little and showed more of the seating area.  As a result I didn’t post this image.  However someone saw this the other day and commented on the picture so I thought, what the heck!

This area always makes me smile.  My son James is almost 15 years old but I remember him running through these fountains getting soaking wet with his cousins, and then stripping off totally naked in the car park to change clothing.  Of course he wouldn’t be seen dead doing that now.  I reckon in another 5 years and after some time at college and he will once again be stripping off and running though fountains.

This weekend will be interesting.  On Sunday I’m off to Northwest Trek, which is a wildlife park for animals that are indigenous to the Pacific North West.   However it’s looking like it’s going to rain so I may end up with lots of pictures of empty wood.  Time will tell, so keep your fingers crossed for a dry weekend.

Tonight the guys decided to play BopIt! – They didn’t do too well though.

Austin-Healey 100 – Redmond

30. May 2012 · Comments Off on Austin-Healey 100 – Redmond · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: ,

I’ve said this before but I love old cars.  I know that new cars are better made, more comfortable and go faster but they don’t have any charm, there is no passion or emotion in new cars, to me they are just boring.

Over the weekend we went to a car show in Woodinville at the Chateau Ste Michelle’s winery and it really wasn’t very good.  There were lots of new Porsches and Lamborghinis which had beautiful lines but weren’t my cup of tea.  Give me an old classic any day.  I’ve been working on James on this, trying to explain to him how character is important and I thought I was making progress.  He was really into old ’67 Chevy Impala’s with big V8s that look and sound fantastic, but he’s clearly moving on as he now likes modern Lamborghinis.

But I like cars like this Austin-Healey.  There were only around 14,000 of these cars made back in the early 50’s the the condition of this one was amazing.  I love the story around Austin-Healey’s, apparently Donald Healey created a one-off car called the Healey Hundred for the 1952 London Motor Show.  Leonard Lord who ran the Austin Motor Company saw the car and commissioned Donald to make a car for Austin, the result was the car below, the Austin-Healey 100.  This was made by Austin in Longbridge and the coach work was carried out by Jensen in West Bromwich.  It got it’s name because it could get to 100 mph which for it’s day was a big deal for a production model.

Remember that little bamboo plant I took to work?  Well it’s doing really well, largely due to the care and attention being given to it from Carter and Master Chief.

Crayons – Home

26. May 2012 · Comments Off on Crayons – Home · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

I thought I’d post something different today.  I was playing with Abi’s coloring box last night for my Halo picture and I remembered a shot I did last year using my macro lens.  I basically stacked up some Crayola crayons added some soft light and shot them with the macro getting in real close.  I loved the image but never got round to posting it.  Even though I still have the images somewhere I can’t post it in my “Picture a Day” collection as my resolution states that I have to shoot the image this year.

So last night I got out the crayons, a softbox, a tripod and my macro lens.  I needed to use a tripod as when you use the macro lens the depth of field (area of focus) for a normal aperture (something like f/8) is very small.  So you need a tiny aperture (f/16-22), which requires more light and a longer exposure time.  As I can’t hold the camera still for a tack sharp image any longer than around 1/60th of a second I needed the tripod.  Note however that even with the tripod and a small aperture, not all crayons are in focus!

I placed some black card on the table and stacked two rows of crayons on top.  it took me quite a few attempts to place the light where I wanted it (I really wanted that specular line of light on the crayon’s point), but eventually I got the shot I wanted.  I was after something specific here though.  I decided to single file tone map the image too, I wanted the picture to have a gritty look and to pull out all the pit’s and details in the crayon.  This worked quite well and also emphasized the texture in the paper.

So this is the end result.  This was an example of an image I had in my mind that I was really going for.  Hope you like the picture.

Carter said that he and Red had an argument, but he sorted it out.  Not sure what he means but I haven’t seen Red all day!

Old Truck – Redmond

25. May 2012 · Comments Off on Old Truck – Redmond · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

When you start trying to capture a picture a day you begin with a list of ideas, then after about 3 days you start frantically looking for something to shoot.  At first you only think about this every few hours, for example you’re at work and walking from one meeting to another and you ask yourself “oh what will I shoot tonight?”  Then, after a few weeks you become obsessed!  You’re looking all the time, in the middle of a conversation with someone your either think of something or see something and break off.  Then it get’s worse.  Eventually your friends and family start looking for you and you get emails and phone calls with ideas.  This is the pain of a picture a day – don’t ever try this unless you are out of work or a professional photographer.

When you do eventually see something, if you have a camera with you (and you should always have a camera) you should stop and take the shot.  Don’t tell yourself “I’ll get that tomorrow”.  Tomorrow it might rain, the subject may move, you may forget where you saw it…  I’m sure you get the idea.

So why am I telling you all this?  Well, the first reason is to save you the pain of ever trying this ridiculous New Years resolution.  The second reason is to tell you about this truck I found.

I was driving home and saw this old F150 parked up by the side of the road.  I say parked up, but abandoned might be a better word.  All around the truck were wild flowers and I thought the old rusty truck against the green trees, grass and flowers might look cool.  So today I grabbed my camera and tripod and popped out.  I parked up down the road from the truck and walked down the road with my tripod over my shoulder to the truck and took some pictures.  The pictures came out VERY green, but apart from that looked good.

After Carters success at painting last week he decided to try using crayons…

62 Corvette – Redmond

14. May 2012 · Comments Off on 62 Corvette – Redmond · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: ,

Now I don’t know much about cars, but I know what I like.  Obviously coming from the UK I’m much more familiar with European cars as there really isn’t a market for US models as they are usually very big and drink a load of gas.  And petrol (that’s what they call gas over there) is around $10 a gallon.  So it’s very rare to come across a V8 – they’re far too expensive.  Also a majority of US roads are pretty straight and the suspensions are set up for going in a straight line at speed and then slowing to turn.  In Europe (and England especially) the roads are really windy (technical term), and well people drive a little faster there so the car suspension is much firmer and feels very different.

So why am I telling you all this?  Actually I’m not sure I wandered off a bit there but I did find something out over the weekend, apparently I really like old Corvette’s – who knew!  Now I’m definitely no Corvette expert but I’m gonna guess that this one was made in 1962.

There were all these cars in the town center and people were all excited over the Lamborghinis and Ferraris, and this Corvette was sitting in the corner all on it’s own.  Nobody was checking out the car.  At first I just went over to take a picture without loads of people in the way but it was beautiful.

Now I don’t normally do this but I took a couple of shots of this car and couldn’t decide which one to post, so in the end I thought I’d post them both.  Check it out, what a really beautiful machine.

Master Chief needed his hair brushed but wouldn’t sit still, so Carter came up with a clever way of holding him down.

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