Candles – Home

01. October 2012 · Comments Off on Candles – Home · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: ,

On Saturday morning I visited Redmond’s Farmers Market and came across these cool little candle holders.  The lady at the stall said that if you put them on white paper and light them in a dark room they light up spreading color across the paper.  Well I couldn’t resist buying them and bringing them home to try it out.

Well tonight I got in from work and thought I’d try them out.  I got the white paper, turned the lights off and lit the candles.  Burnt my finger, turned the lights on ran my hand under the faucet for 2 minutes.  Lit the candles again and then turned off the lights.  Just as she said the colors were everywhere, at least they were for the orange candle, the blue/green one was kind-a over powered by the orange one I think.  But it looked really good anyway.

So I grabbed my tripod and set up the camera.  When I took some pictures I had either a fantastic wash of light with a totally blown out candle or a well defined flame and no colors.  To get round this I took two pictures, one with the candle correctly exposed, and one with the colors illuminating the paper, then I blended the two images together to get the finished result below.

At one point I tried putting a flashlight into the handle holders to see what that did and the colors were even more vibrant, in fact they were probably too bright and I couldn’t figure out how to easily remove the light from the image to produce the end result (the flashlight needed to be very close, almost in the holder to work), so I didn’t use those pictures.

So what you see below is pretty much what my eyes saw.  And I think it came out really well – just a shame that blue/green one didn’t have more color.

Carter and Master Chief watched the “A-Team” this afternoon.  Master Chief was inspired!

Gum Wall – Seattle

29. September 2012 · Comments Off on Gum Wall – Seattle · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

Just under Pike Place Market on Post Alley is the Seattle Gum wall.  The wall is outside the Market Theater and back in 1993 people in line for the theater started sticking gum to the wall just before they went inside.  Initially some used to stick gum to the wall and place a coin in the gum too (I have no idea why you would do this but that’s what they did).  Anyway the theater were pretty cross and would come outside the follow day and scrape all the gum off the wall.  This was clearly seen as a “challenge” to the people of Seattle who really went for it and covered the wall with more.  Eventually (after numerous clean ups) the theater gave up and the cite accepted the wall as a (rather discussing) tourist attraction.

The wall itself is pretty big and covers around 30 square feet.  You would be amazed just how much gum is on the wall and how high people get it!  Every now and then the city comes round and cleans up the very bottom of the wall and of course the floor where all the gum falls off.  But the leave the majority of the gum there.

The wall is a very popular location for wedding photographers (every brides dream I should imagine to get photographed here), also it’s common to see “I love you” or signs  like “Julie will you go to the prom with me”? All spelt out in gum!  So the wall looks cool (I think) and is kind-a fun, except for the smell, which is horrible.  It just smells of sticky sweet candy and really isn’t very nice at all.

However, on the other side of the Alley, the city has decreed that no gum is allowed, they even have signs saying “No Gum”.  Again, another challenge for the city residents.  They of course cover this wall with gum too and decorate the “No Gum” sign for the city too (which is nice of them I think).  Every week the city cleans the wall and the residents of the Seattle start again.

I couldn’t resist this side, I think it’s funny that it’s covered with gum too and had to get a shot.  Maybe there’s a little rebel in me too!

Now I have no idea what Orbeez are, but they start really small and grow when they are put into water.  Needless to say, Master Chief and Carter decided to make some toeday.

Hammering Man – Seattle Art Museum

27. September 2012 · Comments Off on Hammering Man – Seattle Art Museum · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

On Saturday on the Seattle photo walk we visited Seattle’s Art Museum (or SAM).  Outside the museum they have a large Hammering Man moving sculpture.

This 48 foot sculpture was made out of steel and aluminium and has a motorized arm that moves up and down.  The arm is holding a large hammer, hence it’s name, the “Hammering Man”.  It was erected in 1992 and built by artist Jonathan Borofsky.  There are several Hammering Man sculptures around the world, ours is one of the largest.  The arm hammers from 7am to 8pm every day and takes one day off a year, Labor Day.  The statue is suposed to represent the working man so I guess taking Labour Day off makes sense.

When we got to the museum our guide (Chandler) gave us a challenge.  He said that he comes here quite a lot with different photography parties and always see’s the same images. So our chalenge was to try and capture the sculpture from a different perspective, something Chandler hasn’t seen before.  So for the next 15 minutes we tried everything, walking around the sculpture, shooting from under trees, from behind bus shelters, I’m sure you get the picture.

Anyway I took loads of pictures and in the end found this composition.  Below and some distance from the sculpture is a street lamp.  By lying on the floor (nearly) and looking up (at a certain angle) I got this picture so it looks like the Hammering Man is hitting the light.  Yes I know it’s not brilliant, and according to Chandler it’s not original either.  But it was the best shot I got.  He did say it was the best version he of this he’d seen, but I have no doubt he says that to everyone.

So here is my “original” Hammering Man image, with him bashing the crap out of a street light – what a vandal.

Today we were discussing what would happen if we had a flood, Carter explained that he had a plan and got one of James’ size 13 shoes!  Not sure I’ll fit but the Halo dudes are certainly going to be ok!

Cars – Seattle Art Museum

22. September 2012 · Comments Off on Cars – Seattle Art Museum · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

Today was a really good day, I’m totally exhausted now of course but wait till you hear what I did.

This morning I got up at 8am (it was raining, so I guess summer is now over) and I headed out to pick up Chris Pearson (my photo buddy).  We hit the road and headed to Seattle (still raining – and the 520 bridge was closed for the weekend so we had to go the long way across the I90).

We arrived in Seattle at 9am and went to Pike Place Market to go on a Photography Walking Tour.  The tour lasted around 3 hours and we had a blast.  I’ve lived here 10 years but still learnt some new stuff about the city.  Our guide took us through the Market, past the “Gum Wall” (more on that in another posting), down Post Alley to the Art Museum, then down to the water front, and finally along the water then back up to the market.  It was fabulous and I too over 500 pictures.  (I bracketed a lot so really it was around 200 images).

Chris and I grabbed some lunch in Seattle and then headed home.  I then loaded the car with LOADS of camera gear and went off to shoot my first High School Senior photo shoot (more on that in the future too).  2 Hours later I was all done and headed home totally knackered!

Got in at 6:30pm – What a day!

I should say here that while the weather started off wet, once the walking tour started everything dried up and even the sun came out.  So it was a complete success.  I have loads of cool images to post, but Abi selected tonight’s shot.  We checked out the entrance of the city Art Museum while on the tour and they had these amazing cars hanging from the ceiling with neon (or LED, not sure) lights coming out of the cars.  It was very “arty” and looked fantastic!  I took loads of shots and selected this one as my favorite to post.  I think there were five cars in total, here I’m catching two of them.  The problem was, the lights kept blinking on and off and timing it right to get the picture below took a long time.  In the end I just held the shutter down to get the lights right and the result was great.

Really good day, love using Shutter Tours (here is their website, check them out: http://www.shuttertours.com/), and got some great shots.

The guys are getting stressed out waiting for the new Halo game to come out.  So they decided to try some Yoga to relax.

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