Tony Seeley Photography

So this weekend I went out with the camera and found myself back at the Center for Wooden Boats.  This place is pretty cool, you can learn how to fix boats (they have classes), you can hire a wooden boat (they will teach you how to row or sail) or you can just check out all the exhibits they have.

This shot tonight was taken of the center’s main information building.  The wooden structure is actually built on a floating platform and you get to it by walking over a number of pontoons.  This is all well and good and fun to visit but it’s a pain in the neck when it comes to photography.  You set up the tripod and try to take a picture and very slightly everything is moving.

I liked this shot for a number of reasons.  The wooden building is quite nice to start with, and while it was dry there was a lot of cloud cover and it definitely gave me an interesting sky.  I also liked the boats and the purple gazebo on the back of the biggest boat in the center of the picture, finally the reflections in the water added to the image nicely.

They had loads of row boats all around the pontoons and I took LOTs of pictures, so you had better expect some wooden boat pictures over the next few days.

I’ve taken a few pictures of the guys like this!  What can I tell you?  It cracks me up.  Here Master Chief is showing Carter his new shinny balls.

You know when summer is over and fall is coming when the fog rolls in and you lose the sky in the morning.  That’s been happening a lot here lately so I thought I should capture some examples.  Normally I see it on the way to work in the morning as I live at the top of this hill and on the way to work I drive past a large lake.  The fog (I guess) builds up on the lake and then rolls onto the land and I hit it as I drive down the hill.

Anyway, in the past I’ve seen some amazing “fog” pictures, you know the kind of thing, fall trees by a field with a fence and fog coming off the field (I so loads of those) so I thought I’d try to capture some myself. This does of course require me to get up early enough so I have time to stop of the way to work and take a picture (that may be a problem).

But I do have this picture of a sail boat on Elliott Bay with a foggy Seattle skyline.  So I thought I’d start with that.  Ironically this was captured a while ago but I like the image so I thought I’d post it tonight.

The downside of fog I’m finding (in pictures that is) is that my images have no (or very little) contrast or color and look a little boring.  So I had to boost the contrast to make this even slightly interesting.  Now this could be because I suck at photographing fog, but it also could be that there is little foreground interest in this image.  There is the boat (that’s white with a black sail) and then there is just loads of water.  So I shouldn’t be surprised that this is pretty washed out.

Anyway I’ll keep trying and see what else I can get.

Oh, by the way.  My photo walk is this Saturday and I’m leading a group of photographers (28 in total) around Redmond.  So that should be interesting and will hopefully produce a lot of images.  Of course rain is suposed to be here on Saturday but as we live in the Pacific North West I’m hoping people will still turn up – I mean we are used to rain right?

Today, Master Chief was attacked by a huge green spider.  Carter Tried to help, I think it was because Master Chief’s uniform is also green!

The other day we visited Ballard Locks in Seattle and got some great shots of the boats moving from Lake Union through to Elliott Bay.  They have two locks in Ballard, one really really big (it’s like two football pictures) and one that’s pretty small.  The big one takes a LONG time to fill up with boats, then it takes a long time for the water to rise.  So if you go into the big lock you have better have a lot of time.

The smaller lock (in tonight’s picture) is a lot smaller.  For example here you can see it containing pretty much one big boat and a few small sail boats and it’s full.  So with this one you get in and out quicker.  I’m not sure what the rules are, if it costs more or something but most boats you see there go through the larger lock.

In the image below I’m standing on the gates that open and let the boats out so I’m literally at one end and the can see the gates at the other.

This is a cool place to take a camera, the only down side is that there are either too many people there in the way or you end up with all these fences in the way of the pictures.  They fence off every thing here.  So it’s hard to try to take pictures that focus on the subject you want.

Beside the docks they have a fish ladder where you can go and watch the salmon jump up the ladder to get up river to spawn.  I’ll go back there in a few weeks and try to get some shots of the fish as it’s quite amazing to see.

Carter decided to make some paper plane’s tonight, they didn’t fly very far though.