James & Abi – Home

09. December 2012 · Comments Off on James & Abi – Home · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

For the last week or so Lisa has been asking me to take some pictures of the kids for a family Christmas card.  In fairness I tried last week when we went out to get our tree, it was perfect, blue sky, pretty trees near by etc.  So what was the problem I hear you ask?  How is it possible you didn’t get a great picture of the kids?  Well I’m in a good mood now and don’t want to unnecessarily go over my frustration, but lets just say that James didn’t want his picture taken!

OK, so here we are a week later and we are 9 days into December and still don’t have a card.  Lisa had already found somewhere online where she was going to order the cards, she just needed pictures.  So today had to be the day.  There was a problem though (obviously – there’s always a problem).  I wanted to take the pictures outside (they tend to look a little boring indoors, always in front of a white or black background) but it was raining again (shocker!)

So we got the kids to get dressed with clean faces and brushed hair etc., I got the camera gear out and we went on weather watch.  At around 3pm, the rain slowed down, it didn’t stop completely but became more of a light drizzle.  I called the kids and grabbed some lights and ran outside.  Lisa wanted three pictures on the Christmas card, one of each of the kids and one of them both together.  So I got some of Abi on her own, then some of James and finally a very rare couple of pictures of them both together and OH MY GOD they were both smiling! (You have no idea just how rare this is).

Both Abi and James were great, quite happy to do this, Lisa was happy as she got her pictures for the card (which incidentally she has already ordered), and I got a picture for the day.  This one isn’t on the card but it’s one I liked.

I kind’a like taking pictures outside, we have a lot of trees behind our house and they provide a nice backdrop when they are just out of focus.  I really wanted the kids to be brighter than the trees so I used a single speedlight flash in a 24″ softbox.  I dialed down the exposure until I caught some of the background in the image (it’s a little dark but you can kind of see it’s trees) and used the light to make the kids faces pop.  The end result was pretty good and even James liked them and he’s hard to please.  In fact he’s asked me to take some pictures of him and his girlfriend Alex, so all in all a major success.

We are now 9 days into December so you shouldn’t really be surprised that the Halo guys found some Christmas decorations.  I’m betting you see a few more pictures like this. Ho Ho Ho!

Town Lights – Redmond

07. December 2012 · Comments Off on Town Lights – Redmond · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

So tonight has been a funny evening – and it’s not over yet!  I got home and Lisa phoned me as I walked in the door telling me that she was dropping Abi off at “Paint Away” where (as she puts it) you paint things and then Lisa’s plan was to go on for a foot rub with her friend Kathryn.  My instruction was to meet her at 7:30 in Redmond for dinner and then go on for a party at someone’s house.

Now, I don’t really do parties.  It’s not that I’m antisocial, well maybe it is, but when I get home I just want to watch TV, and play on my mac.  I’m too tired to be “entertaining” and listen with interest to other people.  My family will confirm all this if you ask them.  Anyway, Lisa also told me that I needed to get some food for James before I come to Redmond to meet her.  Oh and I was to pick up Cameron (Kathryn’s husband) when I met her for dinner.

So being a good boy I did exactly what I was told.  James wanted a “Baconator” from Wendy’s so I went and got that for him and while I was in Redmond I grabbed this shot of the high street which is currently covered in lights.

I then drove home, dropped off the food for James, picked up Cameron and went back to Redmond for dinner. (How complicated is this?  Are you keeping up?).  So Cameron and I got to the Pub/Restaurant before the girls and started drinking.  Needless to say I’m now home typing this posting after too many beers (we got a couple of pitchers between us), and I’m feeling very happy.

Lisa is rather uncomfortable as apparently I’m a little embarrassing when I’ve had a few drinks, but right now I’m too “Happy” to care.

Needless to say I managed to post a picture tonight (here it is), I’m a little “tipsy” and now off to a party.  I’m pretty sure I’ll say something “bad” and get in trouble but what the heck, my blog, my picture etc. etc.

I’ll let you know how it goes tomorrow.

I’m sure you have often wondered what happens if Carter and Master Chief get in front of a canvas with paints.  Well they fight over the brush as you can see in this image!

Split Leap – Redmond

06. December 2012 · Comments Off on Split Leap – Redmond · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

I have to say I am truly amazed with what the human body can do.  I watch Abi train for her gymnastic meets and the way her body bends is just unbelievable.  She works really hard at it too bless her, she puts hours and hours into practice and comes home bruised and cut up with ridiculous calluses all over her hands.

I’ve mentioned before that one of my favorite events to watch her in is the floor.  The flips and jumps and cartwheels are so alien to me, if I tried any of them I’d be spending the week in hospital.  When Abi trains and does the splits her legs go beyond straight out.  She will sit up on the floor with one leg out in front of her and the other one back behind with her foot raised up on a couple of mats.  My eyes water just watching.  But this level of flexibility is necessary on the floor to allow her to achieve moves like tonight’s split leap picture.

She runs across the floor and leaps up and it’s very impressive.  I tried to catch that perfect moment when her legs are straight in front and behind and while she achieved it, I missed the shot.  She works very hard as well to maintain perfectly straight toes and hold her hands in that “special” gymnast way and you can see she achieved that in the image.  Unfortunately she only gets one chance to show me doing this at a meet and I’m not allowed into the gym to shoot her when she practices.

She was moving pretty quickly and in truth there is a little motion blur in her face in this shot.  Her feet have a lot more motion blur but I really liked this in the shot as it gave the image the feeling of movement and speed.  What I got right was the composition and am pleased with that.

I’ll keep trying to catch that perfect moment bit for the time being I’m happy with this one.

The guys have played with this horse before, only last time it was the “other end”.  This time they decided to ride on top.

Climbing Wall – Redmond

05. December 2012 · Comments Off on Climbing Wall – Redmond · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

I left work tonight a little early at 5pm but it was already dark outside.  But, and this is a huge but, it wasn’t raining.  So I thought I’d try and take a picture on the way home.  At first I figured I’d drive into Redmond Town Center and see if I could get a nice shot of the city lights (they light all the trees around the shops and it looks very pretty).  But on the way I had another idea.

In Marymoor Park they have this huge rock climbing structure.  Now I knew it wan’t lit at night so knew it would be very dark, but I had an idea.  So I parked up in Marymoor and grabbed my camera bag and tripod and walked over the the climbing wall.  The wall is a pretty impressive structure, almost a piece of art actually, all angles and overhangs and it’s also enclosed in a high metal fence that goes all the way round.  I’m not sure what the fence is for but the gate was open so I went in and set up.

I put the camera on the tripod and set it on a 30 second exposure with a relatively small aperture, so when I took a picture you couldn’t really see any details in the structure at all, it was basically in silhouette.  Then I got out my flashlight and when I pressed the shutter, I started to paint the climbing wall with the light.  The result is tonights image.

The flashlight I used is an LED light, pretty strong but the color of the light was very different to the ambient light being thrown from the distant street lamps.  So the wall had a blue hue, which actually looked pretty good.

I took quite a few pictures as I was having problem focussing on the wall before I pressed the shutter.  It was so dark the camera couldn’t find focus.  So there I was in the dark shining a flashlight on the wall.  It must have looked pretty odd.  Some women was standing outside the fence with her dogs, I think she wanted to come inside but was concerned that there was some strage dude with a flashlight – I sure she couldn’t see or understand what I was doing.

Anyway the end result came out pretty well.  I liked the sky above and you can make out the fence and near by buildings and trees.  I also like the fact that the street lamp was throwing orange light and the flashlight blue – this is normally a photographers nightmare but here I think it added to the image.   Well at least it’s different (which is what Lisa usually say’s when she doesn’t like the picture).

Don’t know how this happened but Master Chief got trappend in a huge candle holder!  Took him ages to get out.

Tree Lights – Redmond

04. December 2012 · Comments Off on Tree Lights – Redmond · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

I mentioned in a posting the other day that over the weekend Lisa, Abi and I attended the “Redmond Lights” event.  By the town hall they had this massive tree (and I really mean it was huge) covered with lights.  There were loads of normal lights and some that appeared to animate, I guess because of the size of the tree it was just impressive.

Anyway I took a few shots of this tree from different points of view.  When I got home Lisa and I looked at the pictures and a heated discussion ensued over which image was best.  I think in the end we got it down to two pictures, this one below and another that had another large tree in the foreground that was beautifully lit up with orange lights.  In the end we couldn’t agree on the best image so I followed a tried and trusted approach to pick the right one to post.

So here is Lisa’s favorite picture.

Obviously its pretty dark outside so I had to put the camera on a tripod and capture the image with a long exposure.  I should state that if I didn’t do that, one of two things would have happened.  Either everything would have been very very dark (except for the lights) or everything would have been very blurry.

Having said that of course you can see the people under the tree are very blurry as they are all walking around.  I did my best to clean them up but if I made any more modifications it would have looked very fake.

One thing that struck me was the color of the sky in this image compared with the color of the sky in other ones.  If I stood further back, the sky was blue and black, but when I was closer the sky had an almost orange hue.  The reason for this is the tree to the left.  This was covered in orange light and the closer I got to the tree the more light spilled into the camera and affected the ambiant sky color (wow how technical is that!)

I have to say that this month is proving to be the hardest month of the year.  It’s really not because of a lack of desire to go out and take pictures, it just that when I leave the office at the end of the day it’s totally black outside and raining.  But I only have 27 days to go (can’t believe that) and I really want to end on a high! So I checked with Lisa and have been assured that this weekend we have nothing planned and I’m going out to shoot loads of pictures no matter what.

The guys decided to do some wall climbing tonight.  They did pretty well too.

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