Wooden Boats – Seattle

16. November 2012 · Comments Off on Wooden Boats – Seattle · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , , ,

If you get the chance to visit the Pacifici Northwest you will find in the Seattle area a few large lakes.   Lake Washington is obvioulsy the one most people know about and for good reason.  Lake Washington is 22 miles long (at it’s extreme’s) it has a very large island in it’s middle (Mercer Island) and loads of people live on that, there are also a couple of major floating bridges that cross it, so it does tend to get all the attention.

While Lake Washington is big, there’s another lake between Lake Washington and Elliott Bay, Lake Union.  This lake is much smaller and is probably best know for it’s floating house boats, the subject of which appeared of course in Tom Hanks’ film “Sleepless in Seattle”.  Lake Union also has an official airport for sea planes, and if you go to it’s southern tip you can spend a lot of time watching planes take off and land – trust me it’s pretty cool.

If you do visit the southern point of Lake Union you will find South Lake Union Park (not very imaginatively named) and there you will find the Center for Wooden Boats. This is a small maritime museum that’s dedicated to the preservation and display of (wait for it) wooden boats.  This is actually a really cool place to visit, they have some great exhibits and loads of history and information about the boats on display.  You can also take a free public ride on a boat, learn to sail, rent a classic boat or take a boat building workshop!

While visiting myself I took loads of pictures, one of my favorites being this boat below.   Some of the boats there are in a poor state of repair but this one had been either really looked after or totally refurbished.  Now I’m no sailor but if I was I think I’d like a nice wooden sail boat with all the dark wood on the deck.  They look fantastic.

Carter had something in his teeth and Master Chief very kindly agreed to help him out.

Reflections – Bellevue

15. November 2012 · Comments Off on Reflections – Bellevue · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

Here’s another shot from the park, this time (again) from before the sun went down.  I’ve already posted one picture that showed the large expanse of water above the waterfall, but I also shot this other shot taken from a different position.

Off to the side of the park is this tall apartment building and it was casting this great reflection in the water.  I just had to shoot this one!  Also behind the building the sun was casting this nice red sky.

As it was early there were still quite a few people walking around so this picture took some time and patience.  Having said that I never would have got a shot with nobody in it (there were too many people) so I had to take a few folks out with Photoshop.  There are a few things in this picture that I’m not that happy with (trash cans, park signs and even ghosts of people moving) and in truth if I spent a lot of time, I might be about to remove them.  But the issues are so small you probably wouldn’t even notice them if I didn’t call them out.

Other than the people in Photoshop I didn’t do too much processing on the final image.  A little sharpening and then a slight blur to provide a nice soft focus.

The boys had a great night playing Bingo.  After several hours they succeeded in winning nothing.

City Reflection – Bellevue

13. November 2012 · Comments Off on City Reflection – Bellevue · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

Here’s an interesting picture, again taken in the park just before the sun set.  Just above the waterfall is this large expanse of water which makes a great mirror for the city behind.  To capture this shot I had to set the tripod up on some stairs and I had people walking by looking at me like I was nuts as each leg of the tripod was a different length.  Anyway I composed the shot to get as much of the city reflection as possible.  Whenever I see water it’s all about the reflection.

I really liked the railing in the picture too, the way it get’s smaller and smaller into the distance really shows you how wide this water feature actually is.  The trees and buildings came out great as well in the water, you even get the sky color reflected too.  It’s interesting seeing how the sky nearest the horizon in both the sky and water is lighter and as you move higher and lower they both darken – I think that’s cool.

The only downside of this picture was that there was an ugly crane above the trees to the right of the picture.  This was also reflected in the image and was kind of unsightly.  So that had to go.  Other than that I didn’t have to do much else.  Applied a little tone mapping to bring out the shadows and applied a little soft focus to make it “dreamy”.

Carters got a new perspective on life, something that Lisa fully endorses.

Alki Pier – Seattle

08. November 2012 · Comments Off on Alki Pier – Seattle · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , , ,

Tonight I’m taking you back to sunrise at Alki.  The sky was really pretty and we had taken loads of pictures of the cityscape I was looking for something different.  Just further up the beach was this little pier hanging out over Elliott Bay.  There were actually a few people standing on the pier when I took this and they kind-a ruined the picture. So I hit Photoshop and now they’re gone.

This image was all about timing.  I really wanted the ferry in the right of the picture to have a counter point to look at (so it just wasn’t only about the pier) and I had to bide my time for the ferry to get in the right place.   I was lucky that the other people on the pier weren’t moving around too much so I got the shot.  There are so many things that make this picture nice, I love the sky, the reds are really pretty.  The boat and the pier are great (they were the things that attracted me to the shot in the first place) and I love the rocks under the pier and the waves lapping against the shore.

All in all I like this one and feel getting up at a stupid hour on a day off was actually worth the effort.

I think the guys were watching some Disney films today and insisted on both sucking the same spaghetti, it’s kind of Carter and the Tramp!

Japanese Gazebo – Seattle

07. November 2012 · Comments Off on Japanese Gazebo – Seattle · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , , ,

Today’s image was again taken at the Japanese Gardens in Seattle.  I was walking around the lake looking for interesting subjects and I came across this rickety gazebo built against a tree and standing in the water.

I immediately thought this would be interesting as the texture on the tree and the bamboo used to build the gazebo looked really good.  So I started taking some pictures.  Unfortunately it was pretty dark under the gazebo, there was a lot of shade so this wasn’t really a surprise, but i really wanted to show the latice work in the roof.  So I again resorted to HDR (I love this).  I captured three images each with a different exposure.  One was correctly exposed, one was over exposed by two stops and one was under by two stops.  Then I used Photomatix to merge the three images together to get the picture below.

This came out really well.  The shadows were brought out and you can really see the roof of the gazebo and the texture in the wood.  The water looked nice too and I even got some of the stones in the picture in the bottom left corner.  So I’m quite pleased with this one.

After too much candy the guys decided to just enjoy some gum today.

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