Tony Seeley Photography

While in Seattle Center I ran into Center House to take cover from the rain.  Add to that I wanted to grab a coffee and I knew that apart from a large food hall the house also had a Starbucks.  There was nobody around outside so I figured I could grab a coffee, but once inside I found the rest of Seattle!  They were in a line waiting to get Starbucks.  The place was packed with people.  There are loads of fast food places in Center House with tables everywhere so you can eat, but there were no free seats available.  So no coffee and food for me.

So feeling all depressed I left Center House by the back door and walked onto the patio.  The rain was still coming down hard and the patio was understandably empty.  The rain was bouncing off the tables and there was a nice light canopy above and I thought it might make a nice picture.

So there I am with my trusty tripod (tripod number 2) setting up the camera just outside, pointing the lens at the scene below.  Now you would think (if you were walking past) that there’s a dude taking a picture.  But apparently I was clearly camouflaged as people chose this moment to walk in front of me, stand directly in line with the shot and stop and talk.  Then they went and sat down on the wet benches!  What’s that about?  Bloody rude I call it.  Anyway I gave the people my best “real nasty” stare (works great in fast food restaurants when you want someone to vacate their seat), and they eventually left.

Then I took this picture, and I quite like it.

The guys found some chocolates this evening and raided the boxes.  Pretty naughty really!

Once again the weather was terrible today, but I needed to go out and figured it will probably stop by the time I get to Seattle if I drove there!  I also asked myself how wet could I get?  Well I was totally wrong on the rain stopping, and I found out that you can get VERY wet, walking around in heavy rain with a camera (duh)!

I drove to Seattle Center (by the Space Needle) as I’d heard they had a lot of holiday lights up there and I thought it might make a nice picture.  As my goal was to take pictures of the holiday lights, I needed to get there late in the day, so I left home at 2:30 in the afternoon and drove into the city.  This week parking was no problem, but if you saw the rain coming down you’d realize why.  Nobody was going to go to the Space Needle in this weather, apart from me that is.  I parked across the road from the Needle in the Komo4 TV car park and walked over (in the rain) to see what I could get.

One of the benefits of rain is that you can get some really nice reflection pictures in puddles, but you need the rain to stop!  If not, you just get blurry water which doesn’t look any good.  So that was out!  But despite all my complaining, I did get some nice pictures, and for a change, Lisa picked the first one I’m posting.

Outside the Space Needle is this circular drive with a small fountain in the middle.  By the Needle is a pickup spot where you can drive up and drop off or pick people up.  It’s also where you leave your car if you are valet parking.  Well this area is covered.  No walls but a roof that covers around 100 feet of sidewalk.  Hanging from the roof were these lit up baubles (the only thing I can think of calling them).  They were really pretty and there were loads of them.

This is my first picture.  I could stand under cover and shoot over the heads of people waiting and still get a great shot.  It was pretty windy though and the balls were swinging a little in the wind.  So I had to bump up my ISO so I could get a fast shutter speed to “freeze” the motion.  When I got home I found the images had a little noise but removed that pretty easily in Photoshop.  Other than that, this is exactly what I saw.  Hope you like this one, we do at home.

You can’t get the the end of December without trying to make a ginger bread house!  While this one isn’t made out of ginger bread it’s pretty close.