Japanese Garden – Seattle

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

I thought I’d post another shot from yesterday’s trip to the Seattle Japanese Gardens.  I have to say I’m actually pretty angry with myself as I’ve been doing this “picture a day” thing now for nearly a year and I’ve only just visited the place.  As you can see from the image below, it’s really pretty there, they have a small lake (it’s too big to call it a pond) with little streams or brooks flowing into it from the surrounding hills.

There are large rocks inside all the streams so you can jump from stone to stone to cross, this is if you can’t be bothered to walk to the nearest bridge.  Talking of bridges, there are loads of them and they are all also very cute.  You can imagine what they look like, small wooden curved bridges with handrails on each side.  The gardens are really well manicured and there are bushes and trees surrounding lake.  Some of the bushes are pruned like little banzai trees and look fantastic.

Also interspersed around the gardens are these Japanese stone lanterns – at least that’s what I think they are.  They too are really nice and add to the Japanese feel of the gardens.

At this time of year there are a load of fall colors.  Lots of reds and yellows and really deep greens.  While it wasn’t raining when I was there it was still pretty wet and that kind of made the grass and leaves look quite lush.

So, about the shot.  While I’ve been taking a lot of wide angle landscape pictures lately I’m still learning how to compose good images using ulta wide lenses (it’s not as easy as you’d think).  The most important thing to do (I think) is to get some good foreground interest in the image.  With the wide lenses you have to get very close to something so it takes a prominent position in the picture.  When I say close I mean with-in a foot.  This is what I tried to do in the image below.  The stone lantern looked really nice and I thought it would give the viewer something to start on before they view the rest of the garden.

While part of the lake is in this image it’s not really that important.  This one is really all about the stone lantern and the bushes and trees.  You can see that the sky was a little gray, but this did provide a nice soft light for pictures, it’s just a pity is wasn’t a little brighter.

This isn’t the last image I’ll post from here, and I’ll definitely be going back.  If you get the chance I really recommend checking it out.

The guys decided to make something tonight, so they got out the Lego. They made a nice little car, love the color!

Leaves – Seattle Japanese Gardens

03. November 2012 · Comments Off on Leaves – Seattle Japanese Gardens · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

For a while now I’ve been meaning to go to the Japanese Gardens in Seattle to take some pictures.  But lately it’s been totally manic at work and I’ve even had things on over the weekend so I really have had no free time.  The gardens actually close next week for the Winter so I had to go now or wait till next year.  So today I headed over to check it out.

Luckily it wasn’t raining when I got there but it was cold enough that the gardens weren’t full.  That said there were a few people there so there was some waiting around required.  Unfortunately you aren’t allowed to take tripods into the gardens and a lot of the gardens are in shade but I still got some great shots.  I’ll be posting pictures from the gardens throughout the week but I thought I’d start with something different.

There was this really big Japanese Maple and it was loosing leaves.  Below the tree there were a load of rocks covered in moss and the leaves were falling onto the moss.  The red leaves against the green moss looked fantastic and I thought it would make an interesting image.

I got down low and really close to the leaves to get the shot and I had a pretty narrow depth of field so the leaves at the back of the picture were out of focus.  I really liked the colors in this image, nice and bright.

Master Chief had a bad back tonight so he got a warmer to help ease the pain.  Not sure it worked though.

Cityscape – Seattle

02. November 2012 · Comments Off on Cityscape – Seattle · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

You can’t really take a Seattle cityscape picture from across Elliott Bay without capturing the Space Needle.  I actually thought I’d posted one of these before but I checked and I hadn’t.  So while on Alki beach the other day I captured this shot.   I’m actually a huge distance from Seattle’s city center but as I have some long lenses I can capture a shot like this.

Most people think that the Space Needle is in the middle of Seattle, but in reality it’s a pretty long way from the main downtown buildings.  If you try to get everything in together you sort of have to make a choice.  You either just get the Space Needle (as below) or you shoot the downtown area (with the Great Wheel), or of course you can try for a panorama that goes from one side of the city to the other.  These look nice but they are VERY wide – actually if you go to my Guestbook page you can see what I mean.

Anyway, I was on Alki for a sunrise and took this shot.  This image was taken as the sun was starting to come up so the sky’s pretty visible and the lights are still on.  It’s really very pretty watching the sun come up over the city, if you get the chance to go to Alki, I really recommend it.

This is another example of Master Chief getting himself in a difficult situation, it’s clearly nuts!

(Another) Sunset – Redmond

01. November 2012 · Comments Off on (Another) Sunset – Redmond · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

Now I know what you are thinking, “not another sunset – what’s going on?”  Well, firstly, yes I am shooting a lot of sunsets right now and really there are two very good reasons.

Firstly the day’s are getting shorter and I’ve just taken on a new role at work and the day’s at work are rather long, so it’s either shoot a sunrise at the beginning of the day or a sunset at the end.  Even though I have my camera with me all the time at work I’m just too busy to get it out during the day.

But there’s actually another reason too.  A few weeks I started a Bellevue College Course called “Shoot to Show”.  The purpose of the course is to learn how to put on a gallery show, and hopefully sell some prints.  Part of the course involves us picking a subject and going out and shooting some images.  Then we print and frame the pictures and show for a few days and see what happens.  Anyway, we are well underway in the course and our “theme” is “Beginning and End of Day”.  We are allowed to pretty much interpret this as we like but for me I guess it’s pictures like these sunsets.

So that’s what’s happening, I’m capturing a number of nice sunsets for the course.  Obviously I need to share these with the class, but if you remember the “rules” I came up with at the beginning of the year, I can’t post an image here if it’s been seen by anyone else.  So before I can show the class my work I have to post the image.  The result is you get to see a lot of sunsets.  Hope you don’t mind.

I guess I should tell you about this image.  Well summer is definitely over!  We have a lot of rain and some interesting clouds.  This may not be very nice for warm evening walks, but it sure makes nice pictures.  I was driving home and saw this sky near my home.  So (well you know now how this works) I pulled over and took the shot.  This one is definitely all about sky.  I exposed for the sky too hence the grass at the bottom of the screen is quite dark.  I did try to raise the exposure of this a little but both Lisa and I preferred it a little darker – as it focuses the eyes above.

This evening Master Chief had a terrible accident!  He fell in a cup of tea.  I found Carter trying to pull him out, at least I think that’s what he was trying to do!

Farm – Redmond

31. October 2012 · Comments Off on Farm – Redmond · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: ,

Sometimes you just see something that makes you think – that’s really beautiful!  Doesn’t happen very often, at least not to me, but then we live such busy lives, beauty might just pass us by!  Well tonight’s image was something that just caught my eye and made me stop.

I was driving from Fall City on the 202 Redmond road which basically just takes you past farms and marsh land, really not much to see.  Anyway I turn a corner and this farm is all I can see!  I’m not sure what it was that I liked, looking at the image now I love the sky and the different colors of the trees, that are almost layered.  Then there’s the farm houses and barn at the bottom with the grass in front.

Doesn’t really matter what it was, but I was compelled to pull over and grab some pictures.  Now I am lucky enough to have some pretty long lenes so I pulled over by the side of the road and got out the 300mm zoom.  It was actually getting dark – I know it doesn’t look like it but it was, so I put the camera on a tripod and got the shot.

There was one road that went from the main 202 Redmond road down to the farm and I was kind of waiting for someone to come out of the farm and drive up the road to ask me what I was doing.  I would guess I looked a little suspicious.  Anyway I got a couple of pictures and drove the rest of the way home.

This to me is one of those relaxing images, it’s kind of peaceful and maybe that’s why I like it.

Quite a successful candy haul tonight – so much that the guys created a candy hottub – how cool is that?

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