Night Park – Bellevue

14. November 2012 · Comments Off on Night Park – Bellevue · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

I have to say I really enjoyed visiting the Bellevue Downtown Park.  Getting there just before sunset and staying until after the sun went down got me so many really nice images.  Tonights picture was obviously taken quite late.  The sun had completely gone down and the park was pretty empty.  The lights around the parks walking path had come on and it looked really pretty.

These scenes really area a gift, you literally just have to point the camera and everyone’s a winner.  In this one I again shot with a wide’ish lens so composed to have one of the big lights adding some foreground interest, I again went for the curved path taking you from just in front of the camera to round and out of the picture.  The tall building in the distance breaks up the sky and kind of gives you something at the end of the path.

My only regret is that I didn’t go to the path a month earlier, getting shots with more leaves on the trees would have been interesting, but then there’s always next year.  The good news is I only have a couple more of these to post and next week I’m off work all week and planning on going on a few trips out with the camera.

The guys found some glass at work to play with today.  Carter particularly liked his extra long arms behind the blue one.

Downtown Park – Bellevue

10. November 2012 · Comments Off on Downtown Park – Bellevue · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

This afternoon I decided to go out with the camera and grab some pictures and I thought I’d try somewhere different.   So I went to Bellevue Downtown Park.  This is a really nice park in the middle of the city of Bellevue, right next to the Bell Square Mall.  I know this park pretty well as when we moved to America, Microsoft put us up in an apartment block right next to the park (and the Mall).  Obviously Lisa spent her first three months in the Mall (cost me a fortune!)

Anyway, back to the park.  The park is basically a large expanse of grass surrounded by a walking path that’s lit up with stone lamps.  There’s also a number of water features around the paths, and at one end is this pretty cool really wide waterfall.  Around Thanksgiving the city of Bellevue also open up an ice skating rink right by the waterfall and when I was there they were setting it all up.

I got there around 4pm just before sunset and took a load of pictures before the sun actually went down.  Then the lights in the park came on and I took a load more with the park all lit up.  So I have quite a few images to post.

This first image is actually the very last one I took.  This was taken right next to the ice rink (you can’t see it, it’s off to my right) at the base of some stairs by the waterfall.  I love this image and think the way the trees are all lit up looks great and the stairs kind of lead the eye up and out of the picture.  The city in the background is pretty cool too and you can see one end of the waterfall to the right.  It took a few attempts to get this as people kept coming down the stairs.  But in the end the patience paid off and I got a great shot.

Master Chief decided to “ride the bison” this afternoon.  I don’t think Carter was very impressed!

Night Market – Seattle

09. November 2012 · Comments Off on Night Market – Seattle · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

I was looking through my picture back log this evening looking for something to post and came across this picture of Pike Place Market at night.  Now I’ve never posted this one before (duh) and I can’t remember why!  When I took this I did take a tighter shot of the Public Market sign and posted that, but this one is the whole market with nobody in the image – and you never see that!

I actually drove into Seattle just to take some pictures, it was just after 9pm (as you can see from the big clock) and the place was pretty deserted.  There were a few people out and about going to restaurants and pubs etc., and some where even there with cameras doing the same as me.  The nice thing was that I could drive right into Pike Place and park on the road (in fact I’m parked directly behind where I stood when I took this picture).

There were a few people in shot and cars kept going down the street so I had to time the picture to get it empty and I think it was really worth it.  The neon signage looked great and I loved the purple lights on the wall of the building above the market.  Of course a beautiful blue sky helps as well.

For post processing I just popped this into Photoshop and gave it a little sharpen, then applied a little targeted blurring to give it that glamour glow look and added a vignette.  The finished image came our really well.

Carter lost Master Chief today so went looking for him.  Eventually he found him sitting on a Totem Pole!

Cityscape – Seattle

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

Can you believe it, today is day 300 and I haven’t missed a day.  I’m amazed I got this far and can’t stop now with only 66 days left.  Anyway I’m pleased I’ve made it this far, definitely on the home stretch.

So tonight I thought I post another picture from my early morning trip to West Seattle.  If you remember I went there for a sunrise picture and I got there just after 6:30 in the morning.  It was still dark the sun was nowhere near ready to go above the horizon yet, but I still wanted to grab some pictures.

I got the tripod out and set up the camera and started shooting.  The problem I had was that the camera’s meter was trying to make the image look like daylight with a really long exposure.  The result looked ok but it wasn’t what I was seeing.  So I set the camera to manual mode and started to play with different shutter speeds.  Very quickly I go the image I’m posting tonight.  This is pretty much what I saw.

As the exposure was still quite long, the water came out as pretty flat and still, but I still got the city lights across it so I thought it looked pretty cool.  I’m not sure I like the horizon in this picture being in the center of the image, but I liked the buildings and the lights on Elliott Bay, so I left it there.  The Great Wheel looks a little strange as from this angle is it just looks like a white pole, but there’s not much I can do about that.

If you’ve visited my site before you know I love Photoshop, but I can honestly say this is pretty much out of the camera.  I adjusted the contrast a little and sharpened it but that’s all.

Tonight the boys were comparing their Halloween Balls.

Foot Bridge – Bellevue

25. October 2012 · Comments Off on Foot Bridge – Bellevue · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

Tonight I had the opportunity to join my new team for dinner in Bellevue.  We had a reservation in Daniels Broiler (which by the way is a lovely restaurant) at 6:30, but I thought it might be nice to get into the city a little early and grab some pictures.

The center of Bellevue has some fantastic restaurants and a really great shopping mall.  Most of the shops and restaurants are positioned around the same part of town, an intersection between Bellevue Way and NE 8th St.  On one corner of the intersection is the Hyatt hotel and Daniels Broiler, on another corner (across the road) is a large shopping and office area called Lincoln Square and joining the two together is this funky walking bridge across the road.

My plan was to walk onto the bridge and shoot some of the cars driving past on the roads below but as I approached the bridge I thought it might make a good image in it’s own right.  Luckily my timing was really good and got a couple of shots of the bridge with nobody on it.  As the bridge has a lot of chrome, glass and lights it looked really cool.

Of course once I took this the world decided to come across the bridge, so I was lucky to get this shot.  Then I moved to the center of the bridge and started shooting traffic.  I got some nice shots but really liked the bridge image best so that’s what I’m posting tonight.

The boys were going out this evening for a night on the town.  I caught them getting ready before heading out.

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