Bacon – Green Park

11. August 2012 · Comments Off on Bacon – Green Park · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: ,

My nephew Regan Smith is visiting us from the UK for a couple of weeks and he’s an aspiring chef.  He cooks for us most evenings and loves to visit food utensil shops (like “Bed Bath & Beyond”) to check out the American equipment.

On TV Regan likes to watch the Food Network and one of his favorite shows is “Man vs Food” with Adam Richman.  When Regan got here there were a number of places he wanted to visit and one was a restaurant featured on Man vs Food called “Red Mill Burgers”.  Now those of you who follow or have seen Adam in the show know that he basically takes on food challenges, but in one particular show he was visiting Seattle and just went to Red Mill Burgers as the burgers there were SO good.

So Regan (who after all wants to open his own burger joint) decided he wanted to check out the restaurant.  So today for dinner we gave it a try.

The restaurant is in Green Park North Seattle but the I90 bridge was closed.  As a result we decided to go round Lake Washington via Lynnwood, and got there around two in the afternoon.  The place is tiny, very little seating and next-door to a Starbucks, literally in the middle of nowhere.

Having said that, the restaurant was packed, there was a huge line of people coming out of the store and fortunately most were getting take-out.  We got in line and I found a table and we had bacon burgers, fries, shakes and onion rings. (The onion rings are to die for, and the burgers are very good too – although rather big).

We had a great meal and all ate too much and now I’m home writing this I think I’m stuck in my chair for the evening!

So why am I telling you all this?  Well on the way out of the restaurant I took a quick peek over the counter (Regan told me the kitchen staff were “Really Hot” – his words) and I saw this unbelievable pile of bacon!  (Clearly I’m getting old as I didn’t notice the girls).

In my “bacon” frenzied excitement I asked the girl behind the counter if I could take a picture and she said sure, and invited me into the kitchen.

I appreciate that this is “unusual”, but look at it!  It’s beautiful!  If you like bacon you will definitely know what I mean.

So go to Red Mill Burgers in Green Park and check out the burgers, onion rings and pile of bacon – you won’t be disappointed.

Carter told me today that he wanted to work on his target practice, I thought he meant with a gun, but clearly not!

Suspension Bridge – Bellevue

10. August 2012 · Comments Off on Suspension Bridge – Bellevue · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

The other day I posted an image of the Suspension Bridge at the Botanical Gardens in Bellevue.  You find this 150′ bridge if you follow the “Ravine Experience” nature walk through the park.  Usually I take wide angle shots of structures like this so you can see the whole thing.  But lately I’m trying to find an alternative perspective (that’s a posh photography or “arty” way of saying a different or interesting view).

With modern cameras anyone can take a correctly exposed picture that’s in focus, in fact it’s quite hard not to.  But the difference between a holiday snap and a beautiful picture is all about reading, understanding and manipulating light and learning how to compose scenes that draw the eye in and either tell a story or leave the viewer with a strong emotion.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting I’m good at this or know how to create those strangely compelling images that you can’t stop looking at, but I’m trying.  What’s funning is as I’m a total geek and cameras have so many knobs and buttons, sometimes I go so excited about the technology I forget the composition.

If nothing else, this New Years resolution has got me out of the house and forced me to take a LOT of pictures and I *think* I’m getting better.

I really liked this image.  You can clearly see this is a suspension bridge and you can see it’s surrounded by forest.  I liked the texture of the brick in the base pillar and to draw your eye to it I kept that in focus and made the rest of the bridge slowly fall out of focus.

Tonight Carter and Master Chief decided to do some ironing and we witnessed a terrible accident!

Ferris Wheel – Seattle

09. August 2012 · Comments Off on Ferris Wheel – Seattle · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

A couple of months ago I posted a picture of the new Seattle ferris wheel (called the “Great Wheel”) at sunset.  To capture that image I stood at the end of a pier, but today’s picture was taken from a ferry in Elliott Bay.  We were approaching the pier and city and I had a few seconds to capture the wheel with the city and Space Needle behind it.

When I took this everything was moving.  I was moving on the ferry as it approached the dock and the wheel was going round.  Luckily it was lovely and sunny so I had loads of light and could shoot the image at a really fast shutter speed, this nicely froze all motion and gave me the picture below.

I’m really pleased I got the Space Needle in the image too, here it looks like it’s close to the tall buildings but it’s pretty far away from downtown.  I think the colors of the piers and the buildings, and the blue sky make a really nice picture – at least I’m pleased with it.

I’ve been told that one of the gondolas on the ferris wheel has a glass bottom.  So I’m really keen to take a ride on that and see what pictures I can get.  I’ll try and do it over the next few weeks so I can get a Summery image and share with you all here on the blog.

Work has been a little manic lately with very early starts and super long days, in the evenings I’m just exhausted so have to rely on weekends to capture new images for the blog.  This week we have family visiting from the UK as well so I suspect we will be going somewhere fun on Saturday or Sunday and I’ll get an opportunity to capture something new – at least that’s my hope.

I try to get out of town at least once a month and go somewhere new on a photo trip and have some very exciting plans coming up, with all sorts of trips like the Olympic National Park, the Oregon Coast and Las Vegas.  I can’t believe I’ve kept this going for 222 days and am confident that I’ll make it to the end of the year.  Trust me when I say I have seriously considered stopping this several times, but with only a few months left and some cool trips on my calendar, the end of this year long resolution is definitely in sight and success feels possible.

Carter and Master Chief are definitely getting into cooking.  Tonight they hand rolled 45 meatballs!

Sun House – Bellevue

08. August 2012 · Comments Off on Sun House – Bellevue · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: ,

The Botanical Gardens in Bellevue were really beautiful the other day.  The temperature was ridiculously hot so I kept under the cover of trees by following the woodland trails.  While winding my way around the park I found this Japanese Sun House.  I took several pictures from different perspectives but due to the trees near by (especially off to the left in the picture below) the image I’m posting tonight is the best one.

The house only had 3 walls and inside there were a number of wooden benches where you could sit and enjoy the gardens.  I was lucky when I got there to take this as there was nobody else around.  Ironically shortly after that a wedding party turned up (they arrived in a stretch Hummer limousine – I saw it when I left) to take some pictures.

Now I have nothing against wedding parties or wedding photographers (not that I’d ever photograph a wedding – get that wrong and there’s no opportunity for a do-over, who wants that pressure), but some of them can be a real pain in the ass.  The guy photographing the wedding party basically took over the area and started bossing me and other visitors about.  Now you don’t need a license to photograph a wedding party at the Botanical Gardens so anyone can do it, and I have as much right to be there as a wedding party, so I get a bit angry when they start telling me to get out of the way, specifically when I got there first!

I encountered this same problem in Maui, there were these photographers who went to the beach at sunset to photograph a client.  But the beach is public property, they don’t own it but you would think they did.  I find it all very annoying!

Anyway I had fortunately already taken my pictures so I buggered off and left them too it.

I really liked the image below when I got home, it definitely captured the beauty of the area and the serene tranquil influence of the trees around the house.

Now coming from England I get all sorts of negative comments from people at work about British food, but the Halo guys wanted to try some traditional English food and decided to check out Lisa’s cooking book.  They decided to make some “Spotted Dick” – Yummy!

Ford Truck – Redmond

07. August 2012 · Comments Off on Ford Truck – Redmond · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

It’s funny what you see as you’re driving around, every now and then you see something cool and think “that’ll make a nice pic”.  This happened the other day on the way home, I was driving the back way home and I saw this old truck.  It was quite far away from the road but I thought it might make a nice posting.  Next to the property that had the truck was a road with a white picket fence, so I drove down the road, and jumped out to get the shot.

I hand held the camera to take the image as I was concerned that someone may come out and tell me to move on, so I rested the camera on the picket fence on the middle horizontal plank.  From a distance I wasn’t sure if the truck was road worthy or just there for show, but when I got closer, it looked like it was in need of some work and probably wasn’t running.

It was really sunny when I got the shot and you can see the reflection of the fence in the truck’s door.  I have no idea what year and model this is but it had Ford on the hood so I knew the make.  I loved the white walled tires and the running boards.  The grass on the back kind of looked cool too and when I got home I was really pleased with the image.

I used a good lens and managed to get a nice depth of field so the barn behind is starting to fall out of focus.  Ideally the truck would have been further away from the barn and the barn would have been pretty blurred but unfortunately they were quite close together – but then there’s not much you can do about that.

I’ve learnt now that when I see these opportunities I stop and take the picture (if I have the camera with me of course), as if I think “I’ll get it later on the way back” I never get the chance again.  With my luck the truck would have been towed away that afternoon.  But this one I got and I think it looks great.

Today the Halo guys decided to hold their own medal ceremony, where the winner got a gold Cadbury medal.  Somehow Carter won!

« Older articles
Newer articles »