Tony Seeley Photography

For quite a while now I’ve wanted to visit the Olympic National Park but for all sorts of reasons have never been.

So why visit at all? Well the Park in on the Olympic peninsular – that’s the big bit of land between Seattle and the Pacific Ocean, and with three distinct and diverse ecosystems that include, the Pacific coast, rain forest valleys and glacier-capped mountains the Olympic National Park is home to a stunning variety of plants and animals.

There are so many places to visit and things to see that it’s difficult to figure out an itinerary for just one day, add to this that fact that it’s pretty painful to get to (long drive, ferry trip, very long drive) I’ve had problems finding anyone to go with me.

Anyway this weekend I just thought I haven’t been out with the camera for a while and I fancied a car trip to somewhere new. So I got up super early and hit the road to Edmonds, that took around 40 minutes, then I got on a Ferry to Kingston, another 40 minutes, and found myself on the peninsular.

I had a couple of locations I wanted to check out, namely Port Angeles, Lake Crescent and Sol Duc Falls. The nearest was Port Angeles so off I set.

Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t that great, there was a lot of low cloud (no rain thank goodness) but a lot of mist, especially as I started to go up in elevation.

By the time I reached Port Angeles (nearly 3 hours later) the sky was actually pretty grey. Now if you have broken cloud this can look really good, but this was just a sheet of nothing, not very appealing for pictures, so I quickly headed on the Lake Crescent.

The lake was great, sure the sky was still a little grey but the scenic views were amazing. So I just drove round the lake stopping every mile or so to take some pictures.

After around an hour I got to the end of the lake and headed off to Dol Suc. This took another hour (and is about 30 miles from Forks for all you Twilight fans). I paid my entrance fee to get into the Park and drove the 14 miles to the end of the road. Then there was a mile hike into the forest to get to the falls.

As I was there at the end of summer there wasn’t a load water but the falls still looked good. I took a load of pictures walking around the falls, even walking out onto the rocks at one point to get some closer pics and then headed back to the car.

It was 4 in the afternoon and time to head home so off I went again and got back to Kinston by 7. I had an hours wait for a ferry and got home at 9:30.

For a first trip out I had a blast, took around 400 pictures and ended up with around 30 I really liked – some of which are below.
I’ll definitely go back there and maybe next time convince Lisa and Abi to come too (not even going to try to get James to come). Although next time we’ll find somewhere to stay for a couple of nights, that way I can shoot the coast too.

Anyway here are some of the pics.

What can I tell you, I HATE taking pictures of animals. It’s not that I don’t like them or anything, I just don’t have that patience gene that allows me to either sit over a hole in the ground for hours, stand quietly in a wooded area with a long lens or in my case this weekend, try to convince my stupid dog to sit still.

But as Lisa (my wife) wanted a new picture of Roxie our dog, that’s what I had to do.

Roxie is a Maltese Shih Tzu mix and just doesn’t like having her picture taken. She’ll sit there looking beautiful until the moment I pull the camera up to my face, at which point she runs for the hills.

Now I’ve read blog postings from other photographers who talk about offering treats and being patient for that perfect shot, but I just don’t have the patience – or quite frankly the desire!

But again as Lisa wanted a picture we grabbed the camera, one light and hit the garden with Roxie and a cheese stick. Roxie loves cheese sticks so I figured this might keep her still, but it had the complete opposite effect. She went mental.

Rather than sit still like all those amazingly trained dogs you see on TV, Roxie decided to dance around like a nutta. At all times she didn’t take her eyes off the cheese Lisa was holding, jumping up and down, spinning round in circles and when she did stop and sit still, the only shot I got was a great shot of the back of her head.

Have I mentioned I don’t like doing this?

Anyway, after lots of attempts (and I mean a lot), I managed to get four passable images that Lisa quite liked.

In every one I had to crop out Lisa who was holding the cheese and re-compose the shot so Roxie was nicely positioned in the shot.

Luckily Lisa got her image and I’m saved from having to do this again for a couple of years.

Here are the four we liked:

When we got back from Orlando I had a couple of days off before I had to go to work. So I figured that while I was getting up nice and early (due to the time difference) I’d go and shoot a sunrise over Seattle.

Now sunrise shots in summer suck as you have to get up at like 4am! But I did it and got all my gear together and headed off to the city.

Question was where to go?

To really get the sun over the city I’d have to go over the West Seattle to Alki Beach or something, but I’d done that before.

So this time I thought I’d try Kerry Park to shoot the city skyline as the sun came up on the left. Sure I wouldn’t get the sun in the shot, but I should see some nice light over the city as the sun broke over the horizon. At least that was the plan!

I got there with plenty of time and set up with my 18-135 lens and started taking pictures before the sun came up.

At first it looked like I was going to get some great shots, but as the sun started to provide more light it became clear that while the city looked great (really good visibility) there was a lot of low cloud cover.

The light was nice but I wasn’t going to get the spectacular shots I was hoping for.

Still, this is what can (and usually does) happen with landscape photography. The answer is to keep going and see what you can get.

So I stuck around for about two hours taking pictures while the sun rose and you can see some nice light hitting the buildings on the left.

Before I left I thought I’d try something a little different.

In Kerry Park, right by the location where people shoot the city is a large piece of modern art. I don’t really know what it is but it’s basically a big square thing with round holes all around it.

I was wondering what a picture of the Space Needle would look like if I shot through the statue.

So I moved my tripod and set up for the shot.

Ironically this is my favorite picture of the day, so I included that too.

When I got home I looked at all the images of the city and while they were nice none of them really jumped out and grabbed me! So I decided to add a few filters in Lightroom (no Photoshop here) with a little bit of dual tone action. I added some contrast and clarity and got an image I liked.

So that’s the one I’m sharing with you today.

A few days after our Seattle visit we decided to go back. We thought it would be fun to watch the sun set over the city from the Columbia Tower.

The Columbia Tower is the tallest building in the city and is 943 feet high. It was build back in 2007 and cost a whopping $200 million. The tower has 76 floors and the story goes that the Architect (Chester Lindsey) wanted 76 to celebrate his fathers 76th birthday. However the height of the building was going to be too high and violated Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rules as the building was under the approach flight path to SeaTac airport.

So Chester solved the problem by dropping the height of each floor by 2 inches, just getting under the approved height!

I have no idea if this is true but it’s a great story 🙂

Anyway the 73rd floor has a “Sky View Observatory” that costs $12 to visit and it gives you a panoramic view of the city.

We got to the tower about 8:30 (sun was supposed to set at 9pm) and I checked out the views.

My idea was to set the camera up on a tripod and start taking pictures as the sun was going down, and keep going until well after it had set and the city lights had come on.

For this shoot I had my 10-24mm ultra wide set to f/11 – that way I’d get everything in focus.

After walking round the building a couple of times I picked my spot shooting directly into the sun over the Olympics with the City (and Space Needle) in my foreground.

I put the camera on the Tripod, connected the shutter release cable and started taking pictures.

Now I should point out that I had my wife, two kids and father in-law (with his wife) with me. – I really should have thought this though, as by 9pm as the sun was going down they were all getting board!

So I had to keep apologizing as I wasn’t going anywhere for another half hour – at least!

So I just kept going.

I had a couple of close issues, my battery ran out at about ten past nine, so I had to change that without moving the camera, and a load of people kept coming by and got way too close to the setup.

Anyway by 9:30, my son came and told me that if I wanted to live I needed to pack up NOW – Lisa was not happy.

So I grabbed everything and we left with me hoping I had enough.

When we got home I started processing.

What I wanted was the sun going down over the mountains with a nice amount of light over the water, but with the city lights on. Obviously this is an impossible image as you can’t see both at the same time.

So it was clearly time for Photoshop magic.

In the end I picked two images. One at around 8:50 with the sun really low in the sky, and the other was the last one I took at 9:30.

I added some adjustments in Lightroom to both pictures to get a great sky and backdrop in one and a great city in the other, and then manually blended them together with layers and an overlay mask.

The end result is the image below.

OK, so this isn’t real, it’s art, but so is EVERY OTHER PICTURE like this you have ever seen 🙂 This is just my version.