Tony Seeley Photography

I posted a picture of downtown Bellevue the other day and explained how I went out on a date with Lisa and while walking over a foot bridge saw a scene to capture.  Well tonight’s image is the original picture idea I had.  On this side of the bridge you can see Maggiano’s restaurant and some of the office tower blocks in the distance.

Maggiano’s is one of my favorite places to eat.  If you like Italian, this is the place to go especially if you are in a big party.  They let you order from their family menu and bring you out loads of dishes for everyone to share.  Inside the restaurant it’s decorated in dark wood and looks fantastic.  That too would make a really nice picture and I’ll get that one day too.

In this image the sky came out really blue, I suspect that this is somewhat due to the neon lights affecting the white balance settings in the camera (it wasn’t that blue in real life, it was actually almost black as it was night) but I think it looks great in the image.  The tall office building in the distance also picks up the color of the sky and looks good too.

There is something about photographing neon signs that’s really fun.  You tend to see more colors in the picture than you pick up when you’re there as your eye’s adjust and “see” the neon colors differently.  But the camera’s brain is not as smart as ours and produces more accurate vibrant colors.   So surrounding walls are more saturated and look brighter.

I’ve enjoyed taking these night shots and think I’ll spend some time to go out and get some more, perhaps in downtown Seattle.  So look out for those in the future.

After a long day at work the Halo guys stood outside work waiting for their bus home.

Tonight’s picture is another night shot of Bellevue showing the Bellevue Place shopping area.

The large building on the left is the Hyatt Hotel and Conference Center.  When I used to live in the UK and traveled to Redmond to visit Microsoft, this is the hotel I stayed in.  In fact back in 2002 I brought Lisa and James out to check out the area and this is where we stayed.  The large building on the right contains a number of shops (in the lower two floors) and some offices above.  The shops are not really my cup of tea (galleries and posh furniture – that kind of thing), but on the 21st floor is one of the best restaurants in Bellevue, Daniel’s Broiler.  If you like steak (and ice cream sundae’s) you will love Daniels, although take out a small mortgage before going – this is not McDonald’s!

When you drive here they have a nice valet service so you don’t have to park your car, but if you’re cheap like me (and you don’t have Lisa with you) there is a big car park under the buildings.  What’s nice about this area is that you have around 40 really nice restaurants all within walking distance, a multiplex cinema across the road, and Bellevue Mall within walking distance (and that Mall is huge).

When we actually moved to the US, Microsoft got us a temporary apartment just around the corner from the Mall.  Every day I’d come home from work terrified over what I’d find.  Lisa spent her days walking around the Mall buying everything she could get her hands on.  I think she liked living in Bellevue.

So what about this picture?  Well I took this shot around 9:30pm and it was quite dark outside.  I placed the camera on a tripod in front of the fountain and used a long exposure.  That brought out the blue in the dark sky, almost making it look like day time.  I loved the little fountain and thought it would provide some foreground interest to the image, but I had to take loads of pictures as people kept driving up to valet park their cars, so this was the best of a number of attempts.

There are two things Carter loves about Mexican food.  Margarita’s and Chip’s and Salsa (is that three things?)