Mount Si – North Bend

08. May 2012 · Comments Off on Mount Si – North Bend · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

Over the weekend I visited North Bend, again just looking for things to photograph and found myself driving towards Mount Si.  Now I could have just photographed the mountain (in fact I did a couple of times) and, well, it didn’t look that impressive.  To get the whole mountain into the frame I had to use a wide angle lens and when you do that you get a lot in but distant objects look smaller.  I did want all the mountain in the picture so I needed something in the foreground to make the image interesting.  Then I found this small lake.

I really liked the way the trees reflected in the water and the sky had a great red, warm glow, so while the picture was originally about Mount Si, it kind-a took a back seat in the finished composition.

So what can I tell you about Mount Si?  Well it’s part of the Cascade Range, it was named after some homesteader called Josiah “Uncle Si” Merritt, it has a 4 mile trail going up 3,500 feet and the best bit, if you are old like me, you will have seen it in Twin Peaks!  Yes, Twin Peaks was filmed in North Bend with Mount Si in the background and this is where Agent Cooper had his excellent Cherry Pie.  How educational is my site – Fantastic!

Carter and Master Chief were shocked to find some Halo figurines at work today, I guess it was inevitable that they would find these at Microsoft, but Carter was definitely surprised.

Pike Place Lanterns – Seattle

07. May 2012 · Comments Off on Pike Place Lanterns – Seattle · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

Those of you who have visited Pike Place Market, know about the stores downstairs.  I’ve mentioned this in previous posts, but basically it’s an eclectic collection of stores that pretty much sell everything from clothes, to old records, to rock & roll memorabilia.

One store that caught my eye when I was there last, was this cool lantern shop.  They had a number of lights hanging from the ceiling that were all shapes, colors and sizes.  I don’t like just walking into a store and taking pictures (I might ask for permission but if the store has people in it I’m not going to bother), but outside is kind-a fair game.  Just outside this store was a number of hanging lanterns, so I grabbed a shot.

Rather than shoot the store as it looks I turned the camera a little to emphasis the lights and force the eye to work out what’s going on, hopefully creating a more interesting composition. Also I selected a big aperture that gave me a shallow depth of field so the first lantern is sharp in focus and the focus falls off as you look down the line of lights, again helping the look of the shot.

Cool shop, great lights and hopefully a nice image.

I like Sudoku (what can I say I’m getting old), so Lisa got me this daily Sudoku desk calendar for Christmas.  Well today Carter found it and starting solving puzzles.

Super Moon – Redmond

06. May 2012 · Comments Off on Super Moon – Redmond · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

Now I can tell you here a load of “stuff” about the Super Moon – trust me I looked it up.  But you probably won’t understand it (I know I didn’t) and of course it’s crashingly boring.  All you really need to know is that last night we had one and it’s really big.

Anyway I was sitting in the bonus room last night watching TV when Lisa came running in and said “wow the moon is big – you should take a picture”.  By now of course I had already posted my picture of the day, but I thought what the heck, how long can it take to photograph the moon?  So we paused our program and I went outside with the camera and tripod.

Well apparently, if you have never photographed the moon before it actually takes quite a long time.  The problem is that the moon is very bright (in the black sky) so the camera exposes for the moon and everything else is black.  Actually even the moon itself is blown out so all you see is a big white ball in a totally black sky.  Which is actually pretty crap!  So you have to under expose for the moon, but then you can’t see any clouds.

So you end up standing outside for around 40 minutes figuring out that the only way to get the picture I’m posting tonight is to HDR it (or really double expose it).  Basically you take two pictures, one of the clouds, and one of the moon and then you blend the two together.  And this is the result.

All I can say is thank goodness for Tivo, I didn’t miss a thing.

Greek mythology states that Atlas a Titan supported the heavens on his back.  This is Carters attempt – with a moon.  He looks good don’t you think?

Train – Snoqualmie

05. May 2012 · Comments Off on Train – Snoqualmie · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

During in the week a work colleague (Jan) suggested I check out the trains in Snoqualmie, he told me there was a flatbed trolly cart with a single tree growing on it. (At least I think that’s what he said).  So today I drove to Snoqualmie to see what I could find.

I’ve actually visited Snoqualmie before to take pictures but that was at the beginning of the year and it was a lot colder.  So it was nice to go back and walk around the trains in a t-shirt and enjoy the sunshine.

I parked in the town center and walked all the way back to the bridge and didn’t see Jan’s flatbed.  But in the process I got some great shots of the trains so it was a good day out.

Some of the trains have signs near them telling you all about them but for the yellow train in today’s picture I couldn’t find anything.  Now I should say here I’m definitely no train enthusiast but it was fun to photograph them.  Most of them are rusty and falling apart and I got some great shots of decaying metal (sounds odd I know but you’ll see what I mean when I post those images).  But today I thought I’d start with something that looks like a working train – even though I think it’s been a while since this train rode the rails.

Even though it was a nice day there weren’t too many people around so I got some cool shots without unwanted distractions.  Jan, I hope you like this picture, sorry it’s not what you wanted but hopefully you think it’s cool.

Carter decided tonight to give his friend a makeover, they started by painting nails.

Requests & Ideas

04. May 2012 · Comments Off on Requests & Ideas · Categories: General

Over the last couple of weeks something interesting has started to happen.  People have started coming to me with requests and ideas for pictures.  Some are ideas for serious pictures and some people suggest scenarios for the Halo guys.  This really couldn’t come at a better time – as I’m running out of ideas 🙂

I created a blog page to provide a location for you to suggest “Stuff” and give you guidance on what would be helpful.  You can go to the page here: http://blog.tonyseeley.com/?page_id=676

If you don’t know what to suggest today but come up with an idea in a weeks time, you can find this link under the Pages section on the right hand side of the blog.

So don’t be shy, make a suggestion, you never know, it may end up on the blog (and you’ll get all the credit).

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