19. April 2012 · Comments Off on Windmill – Roozengaarde · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

After posting yesterday’s windmill I thought I’d post some more!  Today’s windmill picture was taken at Roozengaarde in Mount Vernon.  Roozengaarde have some manicured gardens that exhibit the flowers then grow and center stage in the middle of the garden is this windmill.

I was waiting for everyone to get out of the shot but I waited and waited for ages.  Families kept coming up and posing for pictures in front of the thing and I was losing patience.  In the end I thought “sod it” and took this shot with some women standing off to the right.  In the end I removed the women in Photoshop (love that product) so my picture is people free.

I lost the Halo guys at work today, so I went looking for them and I found them in the Drinks Fridge pounding cans!

18. April 2012 · Comments Off on Windmill – Marymoor Park · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

I had a conversation with someone at work today (Lucia) and was asked when I found time to capture the pictures I post.  I explained that I try to photograph whenever I can, be it during the day or on the way home from work.  I’ve even come home, had dinner and gone out again for a picture idea.  So to show it’s possible I took this picture of the windmill in Marymoor Park in Redmond on the way home tonight.

As we had a nice blue sky I thought the windmill might look good so I drove into Marymoor.  I grabbed the tripod and took a number of pictures of the windmill from different angles.  I really liked the tree that’s in the foreground and tried a few with that prominent in the picture with the windmill behind, but it just didn’t look right.  I also tried shooting the windmill from the other side with the sun as a back light, but as the sun was quite low in the sky I got LOADS of lens flare (a little is OK but too much ruins the image).

By far the best picture is the one I got below.  I would say that the detour on the way home cost me around 30 minutes.  The selection and processing of the picture around another 30.  So it goes to show everyone can do this.

To be fair (in case people didn’t read my earlier posts and realize this) I don’t take a picture every day, it just wouldn’t be possible.  So when I go to a good location I might take 3 or 4 that I like.  I then hang on to the ones I didn’t use that night and post them later.   When I first started this I didn’t have any back up pictures as the rule I set myself was that only pictures taken in 2012 could be posted.  But now 3 months in I have around 50.  The frustrating thing is that while I like the images when I take them and put them in my backlog, a couple of weeks later I’m not so keen!  Hence the reason why I’m always looking for something new to shoot.

Carter and his friends decided to play on a kids climbing frame today – they got to the top and got all excited, apparently it was quite high up.

17. April 2012 · Comments Off on Rainbow Bridge – La Conner · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

Today’s image was taken in La Conner which sits on the Swinomish Channel.  This large channel separates the Swinomish Indian Reservation from the Skagit Valley mainland.  There are only two bridges that cross the channel, the picture below shows one of them, this is called locally the Rainbow Bridge.

The Channel is pretty wide and while I was taking this picture seals kept popping up to the surface.  Obviously the moment I tried to take a picture they would dive under – question is how do they know I’m trying to photograph them?

The city of La Conner is not very big, it has less than 1000 residents and based on the number of restaurants and gift type shops I would guess one of their main industries in tourism.  While there I had an excellent pint in a local pub with a really nice pizza to go with it.

Something else I thought I’d mention in this posting is that just over nine years ago I moved to the US from England.  To keep my family and friends back in the UK up to date with our activities I created a web site.  On that web site I placed a visitor counter.  Nine years later I have 6,599 visits.  Now by contrast I set up this site back in January (3 1/2 months ago) and I now have 6,672 visits!  Clearly my family site sucks!  So I’ll be shutting that down soon (mind you posting every day definitely helps, the last time I updated the family site was in April 2010).

The Halo guys went to play in the neighborhood park today and found a climbing wall.  Not being guys who turn down a challenge, they went for it.

16. April 2012 · Comments Off on Picnic Shelter – Rosario Beach · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

When I was in Rosario Beach I walked past this picnic shelter.  The tour guide suggested taking a shot through the window turning the window into a frame for the beach outside.  I actually tried this but wasn’t overly pleased with the end result.  But before I left I thought I’d try one last picture.

The building was made up of large wooden logs and there was a rustic slightly weathered look to the interior.  There was a lot of sunlight streaming in the the window and a stone floor and fireplace.  I figured it would make a good HDR image as it was really dark in the roof and corners and very light by the windows.

So I placed my camera on it’s tripod and took the shot below 5 times and used Photomatix to create the end result.  The completed image captured the wood grain and color really well.  Fortunately everyone else had just left the building so I didn’t have to remove anyone in post processing.

The Halo guys found some sand and a digger and decided to try some construction.

15. April 2012 · Comments Off on Daffodil – Mount Vernon · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

This is the last Daffodil image I will post from my Mount Vernon trip – I promise.  This picture was the last one I took that day, we had just left a winery and were on our way to an ice cream store.  We stopped by some amazing yellow fields and I captured this image.

There were quite a few people there taking pictures so by getting really low and shooting up, I managed to get a clean shot of just the flowers.  So this is a rather simple image but the deep blue sky and yellow flower work very well together.

I was thinking of going back to the tulip festival again this weekend but Abi wasn’t too well so we decided to stay at home.  Needless to say I need to go next week or I will miss the festival.  So next Saturday I will either go with the family or head up really early on my own.

The halo guys wanted to get some fresh air outside this evening, Master Chief found a place to stand in the shade but I think it was a bad location.