Abi – Redmond

30. September 2012 · Comments Off on Abi – Redmond · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

In a couple of weeks on October 13th, Scott Kelby set the date for his 5th annual World Wide Photo Walk.  Now some of you may be wondering what a photo walk is and what this has to do with today’s posting! Well read on, all will be reviled.

Firstly let me explain what a  photo walk is.  The premise is pretty simple, a number of people get together with cameras and follow a set walk and take photographs.  The walk ends at a restaurant or cafe and people share their pictures and discuss the walk.  It’s basically a social event and anyone can join – it’s also free.  You don’t have to be a professional or even have an expensive camera, you just join others for a couple of hours and capture some shots.  Scott ran one in his home town of Tampa in Florida and the had so much fun he set up a date for people to do it all over the world.  Right now there are 24,000 people taking part in 1200 cities around the world.

Anyway I really wanted to go on a walk and went online to find a local one.  There were two in Seattle but I really wanted to do something in my own city of Redmond but there weren’t any set up.  So I applied to be a leader and my application was accepted on Friday.  Now I had an idea of what walk I wanted to do, something with a bit of downtown shops and a little bit of park and even found a place to finish the walk, but still had some organizing to do.

I went to the restaurant I wanted to end up at and spoke to the manager there – now he’s really excited that we will turn up on a Saturday afternoon with hopefully a load of people.  I spoke to the Police and the security company who work in Redmond Town Center and got everything sorted there, and yesterday I walked the photo walk route and captured some shots.  I wanted to make sure the walk was long enough and there was enough interesting things to shoot.

My Walk is just over a mile long and if you’re taking pictures along the way will take around 2 hours to complete, and we end up at Redmond’s Bar and Grill at noon for lunch.  So I’m totally set.  So I published the walk online and people have started to sign up.  I’m allowed a total of 50 people, right now I have 4!  But I’m guessing it’s early days.

Yesterday Abi joined me on the walk helping me look for different things to shoot.  We found loads of subjects and I took tuns of images.  At one location we found this bright orange wall and she posed against if for a shot, and this is the image I’m posting for today.  We had a lot of fun and I’m really looking forward to the real walk.  I’ll post what happens here on the 14th.

If you want learn more or join us on the walk here is the link to the site: Redmond Photo Walk.

Carter and Master Chief’s Girl Scout Badges finally arrived for all the cookies they sold (and ate), they couldn’t agree however who should have which badge!

Alfa Romeo 8C Superleggera – Redmond

16. September 2012 · Comments Off on Alfa Romeo 8C Superleggera – Redmond · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: ,

I thought I’d take a break from Las Vegas today, you really can have too much of a good thing.  So I decided to post a car instead.  Yesterday I visited the Exotic’s Car Show in Redmond and saw some pretty cool cars.  One of my favorites was this Alfa Romeo 8C Superleggera.  Now I’ll be honest I have never seen one of these before.  At first I thought it was some sort or “bat mobile” rip off, but once I got close it was very obvious that this was a real car.

The owner of the car was demoing some of the cars features.  As the car came out in the 1930’s it didn’t have any turn singles on it.  Instead it had these little arms that popped out on either side when the driver pulled a lever.  The car has amazing lines (the front engine compartment and wings being I thin the most impressive) and a beast of an engine.  It has a V8 3.8 liter engine and when the owner fired it up it really did sound like the bat mobile.

Obviously being something very different the car had people round it all the time.  I was pretty patient and waited and waited but I really wasn’t going to get a shot without spectators.  So I decided to cut my losses and do some magic in Photoshop.  So you can’t see them now but there were people all around the back of the car, and all along the other side.  It took me a couple of hours to remove them but you really didn’t want to see loads of people standing around the car.

To hide some of the “Photoshop” work I applied a heavy vignette too, that also had the benefit of drawing you in to the car.  I think the end result is pretty good and the car was amazing.  I really wouldn’t be surprised if this was the inspiration for Tim Burton’s bat mobile car, to me it looks pretty similar.

Carter was on candle duty tonight, this time to put them out.  Master Chief just watched.

iPic – Redmond

02. September 2012 · Comments Off on iPic – Redmond · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

Tonight I decided to photograph one of my favorite places to go, iPic Theater.  This movie theater used to be a Gold Class theater and was owned by Mark Cuban.  However for some reason Gold Class sold out to iPic, but it’s still really good.

So what’s the big deal?  Well firstly this is a movie theater for adults only – so no kids talking.  As they have a bar and serve alcoholic drinks to your seat while you’re watching your film, you have to be 21 or over to go there.  Also, they have these enormous electric chairs that recline and they give you pillows and blankets so you get all comfortable while you enjoy the movie.  And the thing that makes it perfect is they have a full menu and serve you food again in the theater to your seat, what’s more the food is pretty good.  So going out for dinner and a movie is a totally different experience.

Originally Lisa and I said we would never go there as a ticket cost $22.  We thought it was nuts spending that much for the movies, but there was a film we wanted to see (I can’t remember what it was) and the only place that was showing it at the time we wanted was Gold Class.  So we reluctantly went and begrudgingly handed over our $44 for two tickets.

But it was just FANTASTIC.  Back then they used to have a little red button that you could press and someone would come to your seat and take orders etc., but these days (since iPic took it over) the buttons have gone.  Also when iPic took over they raised the prices to $28 a person.  But the problem is once you have been there you just can’t go anywhere else – it really is that good.

I’ve taken friends there and they all get hooked too.  So I thought it might make a nice image.

So I parked up, grabbed the gear and ran across the road.  I had to be quick as security won’t let you take pictures in the town center (check out one of my first postings on when I got busted).  So I thought I’d just be quick.  I took three pictures from different locations and got out of dodge.

Fortunately in the one I chose to post, there were no cars driving past, but I think I could have got a better image.  I think it’s just OK, but definitely good enough to post.

Today I got a new Retina MacBook Pro and Master Chief and Carter helped me unbox it.

Flower – Redmond

23. August 2012 · Comments Off on Flower – Redmond · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: ,

So once again I took my camera out at lunch and went for a walk.  I had no idea what I was looking for but I needed a picture for tonight’s posting.  I didn’t take the car so this really was a photo-walk and I should point out I work on Microsoft’s west campus, so it’s pretty much all office buildings and gardens.

We have a few (really) nice cafeteria’s (they’re full on restaurants really I guess) and I thought maybe I could photograph some food.  But in truth I didn’t really want to walk into a restaurant and pull out my camera and have a hundred people stare at me.

Outside the restaurants were groups of people sitting around at tables having lunch and again I thought of a street photography type of shot, imagine the outside of a small bistro in a city.  But again I didn’t think that would go down well – some of those Microsofties can be a little difficult.

So it was back to the gardens.  There were a few flower beds, and a large number of grasses.  I tried photographing the grasses from inside the bushes but it looked terrible (well you gotta try).  Then I found these yellow flowers.  I thought they looked daisy-ish (again like yesterday’s purple flowers), but I looked up daisy’s on the internet and these aren’t daisy’s.

I took loads of pictures of these flowers, from all angles.  Because the petals were so yellow I found that pictures from above just came across as a sea of yellow.  I tried shooting the flowers from below so I had yellow petals against a blue sky, but the underside of the flowers just didn’t look that good so that didn’t work either.  In the end I found the composition below, one flower standing tall above the others against a green backdrop.

I really liked the shallow depth of field I got in this picture, the way some of the petals on the primary subject are out of focus and the center of the flower is sharp worked really well.  Hope you like it too.

Today the Halo dudes decided to volunteer at the local elementary school, I’m not sure what they plan to do but they seemed very excited.

Crayons – Home

21. August 2012 · Comments Off on Crayons – Home · Categories: Image a Day · Tags:

I got home from work a little late this evening and looked through my backlog of images and came to the conclusion I didn’t like any of them.  This happens quite a lot.  I take a load of pictures, post the one I like best and hold onto others that I think have potential for the future.  Then later I go back and look at them and think yuk!

So I had a problem, I needed a picture to post tonight, didn’t have one and it was late and sucky outside (weather wise – plus I really didn’t want to go out to shoot, too tired) so I needed an idea.

To try something different I thought I’d try to be a little creative so I got a white cup and some Crayola crayons.  Put the crayons in the cup and took a picture from above and lit the crayons with a ring flash.  This was pretty easy to do and the image I’m posting tonight was my third attempt.

As the kids are going back to school soon school supplies are everywhere, so having crayon’s around was no problem.  I guess this is my attempt at being arty.

Tonight the guys decided to test out the new printer, they did quite well I think.

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