Seal Pup – Seattle

21. October 2012 · Comments Off on Seal Pup – Seattle · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

I’ve come the the conclusion that luck plays a big part in capturing a great picture, but then you do need to recognize the lucky opportunity and act on it to get the shot.  Yesterday was a perfect example.  There we were at sunrise on Alki beach taking pictures of the Seattle skyline and the islands out in Puget Sound with the Olympic Mountain Range backdrop.

We had quite a few photographers there and we were all standing on the sidewalk and park above the beach.  I thought it might be interesting to get closer to the beach so I could include the sand and breaking water in the foreground so I walked down to the waters edge.  Now here’s the embarrassing thing, I then went ahead and took a load of pictures and it wasn’t until I looked at the captured image on the back of the camera that I saw a small seal pup right in front of me.

Now we aren’t supposed to get to close to seal’s on the beach but the little guy was pretty close already and didn’t seem bothered by my presence.  I did have a quick look around for the mother, as they can be a little agressive if they think the pup is in danger, but she wasn’t around.

So I got down on the floor and took a LOAD of pictures.  I was so excited that I totally screwed up the first ones, but once I calmed down I got a lot of beautify images.  Now I was around 5 feet from this little guy, and in truth that was probably too close, but I was there already so took the opportunity.

After I got the shots I wanted I backed away slowly and told all the other photographers about the pup.  They then ran down to the beach and I had the park and sidewalk to myself with nobody in the way.

Now I’ll be honest, I LOVE animal pictures, but they usually require amazing patience with you sitting by a hole in the ground for hours.  And as I’m amazingly lazy it’s not really for me.  But give me an opportunity like this and I’m all over it.  I loved the pictures I got and chose this one with the little guy’s eyes open.  I think he liked the camera too, as he almost looks like he’s smiling.

Tonight the guys found a “pumpkin” tree and played in that.

Morning Cityscape – Seattle

20. October 2012 · Comments Off on Morning Cityscape – Seattle · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , , ,

So I have quite a lot on at the moment, I’m taking a picture a day (that takes a load of time), we have just gone through a re-org at work and I have loads to do there, and for some ridiculously stupid reason I decided to do a photography course at Bellevue College.  I have no idea why I signed up for this and this morning I really regretted it!

Why this morning? Because I had to be in Alki, West Seattle at 7am on a Saturday!  Which meant I needed to get up at 6am, seriously sad news.  So why did I have to be there?  Well the course is called “Shoot to Show” and is all about shooting images that you can then frame and show and sell.  We had to pick a theme for our images, and decided on “Beginning or End of day”.  So this morning we all arrived in West Seattle to photograph a sun rise.

Anyway I got there around 6:40 and this was one of the first shots I took.  The sun hadn’t really come up yet, so the city was all lite up and looked really great across the water.  The lights from the city were reflected across the water and the sky was  almost black.  So I set up the tripod and too some pictures.

This picture was a 30 second exposure, so long that the sky looked light blue.  I took a few shots at the waters edge and the images looked great, but I really wanted some foreground interest.  So I stepped back from the water and set up behind a bench and took the image below.  I really liked the end result, the bench looked great and you can even see some grass under the bench.  And then in the distance you have the beautiful city of Seattle.  Pretty cool.

As Lisa and Abi have now decorated the house, Carter and Master Chief are now playing with all the Halloween “stuff”, tonight it’s Boo!

Sailing in Fog – Seattle

11. October 2012 · Comments Off on Sailing in Fog – Seattle · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

You know when summer is over and fall is coming when the fog rolls in and you lose the sky in the morning.  That’s been happening a lot here lately so I thought I should capture some examples.  Normally I see it on the way to work in the morning as I live at the top of this hill and on the way to work I drive past a large lake.  The fog (I guess) builds up on the lake and then rolls onto the land and I hit it as I drive down the hill.

Anyway, in the past I’ve seen some amazing “fog” pictures, you know the kind of thing, fall trees by a field with a fence and fog coming off the field (I so loads of those) so I thought I’d try to capture some myself. This does of course require me to get up early enough so I have time to stop of the way to work and take a picture (that may be a problem).

But I do have this picture of a sail boat on Elliott Bay with a foggy Seattle skyline.  So I thought I’d start with that.  Ironically this was captured a while ago but I like the image so I thought I’d post it tonight.

The downside of fog I’m finding (in pictures that is) is that my images have no (or very little) contrast or color and look a little boring.  So I had to boost the contrast to make this even slightly interesting.  Now this could be because I suck at photographing fog, but it also could be that there is little foreground interest in this image.  There is the boat (that’s white with a black sail) and then there is just loads of water.  So I shouldn’t be surprised that this is pretty washed out.

Anyway I’ll keep trying and see what else I can get.

Oh, by the way.  My photo walk is this Saturday and I’m leading a group of photographers (28 in total) around Redmond.  So that should be interesting and will hopefully produce a lot of images.  Of course rain is suposed to be here on Saturday but as we live in the Pacific North West I’m hoping people will still turn up – I mean we are used to rain right?

Today, Master Chief was attacked by a huge green spider.  Carter Tried to help, I think it was because Master Chief’s uniform is also green!

Reflection – Seattle

08. October 2012 · Comments Off on Reflection – Seattle · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

I know what you’re thinking, didn’t I post a picture of this cup before?  Well yes I did, I posted a shot of the cup at night with a dark blue background sky.  Well I was in Seattle a couple of weeks ago and had the chance to shoot the cup again, only this time capturing a different composition.  The cup is at the entrance to Post Alley and is over a coffee house (wow what a surprise).  Well the coffee house has a big glass window and if you stand in “just” the right spot, you see the image below.

I really liked this image as not only do you see the cups reflection, but you see the Public Market reflection behind and the blue sky.  I really think this looks cool and despite my last posting of the cup I thought I should post this one tonight.  I think I like this version best.

One of the benefits of defining my own resolution around this picture-a-day thing is that I can post the same subject as many times as I like.  I will try not to post the cup again – honest.

I’d be interested in hearing what people think, which cup image do you like best (the link to the other one is here: http://blog.tonyseeley.com/?p=1080)

Today the Halo guys enjoyed a good game of “how long can you hang onto the stairs?”.

Escala – Seattle

06. October 2012 · Comments Off on Escala – Seattle · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

It was an interesting week this week.  First l sold some images that are going to go on a web site (that’s pretty exciting), and secondly I was asked to photograph this building.

The building is the Escala Luxury Condominium building located on 4th Avenue in downtown seattle.  It’s also the the residence of the leading male character in a very popular novel.  Anyway I was asked to shoot the building so went there this afternoon to check it out.

As buildings go it’s very nice.  Has nice lines and a distinctive curve around one of it’s sides.  But finding a good composition was a challenge.  Firstly the building is very tall and getting it all in was difficult, hence the reason I shot it in portrait orientation.  Then there was the traffic and people, there were loads of them and they were in the way most of the time.  Finally the end of the building with the interesting curve I mentioned above, was ruined by a large number of overhead power-lines and the look of the 1st floor windows that were full of ugly advertisements for buying a condo.

Consequently I had to shoot the building from the front.  So I crossed the road and started capturing some shots.  I tried some with the building straight (with the bottom horizontally level), but they looked boring.  So I tried tilting the camera a little.  There were some trees across the road too and standing behind one added a little foreground interest in the image.  Eventually I ended up with this image.

I really liked the trees, I thought they added a lot to the picture, but unfortunately there was a lamp post directly infront of the building, right in front of the Escala sign.  So when I got home I had to remove the lamp post.  Then I had to get another copy of the Escala sign and add the “E” that was obscured by the lamp post.  (Hope this doesn’t ruin the image for you).

So I ended up with an image I liked.  The problem was the image was a little monochrome – boring.  So I tried it in black and white and got a much more compelling image.  I even printed it out to see what it looked like on paper (it looked really good).  Hope you like it too.

Tonight Carter asked Master Chief to help him with his hair.  He looks so much better now don’t you think?

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