Native American – Seattle

24. September 2012 · Comments Off on Native American – Seattle · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: ,

While in Seattle, walking round pier 57, we came across a group of Native Americans in a pow wow beating drums and singing in a circle.  There was a large group of Native Americans there all having a large BBQ.  The guys in the circle were all dressed in “western” dress (by that I mean normal pants or jeans with shirts and coats etc.), and didn’t look that impressive.  That said they had drawn a crowd.

Walking away from the gathering was one guy in full on costume.  He looked amazing, loads of feathers with a bone chest plate.  His face was painted white and that clashed amazingly with the red feathers and scarves.  He was moving pretty slow (he had a lot of gear on and it didn’t look that comfortable), so we walked up to him and started a conversation.  He told us he was from out of state (I think he said Kansas) and was here for a large pow wow.

We asked if he minded us taking his picture and he went into a long explanation on how as long as we ask at the pow wow and the members say yes it’s OK, but they may be praying and if they say no we shouldn’t shoot them as it could be really disrespectful.  Everything he said was very fair but we wanted to shoot him, not the guys in jeans and t-shirts.  I think he was tired as we asked him again if we could photography him and he kind-a sighed and said OK.  So I grabbed a couple of quick shots, thanked him and he walked off.

He really looked amazing, and his facial expression is fantastic – he looks totally annoyed with me, there may even be a little anger in there!  If he had smiled I wouldn’t have liked this so much.  Believe it or not this was shot outside early afternoon and the white behind him is the sky!.  The reason why it’s so blown out behind him is that his face was in heavy shadow (it wasn’t that sunny and the feathers in his headdress were casting a pretty big shadow).  So I metered on his face only (spot metered) and got the shot below.

I LOVE this picture, the fact that his costume and headdress and face came out so well, and the background is totally blown out, really made the image.

Carter and Master Chief saw the image above and got inspired.  Below is their homage to the Native American.

The Great Wheel – Seattle

23. September 2012 · Comments Off on The Great Wheel – Seattle · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

I thought I’d post another image from my Seattle photo walk yesterday.  Today’s image is the “Seattle Great Wheel” that’s located down on the waterfront on Pier 57.  This Ferris wheel has only been open since the end of June and while I really want to go on it, I thought I’d wait until the lines dropped down.  However when I was there yesterday there were no real line at all!  I was surprised by this as I really thought it would be more popular and busy as the weather was dry!

This is called the Great Wheel because it’s the largest Ferris wheel on the West Coast.  It stands 175 feet and it costs $13 to take a ride.  There is one fully glass VIP gondola and that’s $50 a go – I want to ride in that one.  When you pay to get on, you get to go round three times (which I think it pretty good).  In total there are 42 climate controlled gondola’s and each one can hold 8 people and when on the ride you extend out 40 feet over Elliott Bay.

This does look really cool but it’s much smaller than the London Eye (the London Ferris wheel) that’s 443 feet high and is the tallest wheel in Europe and the most popular tourist attraction in the United Kingdom.  That said I’m glad we have our own wheel and look forward to taking a ride.

Anyway, back to the image, I got the chance to take quite a few pictures and you can pretty much stand right under the wheel to get some cool compositions.  While the sun was trying to peak through, the sky was still pretty cloudy and I thought the image below came out well.  Even though I shot in color (always do), the image was pretty monochromatic, there was a slight “blue” tint in the clouds and this spilled onto the the silver and white wheel.  As this didn’t really aid the image, I chose to make it black and white and I think this made a more powerful image.

Real men play an instrument – at least that’s what the Halo guys think so tonight they started their trumpet practice! Scared the crap out of the dog I can tell you.

Cars – Seattle Art Museum

22. September 2012 · Comments Off on Cars – Seattle Art Museum · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

Today was a really good day, I’m totally exhausted now of course but wait till you hear what I did.

This morning I got up at 8am (it was raining, so I guess summer is now over) and I headed out to pick up Chris Pearson (my photo buddy).  We hit the road and headed to Seattle (still raining – and the 520 bridge was closed for the weekend so we had to go the long way across the I90).

We arrived in Seattle at 9am and went to Pike Place Market to go on a Photography Walking Tour.  The tour lasted around 3 hours and we had a blast.  I’ve lived here 10 years but still learnt some new stuff about the city.  Our guide took us through the Market, past the “Gum Wall” (more on that in another posting), down Post Alley to the Art Museum, then down to the water front, and finally along the water then back up to the market.  It was fabulous and I too over 500 pictures.  (I bracketed a lot so really it was around 200 images).

Chris and I grabbed some lunch in Seattle and then headed home.  I then loaded the car with LOADS of camera gear and went off to shoot my first High School Senior photo shoot (more on that in the future too).  2 Hours later I was all done and headed home totally knackered!

Got in at 6:30pm – What a day!

I should say here that while the weather started off wet, once the walking tour started everything dried up and even the sun came out.  So it was a complete success.  I have loads of cool images to post, but Abi selected tonight’s shot.  We checked out the entrance of the city Art Museum while on the tour and they had these amazing cars hanging from the ceiling with neon (or LED, not sure) lights coming out of the cars.  It was very “arty” and looked fantastic!  I took loads of shots and selected this one as my favorite to post.  I think there were five cars in total, here I’m catching two of them.  The problem was, the lights kept blinking on and off and timing it right to get the picture below took a long time.  In the end I just held the shutter down to get the lights right and the result was great.

Really good day, love using Shutter Tours (here is their website, check them out: http://www.shuttertours.com/), and got some great shots.

The guys are getting stressed out waiting for the new Halo game to come out.  So they decided to try some Yoga to relax.

Seatac Airport – Seattle

04. September 2012 · Comments Off on Seatac Airport – Seattle · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

Today I left town and flew out to Las Vegas to go to the Photoshop World conference.   I’ve wanted to go to this for a couple of years and decided this year was the year.  It’s basically a conference for a load of keen Photoshop users who want to learn more about the product and general photography.

About 3000 people attend and there are numerous training courses throughout the day and an expo where you can go and checkout all the latest photography gear and try stuff you want to buy.

Perhaps the best bit is you get to meet all your photography icons (yes there are amazingly talented people out there) and get some guidance and advice on how to improve. (The will even review your work for 20 minutes and tell you why you suck – but I have Lisa for that).

Plus you are surrounded to 3000 other sad photographers who all share the same passion as you.  So this for me is heaven.  I have a photography buddy at home (Chris Pearson) who came with me and as I write this we are sitting in hour hotel room in the Mandalay Bay.

Anyway, today I needed to post a picture and while at the airport in Seattle I captured the picture below of the food court that looks out over the airport’s runways.

As you would expect there is a Starbucks here and LOTs of people walking about (so some are a little blurry).  I HDR’d this image so I could clearly see outside and inside with everything being properly exposed.  In the end it came out pretty good.

Over the next few days expect some shots from Vegas.

Here Master Chief and Carter are sitting in our hotel room enjoying the Vegas view out the window.

Small Lock – Ballard

30. August 2012 · Comments Off on Small Lock – Ballard · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

The other day we visited Ballard Locks in Seattle and got some great shots of the boats moving from Lake Union through to Elliott Bay.  They have two locks in Ballard, one really really big (it’s like two football pictures) and one that’s pretty small.  The big one takes a LONG time to fill up with boats, then it takes a long time for the water to rise.  So if you go into the big lock you have better have a lot of time.

The smaller lock (in tonight’s picture) is a lot smaller.  For example here you can see it containing pretty much one big boat and a few small sail boats and it’s full.  So with this one you get in and out quicker.  I’m not sure what the rules are, if it costs more or something but most boats you see there go through the larger lock.

In the image below I’m standing on the gates that open and let the boats out so I’m literally at one end and the can see the gates at the other.

This is a cool place to take a camera, the only down side is that there are either too many people there in the way or you end up with all these fences in the way of the pictures.  They fence off every thing here.  So it’s hard to try to take pictures that focus on the subject you want.

Beside the docks they have a fish ladder where you can go and watch the salmon jump up the ladder to get up river to spawn.  I’ll go back there in a few weeks and try to get some shots of the fish as it’s quite amazing to see.

Carter decided to make some paper plane’s tonight, they didn’t fly very far though.

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