Tree Stump – Bainbridge Island

24. November 2012 · Comments Off on Tree Stump – Bainbridge Island · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , , ,

It’s kind-a funny the things you chose to shoot and post when you do this kind of “picture-a-day” nonsense and tonight’s posting is a great example of what I mean.  30 years ago when I was but a “slip of a lad” (well I was actually 19 then but I was definitely young) I really didn’t notice much around me, that is of course unless there was a sign saying “Bar Open” or there was a very pretty girl in my field of view.  In fact put a pretty girl in an open bar and World War III could have taken place behind me and I wouldn’t have noticed.  I’m sure you get the idea.  (Oh and before any of my American friends get all moral on me, the legal drinking age in the UK is 18, so finding open bars and pretty girls was a common pastime for me and my friends.  (The fact that I worked in a bar when I was 17 is neither here or there – but I digress.)

The mere thought of me stopping to stare at a sunset, or field of flowers was just out of the question, in fact I can feel 19 year old Tony inside cringing as I type this.  But age does many things to a man, we become more open to our surroundings, have an higher appreciation of natural beauty and are willing to look a complete dicks arse (friend joke) staring at something beautiful a 19 year old would point and laugh at.  Don’t get me wrong, I still like staring at a pretty girl (as Lisa will attest) but 30 years ago did I every think I’d post to an online web site a picture of a fallen tree stump?  Clearly the answer is no, I mean the web didn’t exist 30 years ago, but I think you get my point.

I should point out that I had a couple of beer’s tonight so I’m rambling a little here but what the heck, only 38 days to go, I should enjoy this opportunity.

Anyhow, back to the picture.  I was walking along a beach on Bainbridge Island and I came across a fallen tree.  So what I hear you ask.  Well the tree was rather uninteresting, but the roots at it’s base had turned almost silver and gold.  I looked pretty amazing and I found myself staring at the said tree trunk for far too long (pretty sad eh?)  Anyway I thought I’d take a picture as I really liked the way it looked and figured it might make a nice image.

So not your everyday traditional picture, not sure if this should be classified as a landscape, or macro image, maybe it’s just “arty” either way I like the way it came out and am posting it tonight.  (Hopefully this is not the beer talking).

Tonight the guys decided to play a game of golf – thank you Valerie for loaning the set.

Fort Ward State Park – Bainbridge Island

03. August 2012 · Comments Off on Fort Ward State Park – Bainbridge Island · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

I’ve posted a few pictures from Fort Ward State Park over the last couple of days but I haven’t really shown you what the beach looks like.  This image was taken by the wooden poles in the water picture that I posted a few days ago.  You can see the stones on the beach, not a grain of sand to see anywhere.

The things that caught my eye when I composed this image were the trees falling over towards the water, the large bolder in the water and the state of the clouds.  The wind was blowing while we were there so these clouds didn’t stick around and as you have already seen on the way home the sun came out and the clouds parted to give us blue sky.  But here it looks almost gray.

Where the trees were falling there were some uprooted trunks and I got one call picture of the very bottom of a tree, looking at it’s roots.  It’s a little odd as you can’t really tell what it is but I may post that in the future.

In the far distance you can just make out the mainland.  You can’t see Seattle from here as it’s kind of round the corner to the left, but you can see Bainbridge is not that far away from Seattle.

Well the weekend if finally here and I’ll try to get out tomorrow to shoot something new.

After watching Gabby Douglas last night the guys were inspired.  Here’s Carter practicing his beam routine.

Stones – Bainbridge Island

30. July 2012 · Comments Off on Stones – Bainbridge Island · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

Not much to post tonight as everyone has a “stones” on the beach picture, but I thought so what!  I want one too.  So while walking along the beach on Bainbridge Island, I stopped and shot directly down and got this image.  You can hopefully see that some of these stones are pretty big so can understand why walking along this beach with a huge camera bag and tripod could be a little “dangerous”.  But everything’s good, I got all my camera gear insured a few weeks ago so it’s safe no matter what happens.

This is not a particularly cleaver image, there’s no artificial light – just natural sunlight – it’s just a picture of stones.  Well actually it’s three pictures of stones HDR’d together to add a little “grunge” or detail to the image.  They had some areas where all the stones were the same size (ish) but I liked this one better with everything different, all slightly different colors.

There’s probably some sea life hiding in here somewhere but I just like the image.  There I now have my stone picture.

Master Chief and Carter were missing Maui today, so they decided to try and recreate it here in Redmond.

Birds – Bainbridge Island

29. July 2012 · Comments Off on Birds – Bainbridge Island · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

While on Bainbridge Island Chris and I headed over to Fort Ward State Park to see if we could get any cool pictures.  When you get there you find this long very stoney beach that’s pretty much covered with old tree trunks and drift wood.  There’s a boat ramp that leads you down to the beach so Chris and I grabbed our gear and walked down the ramp.

Along the beach we saw this wooden frame with loads of birds on the top, we thought it might make a nice picture and it didn’t seem that far away, so off we went.  There wasn’t a path to follow you just had to walk over all the stones and carrying all my camera gear I nearly went over a couple of times.  Also while at first it didn’t seem that far, it took us ages to get there (these things always seem closer than they are).

When we arrived at the wooden poles we set up the tripods and took some pictures.  I thought it might look cool if all the birds took off so I picked up a stone and threw it towards the structure to try and startle the birds into flight.  I was totally pathetic!  My stone didn’t even make it half way and the birds didn’t move at all.  I’m clearly getting very old, either that or I have totally unrealistic expectations over my athletic ability (probably both).

While I was attempting this I didn’t notice that the tide had started to come in and was already over the base of my tripod.  So we moved back a few feet, took some more pictures and headed back.  The water was really coming in fast and we only just made it back to the boat ramp before the beach was cut off.  I’m so pleased we made it, but I guess it would have been a more interesting story here if we had got wet, luckily though that didn’t happen.

I actually think the picture below came out OK, the water was pretty still but you still get the wobbly pole reflections in the water.  It was so peaceful there, really quite beautiful.  I left the beach quite jealous of all the homes with a beach view.

Lisa made some Potato Salad today and when she wasn’t looking Carter and Master Chief pinched some!