Lodge Bridge – Snoqualmie

28. December 2012 · Comments Off on Lodge Bridge – Snoqualmie · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

If you read last night’s posting you will have seen that I visited Snoqualmie and the Salish Lodge to get a picture.  Well right next to the hotel is this walking bridge that crosses the main road to the overflow car park.  I saw last night that the bridge was lit up and thought it might make a nice picture.  So I headed up the the bridges entrance (on the hotel’s side) and set up the camera.  It was a little frustrating as every time the bridge was empty and I got ready to take a shot, someone else would walk on the bridge from the other side of the road.  One couple decided to stop in the middle of the bridge and watch the traffic go past underneath for a few minutes.  Of course when they finally walked past me they said the usual “Oh, were you waiting to take a picture?” when they clearly knew I was.  People always do that!

The image came out really well.  It had been raining earlier (and was just starting again when I shot this) and the bridge was wet.  So all the lights along the bridge lit it up really nicely.  I had to take two pictures to get this one end result.  When I exposed correctly for the bridge, the light on the far left (the white one) was so bright it blew out the left hand side of the image.  So I took two shots.  One that gave me a great bridge, trees and sky, and one that gave me a “manageable” not-too-bright street lamp.  Then I blended them together in Photoshop so the end result reflected what I actually saw.  Looks pretty good too.

3 Days to go…

Tonight there was another terrible accident!  Master Chief clone was found in the waste disposal – dead!  His leg was on the side and everyone started to wonder if this was an accident or if something else was going on.

Bridge – Monroe

22. December 2012 · Comments Off on Bridge – Monroe · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

There’s this road that takes you from Carnation to Monroe that winds you around a very rural area of farms and big fields.  The road actually follows the Snoqualmie river and at some point the Snoqualmie river goes off and is replaced by the Skykomish river (don’t just love the names or our rivers?).  Anyway the Skykomish then takes you all the way to Monroe.

When you approach Monroe you have to go over this large bridge (and across the Skykomish river).  The bridge in itself isn’t that impressive I guess but once you cross it you can turn off the road and go down to the river under the bridge.  This affords you a great picture of the river and bridge above you.

I actually got another image from this location at the beginning of the year.  If you look back to my first week you can see a fisherman in a small boat, that was taken here looking up river, so I guess it’s only fair that I should another shot in my last week from the same location.

I realized today just how many HoHo ornaments we have around the house!  Carter and Master Chief found another one to pose next to for today’s picture.

Arboretum Bridge – Seattle

08. December 2012 · Comments Off on Arboretum Bridge – Seattle · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , , ,

You aren’t going to believe this but today I actually went out with the camera and took some pictures.  It was pretty cold out but dry so I hit the road and headed for Seattle.  I had this great plan to go to the Seattle Center (home of the Space Needle) and take some nice pics as they now have loads of Christmas lights up.  But when I got there I spent 45 minutes driving round the area trying to find somewhere to park!  It was impossible and I eventually gave up and headed home.  Luckily though I did go to some other locations so I got a good weeks worth of new pictures.

Tonight’s image was taken in the Seattle Washington Arboretum Park.  This is a really pretty park right by Lake Washington and is full of walking paths that at this time of year are full of runners (it’s too cold I guess to go for a walk).  I found this park by mistake one day.  I was driving down Lake Washington Boulevard looking for somewhere to photograph and drove under this great bridge.  It was made of stone and had these lights on top.  I had Abi with me at the time and told her I’d go back one day and shoot the bridge.

Well today I found the bridge and captured this shot.  Now, those of you who read this blog know I like Photoshop but this image is pretty much right out of the camera.  I did fix one thing though.  One of the lights wasn’t on so I copied a light from somewhere else and fixed the broken one.  Question is, can you tell which one?  Bet you can’t.

But other than that, I didn’t change a thing and I think it came out really well.  It was getting dark when I got there so I had to take this with a long exposure and I needed to take a few shots as runners kept coming over the bridge.  But after five minutes I had the shot and headed home.  More new stuff tomorrow.

I don’t know about you but you cant beat tined Unicorn Meat – yummy.  Tonight the guys enjoyed a delicious dinner.

Bridge – Duvall

22. November 2012 · Comments Off on Bridge – Duvall · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

I live in Redmond, I actually live on the edge of Redmond at the top of a huge hill.  If you drive over the hill and go down the other side (away from Redmond) the road takes you to a valley between Redmond and Duvall.  To get to Duvall you have to cross the Snoqualmie River and there’s a road and bridge that get’s you there.

Today’s picture is of the road you take to Duvall that crosses the river.  I was driving around looking for something to shoot and decided to pull over and take a picture of the valley with the bridge.  I liked the look of the bridge and thought it might make an interesting landscape shot.  However, what I like most about this bridge is what happens in Winter.

Here in the Pacific North West we are well know for our rainfall.  This is probably a little unfair as there are loads of cities in the US that get more rain than us, New York is a great example.  However when we talk about rainfall we normally refer to inches of water.  While New York does get more than us, we have drizzly rain that falls more months of the year – hence the bad reputation.  What does happen here though is that each winter a lot of our rivers breach and water covers a lot of farm land (and unfortunately some peoples homes).

The Snoqualmie River breaches its banks in this valley every year.  So when they built the bridge they thought “lets raise the bridge higher so people can still cross”.  Great idea you say.  Well yes it is except they didn’t raise the road one either side.  So every year the valley floods and there’s this island in the middle with a bridge on it.  How funny is that!  Of course when this happens all the people in Duvall say they can’t come to work!  It’s not possible to drive an extra 10 miles to work I guess.

Tonight the guys decided to have a game of Monopoly.  But Master Chief got suck in jail and was there for most of the game.

Foot Bridge – Bellevue

25. October 2012 · Comments Off on Foot Bridge – Bellevue · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

Tonight I had the opportunity to join my new team for dinner in Bellevue.  We had a reservation in Daniels Broiler (which by the way is a lovely restaurant) at 6:30, but I thought it might be nice to get into the city a little early and grab some pictures.

The center of Bellevue has some fantastic restaurants and a really great shopping mall.  Most of the shops and restaurants are positioned around the same part of town, an intersection between Bellevue Way and NE 8th St.  On one corner of the intersection is the Hyatt hotel and Daniels Broiler, on another corner (across the road) is a large shopping and office area called Lincoln Square and joining the two together is this funky walking bridge across the road.

My plan was to walk onto the bridge and shoot some of the cars driving past on the roads below but as I approached the bridge I thought it might make a good image in it’s own right.  Luckily my timing was really good and got a couple of shots of the bridge with nobody on it.  As the bridge has a lot of chrome, glass and lights it looked really cool.

Of course once I took this the world decided to come across the bridge, so I was lucky to get this shot.  Then I moved to the center of the bridge and started shooting traffic.  I got some nice shots but really liked the bridge image best so that’s what I’m posting tonight.

The boys were going out this evening for a night on the town.  I caught them getting ready before heading out.

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