Gymnastics and Snow!

09. February 2014 · 1 comment · Categories: General

Very interesting day yesterday. Abi had a Gym Meet in Bellevue so we all went to that (I say all, I obviously mean Abi, Lisa and I – James stayed at home on his computer). Anyway Abi walked on at 4:30 in the afternoon and the competition finished at 8:30pm.

She did amazingly well and came first in Beam, Bar and Vault and second in Floor, and first overall with a total score of 37.1 a whole point above her nearest competitor. I suspect she was slightly disadvantaged on floor as she was the first person to compete, so the judges base other scores off her! Bottom line it’s always really better to go somewhere in the middle of the pack – that said she was amazing. (Very proud Dad)

What made the day especially interesting was the weather. I should call out that when I left home to go to the meet (around 4pm) it was dry outside. The day had been cold but clear, even with some lovely blue skies. Anyway while at the meet it started to snow.

When we left the gym the snow was sticking and the roads were just terrible. People where sliding all over the place, hitting curbs and cars and it was pretty dangerous.

Lisa and I were in different cars and I got out of their first and headed home. I got on the 520 freeway and the traffic came to a halt around 2 miles from the end of the road. We just weren’t moving at all so in frustration I followed some other cars who exited the freeway by traveling the wrong way off the 520 by driving up the on ramp.

I then cut through back streets (witnessing multiple accidents) and got to the bottom of Novelty hill (we live up a big hill separating Redmond from Duvall.)

Needless to say I was keeping Lisa up to date on my progress over the phone, telling her the state of the roads, so she got to the bottom of Novelty around the same time as me. We tried to get up the hill but it just wasn’t happening, cars that were further up the hill from us had given up, turned round and came down. People told us the road was un-passable and there were too many abandoned cars from failed attempts.

Eventually (after not going anywhere for a while) we gave up too and turned round and tried another hill to get home. This also proved to be impossible and once again we had to turn around and head back to Redmond.

By now it was 10pm and we were hungry and tired. Lisa called the Redmond Marriott and got us a room and we headed there for the night. When she called they were at 40% capacity, when we got there they were nearly full. I called James and told him what was going on and he was fine, said he’d see us in the morning.

At 9am I got Lisa and Abi up, we grabbed some breakfast and headed home (again). We made it up Novelty Hill this time but had to pass around 60 abandoned cars that had been left on the hill. In some places the road was down to a single lane there were just so many cars!

Eventually I made it home and pulled up outside our house that was covered in snow and looked great, so I grabbed a picture of that!

I walked in the house and found James still on his computer in the same clothes.  Apparently with neither Lisa or I there he decided to stay up all night and play games – oh to be 16 again 🙁

So today I’m posting two pictures. Abi on the 1st position podium and our house in the snow.

Like I said, an interesting day. 🙂

Those that check out my pictures know that I like HDR images.  I know that this isn’t to everyone’s taste but I just love the way they look.  Anyway much to my frustration Lisa doesn’t like HDR photography at all and tells me the images look fake.

I definitely agree that HDR doesn’t work in all situations and you can easily overdo the processing (something I’m guilty of too sometimes).  When I got home I shot the house and bracketed 6 exposures – all one stop apart.

I then threw them all into Photomatix to see what it would produce.  The result was just horrible.  Sure the image had better dynamic range but just looked terrible.

When processing HDR the tone mapping tool (I like Photomatix) is just the beginning, you then need to stack the original images with the tone mapped version in layers in photoshop.  Then the work begins.  You manually blend layers together to produce the desired end result.

Then you denoise the image, add any filter effects (Topaz, NIK or OnOne provide great tools for this) and finally sharpen.

The image above took a while as snow and HDR don’t like each other 🙂  This image was a combination of the six original pictures, the Photomatix tone mapped image, an HDR Topaz Adjust image and several NIK color effects filters.

I tried to keep the end result as subtle as possible – hopefully Lisa will like this one.

This picture however, I know she will like 🙂  Abi once again in fist place – like I said above, very proud Dad.

Lightbulb

01. February 2014 · Write a comment · Categories: Photography

This week I’ve not been very well, horrid cold with cough and incessant sniffing – you know the sort of thing – I even had time off work (quite unusual for me).  But I still wanted to post a picture this weekend but didn’t have anything recent.

Yesterday at work the ten thousand Microsoft Operating Systems Group (OSG) team members took to the soccer field to spell out a huge 12th man tribute for the Seattle Seahawks.  I was actually asked to stand on the roof of one of the buildings overlooking the field to take some pictures, but as I was off sick I couldn’t be there.  That was going to be my planned picture!

So here I was Saturday morning with nothing.  Also as it was raining outside and I still had the cold, I wasn’t going out, so I needed to shoot something indoors.

Being a little anally retentive I actually have a list of photo ideas that are categorized (yes I know this is nuts) into photography genre’s and locations.  So I hit my list and found and idea that I’ve wanted to do for a while – shoot a lightbulb with it’s filament lit up.

The goal is to have a lightbulb floating in the air with no visual support but with the filament hot.  I mean how hard can that be?  Well it appears the answer is “not very hard at all”.

To set up I placed a pop-up black backdrop against a wall, and attached a lamp holder to a light stand.  I plugged the lamp holder into the ceiling light that has a dimmer switch, that way I could adjust the power on the bulb so it wasn’t too hot.

Then I took a load of pictures.  I played with the dimmer and the exposure setting to get the best result – this took around 10 shots.  The image looked great but it was a little boring.  So I grabbed a single speed light and put a blue filter on it.  The speed light was shot at the backdrop with a little kiss of light on the bulb and the result was much better.

Now I had the bulb element.  Next I unplugged the bulb and suspended it unlit from the light stand and took some more pictures.  This got me the bulbs screw-in connector.

Finally it was time to hit Photoshop.  I selected the best filament picture and the best screw connector picture and blended them together.   The finished result is the image below.

This sounds like a lot of work but the whole exercise took less than an hour – from set up to pack away – this included the time needed to create the finished image in Photoshop.

So this is my picture for this week.

Seattle at Night

26. January 2014 · Write a comment · Categories: Photography · Tags: ,

This weekend Lisa and Abi flew down to San Diego to attend a gymnastics meet.  This left James and I to our own devices, which pretty much meant we stayed in bed each day until noon, watched loads of TV and ate out at our favorite restaurants (really, what did you expect).

But by Sunday afternoon even I was getting bored.  So I told James we were going out to take some pictures and grab some dinner.  It had been a fantastic weekend weather wise so I thought a sunset picture over Seattle might be nice.  James I suspect, thought this was a bad idea (he didn’t say anything of course) but when I said we could eat wherever he wanted he perked up a bit.  I think he wanted to go to the Metropolitan Grill, which for those who don’t know is an amazing steak house Seattle.

So off we went to Seattle, I even had a plan.  At first I thought we’d try Discovery Park and take some shots there, but there is a hell of a walk from the parking lot down to the beach and we just didn’t fancy that.  But on the way there we passed this large marina with a load of big fishing boats.  They looked amazing as we drove past so we turned round and went back.

I should also say that on the way to Seattle we spoke to Lisa and Abi on the phone and Lisa said we were NOT to go to the Met for dinner.  Abi and Lisa love it there too and they said it would be unfair. (This from the two jet setters where were having a great weekend away).  But James and I didn’t want to upset them so chose another location.  So we made a reservation at Daniels Broiler at 6:15 (for those who don’t know, Daniels is the other excellent steak house in Seattle – but it wasn’t the Met so we were good :-).

As a result we had around an hour to get some pictures before dinner and the marina looked perfect.

So we pulled over and started shooting.  While it was a clear night and was lovely and sunny earlier in the day it was really cold now that the sun was going down.  So James and I started working fast.  Also the red skies we get here at night don’t last very long at all (literally minutes), so we were taking pictures as fast as we could.

The first collection of shots were of the boat below.  It looked a lot older than some of the others and the sky above was really red.  I especially liked the reflection in the water.  This one was de-noised and I applied a NIK soft filter.

Next we found Silver Isle at the dock so I took a few shots.  In truth this one didn’t come out as nice so it required more processing.

We then moved further along the dock and like that, the sun was gone, along with the red sky.  But the lights all came on and started adding a warm glow to some of the boats.  Then I found this great view of a load of big fishing boats and got a great shot.  This really wasn’t processed at all.

At this point we needed to head to the restaurant.  Daniels Broiler is actually on Lake Union and when we got there we were a little early so I grabbed this picture below just outside.  This image too wasn’t really modified – just applied a vignette.

One Cent

18. January 2014 · Write a comment · Categories: Photography · Tags:

Macro photography is just a posh name for extreme close up photography and is skill in it’s own right.  A skill I should state I don’t have 🙂

To get “really close” images you need special gear, either a macro lens, or some extension tubes or a lens diopter filter.

The best solution is a dedicated lens designed to get really close and make the subject look bigger in the image, but these lenses are expensive.  Alternatively you can go for extension tubes that you insert between the lens and the camera body – years ago you could by “bellows” that did the same job that allowed you to move the lens nearer or further away from the camera.  But all extension systems really do is allow you to focus very close to the lens – which of course makes the subject look larger, they also reduce the amount of light entering the camera and force you to have much longer exposure times – so the subject needs to stay still longer.

Your last option is the lens diopter.  This is basically a filter that you can screw on the end of the lens that acts like a magnifying glass.  These are cheap, don’t reduce light, but do of course add additional glass between the subject and the sensor.  Also if you purchase a really cheap diopter, the images aren’t really that great.

Now I’ve wanted to play with macro photography for a while, and there really aren’t any great dedicated macro lenses for my camera.  So I recently purchased some extension tubes and a couple of diopters.  What I really want to shoot are some insects – creepy I know but they can look super cool close up big in the frame.  But January isn’t a great time of year to find insect subjects so I thought I’d capture something else.

I grabbed the camera and a couple of lenses and put one of the diopters on the end of the lens then I went looking for something to shoot.  First up I asked Abi if I could shoot her.  She stood in front of the window and I got really close and took some pictures of her eye!  In the picture you could see the reflection of the window and her eye in great detail.  In the end though I didn’t pick this one to post as she kept moving and many of the images were a little out of focus.

Next I found an old cent and took some shots of that – I actually robbed Abi’s purse for this – don’t tell her.  I put the coin on the kitchen counter and got in close for some pictures.  I didn’t add any extra lighting, just focused on the words “One Cent” and snapped away.  These came out really well and I selected one of the images to post.

This was a lot of fun, but definitely showed me how hard it is to grab those excellent macro shots.  But I like a challenge and will keep trying and we’ll see what I can capture in spring when the garden comes alive!

25th Wedding Anniversary

07. January 2014 · Write a comment · Categories: Photography

Those of you who know me, know I can be a bit of an idiot sometimes.  I’m usually inappropriate with my humor, frequently annoying and very very occasionally funny!  Funny that is to you, who heard my sad witticism for the first time.

So spare a thought for my wonderful wife Lisa.  She not only has heard my joke before (trust me she has heard them all before – I don’t have that much material), but she has heard it MANY times and put up with me for over twenty five years.

Now you’re thinking about it, you’re probably starting to really appreciate how amazing Lisa is!

Anyway, on December 10th last month we celebrated our twenty fifth wedding anniversary, which I think for any couple these days is pretty damn good.  Leading up to the day I asked Lisa what she wanted and she of course responded with the normal, “Nothing thanks I’m fine”.  But I kept pushing, pointing out repetitively that she really deserved something nice this year for sticking the course.

Eventually I convinced her to go out shopping with me the weekend before our anniversary to get something nice.  We ended up in Nordstrom’s and found ourselves in the jewelry department.  I really don’t think Lisa wanted anything initially but once she starts to shop, well it’s impressive.  In the end Lisa decided she didn’t want one ring, she wanted three!  I immediately said no problem – trust me the torture she’s been through living with me she deserves a hundred.

So we brought the rings which of course weren’t the right size, and rather than have them adjusted Lisa decided to get new ones made that fit her perfectly.  In my naivety I was a bit disappointed as I wanted her to have her rings on our anniversary but she explained that this was fine and normal and didn’t mind waiting the few weeks for the new rings to arrive.

This morning she got the call telling her the rings were in and she ran off to Bellevue to pick them up.

Now this is a little naff (if you don’t know what naff means you can look it up here) but I thought I’d shoot the rings for a blog posting and share them with family and friends.

Trying to be “creative” I pinched an old wedding photographer trick and shot the rings on a dictionary by the word “Love” with a spotlight.  This gives a nice heart shadow (this is definitely naff).  Anyway Lisa has never seen this before and loved it so it made the blog.

Joking aside I’m a very lucky man to have Lisa and love her dearly and look forward to the next twenty five years.

Here’s the pic – hope you like it as much as Lisa.

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