Bell Square Mall – Bellevue

20. December 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

Here we are with 5 days to go to Christmas and tonight I decided to do a nutty thing, I drove to Bellevue after work to do a little Christmas shopping.  I needed to pop into Bell Square Mall to get something for Lisa (can’t say what, as she reads this) and it was totally manic.  The traffic was really bad and parking (as you would imagine) was also terrible, but I got in pretty quickly by taking some back streets.  It was totally chaos in the Mall – far too many people.  I managed to get one thing I wanted but the other was sold out so I’m going out again tomorrow (very sad about that).

It was actually a nice evening tonight, a little cold but we had a clear sky and it was dry, so I thought I should grab a picture for the day.  In Bellevue at 7pm every night they do this sort of street show called “Snow Flake Lane” where all these actors come out in costume – loads of them are dressed as toy drummer soliders – and they dance around and play instruments entertaining the shoppers.  I totally hate this, it’s a complete nightmare and not entertaining at all!  So I needed to grab a picture quickly and get out of Dodge.

There are loads of really pretty street lights around the city center, Bellevue do a good job of adding loads of Holiday lights, but at street level it’s pretty hard to compose an image that really shows the lights at their best.  So I decided to get some height and shoot down.  Tonight’s image captures the traffic and lights in the city.  I love the blue lights all over the buildings and the holiday lights on the street lamps look cool too.  But my favorite part is the blurred motion of the vehicles as they enter the city.

Tonight the guys played hide and seek.  Excellent hiding I thought.

Patio – Seattle

19. December 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: ,

While in Seattle Center I ran into Center House to take cover from the rain.  Add to that I wanted to grab a coffee and I knew that apart from a large food hall the house also had a Starbucks.  There was nobody around outside so I figured I could grab a coffee, but once inside I found the rest of Seattle!  They were in a line waiting to get Starbucks.  The place was packed with people.  There are loads of fast food places in Center House with tables everywhere so you can eat, but there were no free seats available.  So no coffee and food for me.

So feeling all depressed I left Center House by the back door and walked onto the patio.  The rain was still coming down hard and the patio was understandably empty.  The rain was bouncing off the tables and there was a nice light canopy above and I thought it might make a nice picture.

So there I am with my trusty tripod (tripod number 2) setting up the camera just outside, pointing the lens at the scene below.  Now you would think (if you were walking past) that there’s a dude taking a picture.  But apparently I was clearly camouflaged as people chose this moment to walk in front of me, stand directly in line with the shot and stop and talk.  Then they went and sat down on the wet benches!  What’s that about?  Bloody rude I call it.  Anyway I gave the people my best “real nasty” stare (works great in fast food restaurants when you want someone to vacate their seat), and they eventually left.

Then I took this picture, and I quite like it.

The guys found some chocolates this evening and raided the boxes.  Pretty naughty really!

Christmas Space Needle – Seattle

18. December 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

You can’t really go to the Seattle Center with a camera and not take a picture of the Space Needle, that would be just silly! – there’s probably a law somewhere that prohibits that!  So I figured I should take a picture while there on Saturday.  The rain was coming down pretty hard and I was soaked.  But being the “professional” I am, I still got out the tripod and set it up in front of the needle.

At this time of year it’s all lit up and they even have a Christmas Tree in the fountain at the front.  Being Seattle it’s not a traditional tree obviously, it’s made up of a collection of balls that are covered in lights.  But it still looks pretty cool.

When I took this picture it was pretty dark.  But as I put the camera on a tripod and took the picture with a long exposure, the sky looked quite light and you can easily see the blue color.  Having said that of course the needle is nicely lit and the water on the road gives some really nice light reflections.  I used a really wide lens on this picture, it was the only way I could get the needle in the picture.  But lenses this wide introduce some distortion.  You can remove this but you lose some of the picture.  In this image the tree in the fountain appears to be leaning over to the left, but really it was standing straight up but as I wanted to keep all the details in the image I decided not to correct it.

Today Master Chief showed Carter his new Santa Hat – really nice!

KeyArena – Seattle

17. December 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

Today I was pretty angry.  I’m sitting at my desk at work and I looked out my window and saw a beautiful afternoon.  Yes it was cold, but dry with a blue sky!  If you saw the state I was in yesterday after my photo trip out, you’d understand my frustration.  I was so wet it was ridiculous!  Yet one day later when I’m stuck at work, it’s a lovely day outside – it’s just not fair.  It’s kind’a hard to really show you how wet it was as I can’t really take nice pictures of rain, so you are just going to trust me that it was miserable.

Anyway, while out I walked around Seattle Center and found myself by KeyArena.  This is a large general purpose arena in Seattle and was the original home of the 1962 world fair (when the space needle was first opened).  It used to be the home of the Seattle SuperSonics basketball team but we sold them to Oklahoma City back in 2008.  Since then the arena is the home of concerts, visiting circuses, ice shows and professional wrestling.  It seats just over seventeen thousand people and this year it was the location for the Microsoft company meeting.

Outside KeyArena is this huge fountain.  In summer it’s literally full of kids running and playing in the water, but yesterday there was nobody there.  But surprisingly the fountain was on. So I walked out to the fountain (in the pouring rain), set up the tripod and grabbed the shot below.  People were running past me in the rain giving me funny looks.  One guy asked me if I got a nice picture but I was pretty much left alone.

I decided last night that I don’t care how bad my pictures are for the rest of the year, I’m NOT going out in the rain again.  Just saying…

Last night Lisa made burgers for dinner and after doing the dished James left the griddle and press out.  When I got home I found this sight!  Not sure why this happened but Master Chief and Carter were trying to “Press” Red.

Baubles – Seattle

16. December 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: ,

Once again the weather was terrible today, but I needed to go out and figured it will probably stop by the time I get to Seattle if I drove there!  I also asked myself how wet could I get?  Well I was totally wrong on the rain stopping, and I found out that you can get VERY wet, walking around in heavy rain with a camera (duh)!

I drove to Seattle Center (by the Space Needle) as I’d heard they had a lot of holiday lights up there and I thought it might make a nice picture.  As my goal was to take pictures of the holiday lights, I needed to get there late in the day, so I left home at 2:30 in the afternoon and drove into the city.  This week parking was no problem, but if you saw the rain coming down you’d realize why.  Nobody was going to go to the Space Needle in this weather, apart from me that is.  I parked across the road from the Needle in the Komo4 TV car park and walked over (in the rain) to see what I could get.

One of the benefits of rain is that you can get some really nice reflection pictures in puddles, but you need the rain to stop!  If not, you just get blurry water which doesn’t look any good.  So that was out!  But despite all my complaining, I did get some nice pictures, and for a change, Lisa picked the first one I’m posting.

Outside the Space Needle is this circular drive with a small fountain in the middle.  By the Needle is a pickup spot where you can drive up and drop off or pick people up.  It’s also where you leave your car if you are valet parking.  Well this area is covered.  No walls but a roof that covers around 100 feet of sidewalk.  Hanging from the roof were these lit up baubles (the only thing I can think of calling them).  They were really pretty and there were loads of them.

This is my first picture.  I could stand under cover and shoot over the heads of people waiting and still get a great shot.  It was pretty windy though and the balls were swinging a little in the wind.  So I had to bump up my ISO so I could get a fast shutter speed to “freeze” the motion.  When I got home I found the images had a little noise but removed that pretty easily in Photoshop.  Other than that, this is exactly what I saw.  Hope you like this one, we do at home.

You can’t get the the end of December without trying to make a ginger bread house!  While this one isn’t made out of ginger bread it’s pretty close.

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