I90 Lake Washington Bridge – Seattle

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

Abi and I were driving along Lake Washington Boulevard right by the lake looking for something to shoot.  We were in a pretty expensive area on the western shore driving through Coleman Park when I found the perfect subject.  We drove under the I90 Lake Washington Bridge and I thought it would make a great picture.

So we parked up right outside a waterfront house that was two houses away from these bridges.  I mention this as the house was for sale and while it was really beautiful, it was pretty much under these bridges.  And the cost… 2.2 million dollars.  So you have to ask yourself, how much does one cost that’s not next to huge bridges like these?

Anyway, Abi and I grabbed the tripod and ran past the houses and down a small embankment to the waters edge.  Set up the tripod and captured the image below.  Looking through the view finder I knew this was going to be a nice image, but even I was blown away when I got home and processed the shot.

Some of my images are nice I think, but this one made me gasp!  Lisa and the kids felt the same so I’m betting everyone else hates it – haha you never can win.  As the sun was going down, you can see the red glow of the sunset on the other side of the lake, the underside of the bridges were really dark.  So this is actually a seven image HDR picture.

The land you can see at the end of the bridge is actually Mercer Island in the middle of Lake Washington.  Over to the left on the other side of the lake you can make out some sky scrapers.  This is the city of Bellevue.  The colors in this image came out really well, with the sun hitting Mercer and the blue sky, and the light on the water, this could be one of my favorite pictures of the year.

Master Chief wanted to have a go at escapeology, but found he sucked at that and Carter had to help him get out.

Pier – Seattle

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

A friend at home (Kathryn Skinner) asked me if I had any nice black and white images, so we looked though my image collection and both decided I didn’t.  As a result I thought I’d try to capture a picture that would make a good black and white.  So this evening Abi and I went out to see what we could get.

We found ourselves over on the west side of Lake Washington down by the I90 bridge and stopped by a small park with a pier.  The sun was starting to set so the pier was no longer directly lit and I thought the dark wood of the pier might look good against the sky.  Ideally I would have been there a little later so I could have taken the picture with a nice long exposure to smooth the water but I had Abi and couldn’t really hang around.

At the end of the pier were three fishermen and under the pier were loads of kids swimming.  Every now and then they would climb up onto the pier and jump off.  I spent some time in Photoshop removing all the people until the image looked as it does below.

I actually had a couple of lenses with me, one of them was my wide angle “landscape” lens, but unfortunately it started capturing images that were way over exposed.  So that’s going back to Nikon tomorrow.  As a result I took the image below with normal zoom, but I think it came out really well.  So I’ll show this to Kathryn and see what she thinks.

Nothing like a nice game of pool, but as there are three colors on the table I have NO IDEA what Carter and Master Chief are playing.

Bacon – Green Park

11. August 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: ,

My nephew Regan Smith is visiting us from the UK for a couple of weeks and he’s an aspiring chef.  He cooks for us most evenings and loves to visit food utensil shops (like “Bed Bath & Beyond”) to check out the American equipment.

On TV Regan likes to watch the Food Network and one of his favorite shows is “Man vs Food” with Adam Richman.  When Regan got here there were a number of places he wanted to visit and one was a restaurant featured on Man vs Food called “Red Mill Burgers”.  Now those of you who follow or have seen Adam in the show know that he basically takes on food challenges, but in one particular show he was visiting Seattle and just went to Red Mill Burgers as the burgers there were SO good.

So Regan (who after all wants to open his own burger joint) decided he wanted to check out the restaurant.  So today for dinner we gave it a try.

The restaurant is in Green Park North Seattle but the I90 bridge was closed.  As a result we decided to go round Lake Washington via Lynnwood, and got there around two in the afternoon.  The place is tiny, very little seating and next-door to a Starbucks, literally in the middle of nowhere.

Having said that, the restaurant was packed, there was a huge line of people coming out of the store and fortunately most were getting take-out.  We got in line and I found a table and we had bacon burgers, fries, shakes and onion rings. (The onion rings are to die for, and the burgers are very good too – although rather big).

We had a great meal and all ate too much and now I’m home writing this I think I’m stuck in my chair for the evening!

So why am I telling you all this?  Well on the way out of the restaurant I took a quick peek over the counter (Regan told me the kitchen staff were “Really Hot” – his words) and I saw this unbelievable pile of bacon!  (Clearly I’m getting old as I didn’t notice the girls).

In my “bacon” frenzied excitement I asked the girl behind the counter if I could take a picture and she said sure, and invited me into the kitchen.

I appreciate that this is “unusual”, but look at it!  It’s beautiful!  If you like bacon you will definitely know what I mean.

So go to Red Mill Burgers in Green Park and check out the burgers, onion rings and pile of bacon – you won’t be disappointed.

Carter told me today that he wanted to work on his target practice, I thought he meant with a gun, but clearly not!

Ferris Wheel – Seattle

09. August 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

A couple of months ago I posted a picture of the new Seattle ferris wheel (called the “Great Wheel”) at sunset.  To capture that image I stood at the end of a pier, but today’s picture was taken from a ferry in Elliott Bay.  We were approaching the pier and city and I had a few seconds to capture the wheel with the city and Space Needle behind it.

When I took this everything was moving.  I was moving on the ferry as it approached the dock and the wheel was going round.  Luckily it was lovely and sunny so I had loads of light and could shoot the image at a really fast shutter speed, this nicely froze all motion and gave me the picture below.

I’m really pleased I got the Space Needle in the image too, here it looks like it’s close to the tall buildings but it’s pretty far away from downtown.  I think the colors of the piers and the buildings, and the blue sky make a really nice picture – at least I’m pleased with it.

I’ve been told that one of the gondolas on the ferris wheel has a glass bottom.  So I’m really keen to take a ride on that and see what pictures I can get.  I’ll try and do it over the next few weeks so I can get a Summery image and share with you all here on the blog.

Work has been a little manic lately with very early starts and super long days, in the evenings I’m just exhausted so have to rely on weekends to capture new images for the blog.  This week we have family visiting from the UK as well so I suspect we will be going somewhere fun on Saturday or Sunday and I’ll get an opportunity to capture something new – at least that’s my hope.

I try to get out of town at least once a month and go somewhere new on a photo trip and have some very exciting plans coming up, with all sorts of trips like the Olympic National Park, the Oregon Coast and Las Vegas.  I can’t believe I’ve kept this going for 222 days and am confident that I’ll make it to the end of the year.  Trust me when I say I have seriously considered stopping this several times, but with only a few months left and some cool trips on my calendar, the end of this year long resolution is definitely in sight and success feels possible.

Carter and Master Chief are definitely getting into cooking.  Tonight they hand rolled 45 meatballs!

Cityscape – Seattle

01. August 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

When we left Bainbridge Island on the ferry the sun had definitely come out and we even had patchy blue skies above us.  The ferry ride is about 30 minutes from the Island to the Mainland and Chris and I stood at the ferries bow the whole time photographing everything that crossed our path.  This included another ferry (going in the opposite direction), numerous private boats of various sizes, peoples homes that faced the water front and lots of seagulls flying next to the ferry.

Some of the homes on Bainbridge are just beautiful, I’d love to live there but Lisa would hate it.  While we were driving around the Island it was almost deserted but there aren’t a lot of shops there and no Target!  So Lisa would never move there.

As we approached Seattle I started taking cityscape shots, the sun was shining on the city so a lot of the buildings were bright and shiny and quite colorful.  We have the new ferris wheel in Seattle (not been on that yet) and it was slowly going round so I wanted that in the shot, I also wanted some of the tall buildings in downtown and some of the piers and took the shot below.  As I composed the shot, I saw the plane going past (top of picture) and caught it too – I think this actually adds to the picture.

When people think of Seattle they also think of the Space Needle and while it would be nice to have that in shot too, it’s quite a long way off to the left.  So if you try to get the Needle and downtown in the same shot, it almost has to be a panorama, so no Needle in this image.

Considering I took this on a moving ferry, I think the image came out really well.  It’s also nice having a shot from the water, not always an easy or obvious point of view.

The guys spent a lot of time today watching Kerry Walsh and Misty May, and then decided to have their own beach volleyball game.

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