A sunset in Seattle
A lovely sunset from Seattle…
From a recent trip to Seattle, when I got out around sunset and stumbled upon this little marina over in Ballard. The light was just right, and I loved the look of this boat.
Seattle sunsets
A lovely sunset in Seattle…
I was in Seattle in November, and on evening was able to get down to Pike Place Market to take some shots. It had been a nice afternoon, with some clouds, and I was hoping that the sunset would turn into something decent. So I popped into a place to have a beer, and when I emerged it was full-on sunset. I was frantically running here and there to capture the light, because it was just beautiful. Luckily I didn’t miss this one!
That peaceful, easy feeling
I spent a morning shooting in Seattle’s Japanese Garden, and came away with a lot of keepers. Here’s one of my favorites…
On my recent trip to Seattle, I spent a morning exploring and shooting their Japanese Gardens. It’s a gorgeous park with amazing reflections available thanks to the pond at the center of the park. One of my favorite spots was this little Japanese pagoda/temple thing on a rock, right on the edge of the pond. I spent quite a while here shooting away, but I think this is my favorite shot of it thus far.
Sunset in Seattle
Sometimes you just show up at the right time and get lucky. That's exactly what happened to me one evening in Seattle. I'll take it anytime! ;-)
I am still enjoying the wonders of Italy with the family, but of course I have a tremendous backlog of photos from previous trips still to share. I feel like I could turn this into an Italian photo blog, I've taken so much! But, I haven't had much time to process the photos, so I am taking a quick break from Italy to share these photos from a sunset I captured in Seattle. Both were shot at the Pike Place Market, which is a wonderful spot to visit if you find yourself there!
The Pike Place fish counter
I love Seattle, and in particular I love to visit Pike Place Market. It's touristy but awesome. Here's a shot of the fish counter, plus a couple of extra creative edits. It's always good to experiment, right?
I love to wander at Pike Place Market in Seattle...
Having visited Seattle a few times in my life, it qualifies as one of those places that I love to photograph. There's plenty of the town that I haven't shot, so I guess that means it qualifies for a return trip!
Most of my time has been concentrated around the Pike Place Market, which definitely doesn't represent the whole of the city. I've seen other parts too, and several outside of Seattle, but something about Pike Place just draws me in each time I am there. It's touristy but I find it quite beautiful. I've gotten up at sunrise to shoot it, and been there at sunset too. I've shot it in the middle of the day (crowded!!) and just about everything in between.
We made a quick stop there last summer on our epic roadtrip, and I got out first thing that morning to shoot Pike Place (again). The first thing you see, assuming you come in the "main entrance", is this fish counter. It's famous for being the place where they are tossing the salmon around - it's quite fun.
But being interested in art, and just having fun mixing things up, I decided to create a couple of different versions of the above photo. The first one is a pretty traditional black and white, which I converted in Tonality by Macphun. It's a great product for making monochromes and if you want to read more, you can check my review here. While there's NO WAY I could ever abandon my love of color, I sure am becoming more interested in black and whites.
This next one is just pure fun, not a serious photo at all, but I like it. Here I used FX Photo Studio by Macphun (read my review here) to create this mirrored-symmetry look. Kind of cool, right? It's not a complicated thing to create either - this was a single click edit. Gotta love that about Macphun!
Some goodness from Seattle
I love to visit Seattle, and luckily we made a stop there on our big trip this past summer. Unluckily, it was only for 1 night. But I did get a wonderful sunset out of the stop, so I can't complain about that! Here are some pics from Pike Place Market during that sweet, sweet sunset!
Have you been to Seattle? I think it's a beautiful city.
We spent a quick day/night in Seattle this past summer, as we were turning back to Texas and making the long drive home at the end of our summer of awesomeness. The city deserves (and frankly, requires) quite a bit more time than we were able to give it, but it wasn't our first time there and likely won't be our last. It was a short stop by design (sadly).
The primary thing we did was wander around Pike Place Market, and we did that a couple of times: sunset on the night we arrived, and the following morning before we departed. I was rather pleased with how the sunset turned out, and rather pleased that I had my camera with me (though you wouldn't really expect me not to, right?).
So today's pics are a handful from that evening's sunset, all taken at Pike Place Market, and mostly of the signs there, which I love. I actually have a large backlog of photos that I have processed from past trips (San Francisco, Copenhagen, Glasgow, France, etc), and I am trying to work them into the blog here when I can. This isn't exactly a chronological blog in any way, so I tend to mix things up anyways. It makes it more fun for me, and hopefully you enjoy the varied assortment. Plus, I am a little scatter-brained at times. :-)
Anyways, I am currently distracted with working on pics from my recent trip to Norway and Scotland, which was an awesome trip by the way, thanks for asking! :-) I have a dozen or so processed from Norway and I will be sharing those soon, so be sure and come back for a look.
Thanks for clicking by today!
Sunset at the lighthouse
I lucked into an amazing sunset at Lime Kiln Point State Park on San Juan Island, Washington - amazing clouds and superb color. It was a real stunner. Click on in and see all 4 pics!
I caught an amazing sunset at Lime Kiln Point State Park in Washington!
Considering how much I wrote for that last post, I think I will keep this one pretty short. On that summer trip, we spent about a week on San Juan Island off the coast of Washington State. One evening we made our way over to Lime Kiln Point State Park. Obviously there is a lighthouse there, but the main attraction is that it's a fabulous place to watch for passing whales.
Sadly, we never saw any whales that day, but I couldn't really complain considering the awesome sunset that arrived! I stood on a rock outcropping and fired away for quite a while as the light changed and got more intense. It was beautiful, and I was surprised that there were only a few people around. I was the only photographer standing there and firing brackets into the sunset.
All 4 of these photos are 3 exposure HDR's which were combined in Photomatix with filters applied in Color Efex Pro and final touch-up in Lightroom.
Do you ever get a place all to yourself like that? Isn't it awesome?
Catching a ferry to the islands
I got pretty lucky one evening. We took a ferry from the mainland in Washington State over to the San Juan Islands, and happened to catch the last ferry of the day. And then, sunset happened, and it happened big. Luckily, I was hanging off the end of the boat with my camera in hand!
Have you been to the San Juan Islands yet? You should go!
As part of our super summer road trip, we took off up north of Seattle and caught the car ferry from Anacortes over to Friday Harbor (on San Juan Island, Washington State), where we stayed for about a week. It's a great place. Very quaint and quiet and very beautiful. I have plenty of shots still to process from my time on the island...but today I am sharing shots I took on the ferry ride. It was quite the ride my friends!
Because we were driving up from our stay in Oregon, we happened to schedule our ferry ride for the evening and as such were on the ferry during sunset - oh darn! Sometimes you get lucky, and this was one of those times. Every now and then it happens.
We departed Anacortes for the ~1 hour ferry ride and immediately I knew that sunset was going to be pretty kickass. You know, sometimes you can just tell, right?
So as soon as we were on board, I left the car with the camera in hand (no need for a tripod when your method of transportation is moving, right?) and headed up stairs to get on the back deck. I wanted some shots of the ferry terminal and then I planned to walk around and shoot for the hour.
It turns out most of the sunset action was behind us, so I was in a great spot already. I did some meandering just to make sure (I can't stand to miss something) but always ended up back on the back deck of the ferry, firing madly into the sunset. It was pretty awesome and only got better and better.
If you ever find yourself in Seattle and want a little break from the city, I highly recommend hopping over to the San Juan Islands - well worth a visit!
The Seattle skyline
I caught this Seattle skyline shot from a ferry when we were pulling back into town. I loved this view, even though I was pretty cold up on the rooftop deck. We had been up in the San Juan Islands for the weekend (you have to go there!) and on the return, I had the camera out firing left and right. When we arrived into Seattle and I saw the skyline there, I knew this was a shot that I really wanted!
Seattle houseboats
Here's something a little different! Although I like the "big" scenes that I shoot in HDR, sometimes it's fun to throw in a little something unexpected...like a pastel-colored, intentionally soft houseboat shot. :)
I caught this image while wandering along Lake Union in Seattle a while back. I had a few minutes before a meeting, and this area caught my eye, and seemed familiar. It turns out this is near the houseboat that was used in the movie Sleepless in Seattle (at least according to some locals, it is). I went for a soft, dreamy sort of processing here and thought it worked, especially with all the bright colors in the scene. It made me think of a painting.
Snug Harbor
For starters, I just want to thank everyone that commented on my photo yesterday here on the blog, or on Google+ and for all the shares, etc on Google+ as well. I really appreciate that so much!
This has been a crazy week, and it included a quick trip out to San Francisco but sadly no time for shooting while out West. Luckily though, I did get the opportunity to meet with Thomas Hawk and had a great time chatting with him. He is an insightful and interesting guy, not to mention a great photographer. More on that later, but I wanted to share the below shot which I posted on Google+ yesterday...taken with my iPhone. This is Thomas, hanging out with the Bay Bridge in the background.
Ok, on to the photo post for today...
I shot this one while up in Seattle earlier in the year. We took a weekend and ferried up to the San Juan Islands, which are fabulous by the way. We spent the weekend in Friday Harbor and at some point that weekend decided we wanted to go on a kayak tour around the coastline. The tour took us up to Snug Harbor, which is where we launched from, and the beauty of the area is just incredible. I took so many photos - many from the kayak itself - and have a lot more to share. So, you will see more of this place! It's beautiful all the way around!
Life is a bountiful harvest
As you probably know, all of us here in the US are headed into a long weekend in celebration of Thanksgiving. In that spirit, I wanted to share a few things that I am thankful for as it relates to photography:
- Photography has given me new eyes, and I am thankful for it - I may look at the same things as before, but now I really see them
- Photography has taken me places that I would never have gone before - into certain buildings, down dark alleys, around deserted corners - and I am glad I went
- I have been given opportunities as a direct result of going to these places - print sales, commercial licensing opportunities, and making just enough money from it to reinvest in new equipment
- I am thankful for all the new Nikon gear I just picked up - it is incredible to have pro-level tools in hand
- I am incredibly thankful for the community of folks that I interact with, none of which I would have had the opportunity to meet without photography - and all of which I have learned something from
Thanks to everyone who has ever visited my blog, commented or shared my work on Google+, friended me on Facebook or "Liked" my page there, made me a contact on Flickr, or followed me on Twitter or elsewhere - I am incredibly grateful for every single bit of it, and my photographic life is richer because of it.
THANK YOU!
Spray
I shot this one off the back of our ferry boat, heading north from Seattle up to the San Juan Islands. I just liked the water spraying out from the engines. The scenery is so gorgeous, and I just could not stay inside with everyone else! Great scenery + great weather + Nikon= pure bliss.
Cruising the strait
I took this shot from the rooftop deck of the ferry we were on, heading from Seattle, WA up to Friday Harbor in the San Juan Islands. The cruise is a beautiful one, as you are surrounded by incredible scenery such as this the whole way. It's very inspiring. It's jaw-dropping. It makes you (or at least, me) want to sell everything and move there! I spent a good part of the cruise up here on top of the ferry, snapping away and having a great time. I was also enjoying the weather quite a bit, as it was nice and cool, unlike Austin where we are still hitting highs north of 100 degrees! That's a great thing about photographs - they capture a moment and let you relive it any time you want. I freakin' love that!
Good morning, Seattle
Ah, Seattle, how I love thee! I shot this from my hotel room - through the glass - early one morning while up in Seattle for work. I really enjoy visiting that town, and each time I go there I return liking it even more. It's got some cool architecture, some wonderful landmarks (that's the tip of the Space Needle peeking out over that building on the far right), the greatest public market anywhere (Pike Place), cool signs, graffiti and of course there are some amazing landscapes nearby! What's not to love? (waiting for someone to say it rains a lot...)