3c's: cheese, carrots & craisins

I've been itching to head towards east Snohomish County for awhile, and yesterday was the day! Looming clouds and questionable weather lead me to a short, quick two-mile hike with my friend, Del, to Wallace Falls State Park. It was more pleasant and rugged than I expected!

But of course, we detoured towards a public fishing area off the Skykomish River on the way there...

I am such a kook. I hiked two-miles to look at a gorgous waterfall and ended up concentrating on moss.

I did manage to get one good, non-generic falls pic from my vantage point. That is my dear friend Del risking certain death in pursuit of a unique shot. I saw a preview on his lcd... mission accomplished ;)

Like the mossy shot above, I increased the vibrancy & saturation to get some fun colors. It was actually pretty dreary and flat, but I like the turquois colors that this processing picked up.

Thanks for checking out my pics! I am headed to DC for the week, so I probably won't have any posts till next week. Take care!

Wanderings

Yesterday, my good friend, Del, and I hit the streets of Seattle. Our destination de jour was the Smith Tower, but we ended up making a great big loop of downtown, too. I ended up with quite a few pictures that I liked. Nice huh? Rather than one really, really long string of pictures I have broken them into four groups, this one here (the Wanderings), Smith Tower, Arctic Brrr?, and Variations of a Coffee Shop in D.

The pictures below were all taken with the Nikon D80, using my 18-55mm lens. I didn't use any filters, polarizers or cokin gear. I am still trying to figure out my "style" and I don't really know what direction I am going in. Does it matter? Nah, I am still having fun and enjoying the discovery process.

Store Front
The reflections in the window caught my eye.

Phad woon sen

The different colors of this lovely Thai dish were interesting to me. At first, I tried taking the picture from a different angle (facing the wall), but it was too boring, so I shifted my perspective a bit. Much more interesting background now, eh?

Eww.

The gum wall. I never knew it existed... did you? It took me a few minutes to get over my germaphobe ways and subsequent photographic mental block, but I did end up having fun snapping a few pictures here.

And here it is in color...

The Alley

The lighting was tough here. I didn't bring a tripod, and there was no way I would be leaning myself or my precious (clean!) camera on the walls in Pike Place for stability. I intentionally underexposed this shot to be able to have a pretty fast shutter speed. The darkness worked in my favor.

Smith Tower

Yesterday, I took a nice stroll around Seattle and seemed to find inspiration around every corner. Instead of one very long stream of pics, I have grouped them together.... this is the Smith Tower group.

What a truly beautiful place. The Smith Tower was the first skyscraper in Seattle. The observation deck was closed to the public for a private event, but Del & I were able to take a good look around the lobby.

Lobby

To put it lightly, the lighting was challenging. I used the edge of a counter to rest my camera on and took a 15 second exposure, nikon style.

Lobby in black & white

I converted the picture above into black & white, then made some other adjustments to the clarity and contrast.

The Elevator

Lobby, Again

I must have taken twenty frames here. This one is of the lobby, but composed with a twist.

Dark, Dark Lobby

I took this one in manual mode, intentionally underexposing the picture. I liked the pattern of the lights and the reflection on the walls.

Arctic Brr?

Yesterday, I took a nice stroll around Seattle and seemed to find inspiration around every corner. Instead of one very long stream of pics, I have grouped them together.... this is the Arctic Building Group.

I took these using my friend Del's 10-22mm. This whole Nikon D80 thing is coming in handy... I've wondered if a wide angle was the next direction I wanted to go in lenses. I love the distortion.

Variations of a coffee shop, in D

Yesterday, I took a nice stroll around Seattle and seemed to find inspiration around every corner. Instead of one very long stream of pics, I have grouped them together.... this is the coffee shop group.

As much as a I love the convenience and reliablilty of the big coffee chains, I am a huge fan of *other* local coffee shops, and find their personalities quite interesting. Today's pics are from the Cafe Umbria in Pioneer Square

Bokah Man

Coffee Shop 1

This one has low clarity & high contrast. The outside windows are not as defined as the other two below.

Coffee Shop 2

I increased the clarity, lowered the contrast & added an artsy "fresco" filter.

Coffee Shop 3
Just like number two, above, except without the fresco.

raw

The D80... unedited (no photo shop whatsoever, with the exception of converting to jpeg) I took this in my kitchen, with the vase set on top of my stove to get the lighting from above. I used a tripod, of course, and my 18-55 with my canon close-up filter (wouldn't trade that piece of gold, yo!). Its funny because I wanted to use the 18-55 for its AF abilities, and ended up using the manual focus anyway. funny.

A different view, with a bit of processing. I am warming up to this "photoshop" phenomenon bedonkidonk. (oh, and it is a completely different picture; I didn't just crop the one above....)

Thanks for looking at my pictures! I hope that you are having a lovely day... where ever you may be.

out with the old

I went to Trader Joes tonight and found myself lured by a certain $6 bouqet of lillies! i love the flowers at TJ! I figured it was time to say goodbye to my roses from last month... and time to break in the new 50mm & close up filter!

This lens is not an autofocus lens; I set it to infinity and did a bunch of Grover's "neeear, faaaaar, nneeeeeaar, farrr"s until I got the pics in focus. I was in my kitchen, so the lighting was kinda crummy. I used editing software to tone down the flourescent lights and add some contrast.

Oh... while at TJ I also checked out their wine selection. Dud. In case you are interested... the score is Petit Verdot: 5 & Lori: zip.

fun with the neighbors

Today, I headed up to A-town to capture a special family moment for my sister's neighbors. It means a lot to me when people ask me to photograph these special times; it is an honor.

I was unprepared... I am not familiar with the Nikon yet, and am without an AF 50mm (I stopped by Kits in Mill Creek... they have three stores in their region with the lens - Oak Harbor, Anchorage & Bellevue). Plus, the timing was not the best for photography (close to high noon... yikes!).

But, I am happy with how they turned out. And, once I remembered to switch my camera back to AF mode, I am pleased with the sharpness of the pics. I am eager, though, to get the 50mm lens. I think that my aperture was only at around 5 something when zoomed out to 55mm. Would have been great to have a nice 3.5 to tone down the branches.

Thank you, fine neighbors, for your patience with my s-l-o-w photography skills & thanks to everyone else for checking out my pics!

pursuit of petit verdot

I bid a fond farewell to my bff the 50mm on Monday; will my new lens and I hit it off, too?

msNg part II

After work today I had a chance to take a closer look at yesterday's pics and attempt a little bit of editing. I can so much more with my new software; I just don't know what I want to do yet. Too many choices for someone so stinkin indecisive.

First Stop
I took this one as we walked along the waterfront in Everett. The camera was still in jpeg mode and had a wierd white balance. I warmed up the file to give a nice orangey glow.

Ocean Ripple

In my heart I really do strive to be a purist. I try to compose my pictures so that I won't need to crop, I haven't tried layering or stitching. However, I want my pictures to be interesting to look at, so I have started to apply some processing to my pictures.

Today, I tried an ocean ripple filter.... just for kicks. I toned the ripple down really low, so hopefully the effect is subtle. I really liked the name of this boat... the Peacemaker.

Marina
For this one, I really wanted to focus on the boat with its light on; I wanted the rest of the scene to be pretty dark.

The Walkway

I ws really drawn to the lighting on this walkway. I have posted two pics; the first one is completely unedited & the other one has a little bit of msNg added to it. (msNg=macro superNikongirl)

It was fun to try out the new camera. I have another cool one to process... I need to figure out how to straighten the horizon! Its awful! No wonder I always walk into stuff, I am just naturally crooked ;)

Thank you for checking out the pics from the new camera! It was a nice trip to the Port of Everett; nice pics, nice weather, nice atmosphere, nice little mid-week adventure, nice lighting ;)

msNg

After an odd bit of Craig's List fate, I am now the proud owner of a Nikon D80...

It was sad to say goodbye to my beautiful (clean) Rebel, my bff the 50mm, and my newest pride and joy, the 70-300... but after an evening of shooting with the D80, I can tell that I made the right decision.

I only have one pic to post so far, I have to get used to new viewing and editing software too!



Not too bad for a first shoot, eh?

good bye?

I might be entering the world of Nikon tomorrow, so I wanted to get one last photo shoot on my Canon. (Interesting side note: for something named a "rebel" there sure seem to be pretty common...)

I've been wanting to head back to Kerry Park since I ordered my 70-300mm, to test out the powers of 300mm... turned out to be a bit too much power. 100mm seemed to work juuuust fine.

It is hard to get a non-cliche picture from up here (I've already taken my quota of cliche pics from here anyway) so I converted the pic to monochrome, added a blue tone & filter, bumped up the contrast, saturation & sharpness. viola.

cold jumbo jack

When I was younger, the term "enchanting" brought images of Disney-style magical, sparkely wonderment. I had visions of royalty, magic spells and colorful powder that poofed into some sort of whimsical animal beyond the reaches of my own imagination.

As I have grown to see more of the world, I see "enchantment" as something different. It is no longer a term meant only for things imagined; it is real. Enchantment, to me now, is the magnification of natural beauty.

Yesterday I went for a lengthy trek with a good friend of mine along a historic trail in the North Bend area. Even with the bleakness of winter, this area was enchanting. The sunset hours were especially beautiful; the subdued light set a wonderful glowing tone around the trees.

I also realized at the end of the day that I only used my 70-300mm lens the entire day. It started with some macro work and I just kept the thing on the whole time. Kinda neat. The other cool thing is that, with the exception of the first pic, I took them all hand-held.

Tiny Bubbles
While stopping to admire the view from poopoo point, the lighting on this little bush caught Del's eye and he suggested I try to capture it. Good idea! It turned out to be rather tricky and I ended up using manual focus. So, I feel kinda cool being able to use manual focus ;) brings me back to when I was the photographer for my middle school yearbook and I used an old school pentax camera. I took the first pic in the 130mm range, and the bottom one at 70mm. It is odd, I didn't take any at 300m. hmmm.


Ragnar
We stopped at Ragnar, a railroad graveyard and old quarry. This sign seemed interesting to me, so I spent a while trying different shots. Based on the bullet holes in the sign there were others who found this sign as an interesting target, too. I did some processing... set the picture style to monotone, applied a filter (green, I think. maybe yellow) and then a sepia tone. I thought that the sepia style worked well for the era. (plus, I am on a sepia kick these days...)

The pic below is an example for my future reference of the limitations when composing landscapes with the 70-300mm. I had my lens set at 70mm and this is all I could capture. I wanted to get the "Station One Mile" and "Ragnar" signs in the same shot and had to take quite a few steps back to get this shot. Still not quite what I had in mind.

Waterfall

Despite a lack of recent hiking adventures, we were still feeling pretty good at the five-mile mark. Feet were fine; backpacks were great; plenty of water; plenty of daylight. We ended up taking a side trip down to Twin Falls. I had fun just taking random pictures in 300mm.... just because I can.

The pic below was taken at 119mm, though, and then croped in. I converted it to monochrome, added a red filter and used a purple tone (purple is my other favorite tone these days). I like this one because it is different than the normal "pretty" waterfall pic. I set my ISO to 400 to be able get a faster shutter speed (1/160th of a second) in order to capture the choppiness of the water. I can see an image of a face in this pic... can you see it? The rocks are the face and the water is like hair.

Thanks for checking out my pictures! Wishing you all a happy February!