Exploration

Perhaps it is fitting that I found myself in unmarked territory over a weekend that celebrates Columbus' exploration into the "new world".

The pics below are from a couple of hikes over the weekend. You won't find these hikes in any hiking books, although a hand-held GPS device seemed to function well.

Ooo, a Log!
This is one was taken along the side of the road (figures, huh?). I liked the glow of the yellow leaves in the setting sun, and thought that the trunk was an interesting feature, too. I wish, though, that I had taken the time to grab my cokin 2ND filter to minimize some of the glare on the right-hand side of the pic.

Color Crop

I had trouble framing this one just right (again, the 2nd would have come in handy!). I really like the colors, though, and figured I could just crop it. Hey, thats what I did! I didn't make any color/contrast/saturation adjustments, just a bit o' cropping.

Look!
The pic below may be just "so-so" but it is an example of something I have learned. My current focus is to just try different things and see what happens (resulting in a lot of wasted frames. Luckily, I have plenty of CF cards!). I was pleased with the depth of field for this pic, along with the expert use of my polarizer. Yes, I stood in the water. Yes I made some saturation changes using the canon software (the original didn't have the right color saturation).




Beams of Light
For this pic, I was initially concentrating on the water in the lower corner. The little ripples caught my eye because they were so noisy! However, I ended up catching some great light beams. I converted this to black & white to give it a classic feel (plus, I loooove black & whites). I think that this is my favorite pic for the weekend. (btw, wouldn't it be even more fantastic if I had a 10-22mm???)

I don't know

I am calling this one "I don't know" because, well, I am unfamiliar with this part of the state and have no idea what mountain I am looking at. I love rocks.

The Sign

Given that this place was so beautiful, yet so deserted, and not listed in "the book," I was curious about its history. Del spotted the back of the sign from the beach, and I trekked up see of it offered any clues.

Nope.

Flashy Leaves

This pic was another lesson learned. I thought that the fall colors looked so pretty against the blue sky, complete with fluffy clouds; however, the first pic I took made the branches way too dark. A-ha! Fill flash! I tried several different aperture settings to get a pic that would show the branch in a way that was not too dark, and not too light. Enjoy.

Alrighty, there you go, my lastest & greatest. As always, thank you so much for taking a peek at my pics. Peace.

Glimpse

My dear sweet mom & made a quick trip to the UW campus today to check out a venue for an upcoming event. As we left the parking gargage, I looked up and saw this building (it is the administrative building and houses the office of the UW president).

Its an alright pic; but it is a bit of a benchmark for me. For the first time since I bought my camera two months ago, I confidently took it out my bag, set it to aperture mode (f3.5 ish), pointed and clicked. And then we went on our merry way. I didn't scratch my head wondering what to do. I didn't even think about my little canon until the car ride home; I realized that the rebel XTi and I are becoming friends. How nice... finally.

And yes, I did do some editing when I came home. Just a little bit though (and no, mister, it is not a slippery slope). First, I dropped the color saturation down to get a black & white shot, then I increased the contrast a bit to see what would happen and liked the darkness that appeared in the lower corner. Thats it... see, just a wee little bit of editing.

I took a few other shots for the day, but they were kinda boring. I would like to head back there sometime though... the UW campus is so beautiful and in many ways feels like my second home. I am so nerdy. (insert any song here) & GO DAWGS!

F3.5

I think that my photos usually capture my personality and outlook on life. They put a little twist to the ordinary (I am so weird... I definitely don't fit a box, much less a pigeon hole). I try to bring out something that is beautiful and interesting about whatever I am seeing. I think that they end up looking pretty nice, pretty positive.

But life isn't always roses.

For awhile I've wondered if I could do some darker pieces; scenes that are still interesting but aren't so "pretty." The pics in this post are my attempt to try out a different style.

The Creek

F13, ISO 100, 6 seconds

Spooky Tree

F 3.5, ISO 100, 0.8 second

I used the Canon software to lower the brightness, increase the contrast, push the saturation & hue to the extreme and bring the sharpness to a medium level.

The Bridge, 1 & 2

Both are f3.5, ISO 100, 0.4 seconds

I converted both to black & white-ish, there is still a tiny bit of saturation in them both. They were taken without a tripod (I was in a hurry!) but I kinda like the noise (or as Canon puts it... the pictures are "slightly grainy").

Thanks for checking out this group of pics. I am interested in any comments... are they interesting to you too, or just weird? Or are they just kinda blah? C'mon... be honest

Sunday Stroll

Ok, I am going to keep this post short... famous last words, right?

I am still adjusting to life after grad school. Weird isn't it? What is spare time? I am also trying to intentionally not fill up my schedule and just be open to whatever comes up. (Although, a quick glance at my calendar shows me booked till next Tuesday. sigh.) Sunday was just such a day. These pics are from a wee little hike in the North Bend area. I haven't been there before, but I had a trusty tourguide.

It is a Sign
Grr. I forgot my tripod! My new, beautiful, handy tripod! It was nice, though, to take some hand-held pics. The challenge for the day is to keep the ISO low, the shutter fast and the blurry images to a minimun.

The one of the sign below is at ISO 200. I chose a small aperture setting, f3.5 to get a fast shutter speed (1/8 of a second) because I was holding my camera. I didn't even intend to have such a nice, muted background. Nice. One thing that I would tweek a little if I could would be to have the top right-hand corner of the sign fully in the frame. I like the lighting, too, and didn't make any tonal adjustments to this pic.

HD Iron Horse Trail

Our destination for the day was a cool little water feature on the Annette Lake Trail (side note: the cool little water feature has disappeared! maybe next year?). The trail crosses the Iron Horse Trail and we could hear water falling over rocks somewhere. Didn't find any waterfalls or rushing creek beds (too many trees!) but had a nice little wander down the Iron Horse Trail. It was late afternoon by this point, and the lighting created kind of a weird HD effect. My eyes were buggy. Del took a shot from a similar spot that shows EVEN MORE sharpness. Insane.

Fall Leaves
I found a gigantic berry bush. Ooh Berries! I tried several different angles, but couldn't get the shot I had in my mind. I could frame it, but it was too shaky. I tried Del's tripod, but couldn't frame it right that way either. So, the fall leaves below are a close second to what I had in mind. I am really pleased, though, with the water droplets lining the edge of the leaves! I shot this one in ISO 200, f5.6 (because I was zoomed in a bit), and with a shutter speed of 1/20th of a second.



Abstract Tree
I loved the maple trees on this hike; they had tiny little leaves! This tree caught my eye as we headed down the trail. I don't know why; I was drawn to it. At the time, I was frustrated with the composition... again, not quite what I had in mind. However, when I had a chance to review the shots at home, I ended up having a hard time figuring out which one I liked the best. I can see so many different images in this shot. I'll use "vague lori" descriptions in pursuit of brevity... the lighting was interesting, it reminded me of trees in Japan, I can see a tree angel, and it reminds me of school plays were people play trees (think Dead Poet's Society). Here is a vague zinger for ya: I can see the grace and beauty of nature in concert with humanity.


.... or maybe it is time to go to sleep. g'night & sweet, tiny maple leaf dreams to all. Thanks for checking out my pics & reading my unending randomness.

From Blah to Bling

Hmmm, a day of shooting. Where shall we go?

When I set out for today's "random shoot" I figured it would be a day like my Pike Place day... a familiar locale with the pics of the randomest things. The day turned out to be one with a rather random itinerary. All for the sake of photography.

1st stop

After an uneventful trip to the camera shop, our first destination was Marymore Park in Redmond. It has many trees. It should have "the" tree shot, filled with fall's beautiful colors, right? Well.... it has trees, they are pretty, but at the same time pretty sterile. I did manage a pic of the windmill near the entrance of the park and one of the sunlight hitting a gate near the historic mansion/building. We'll call Marymore the "blah" part of the day.

2nd stop

Then we headed south. We found a place with many trees (bonzai even!) however, it was closed. Huh? It was barely even 4:30pm... we were in Del's old hood so we didn't need garm-garm to find other fun locales. The pic below was taken at the marina in Des Moines. I really, really wanted to get a shot from the base of the fishing poles, but since the fisherpeople were strangers I figured they wouldn't let me. So I settled for breaking one of the rules of photography and shot straight into the sun, just for fun. (oh and um, New Dan, if you are reading this, I hear that this marina is a great place for crabbing...)

3rd stop

It was a pleasant afternoon, but the photo-mojo just wasn't happening. After a bit of Starbucks for inspiration, we were in Seattle. The waterfront is always a good spot and is especially lovely at night. See ?

"aquarium" because it is the aquarium

p.s. Look! You can see the space needle in the background. Yeah, it was intentional.

"aquarium 2" this one has a bit 'o dock, too

For these two (the ones above and below) I stood in the same place and experimented framing the shot with my camera tilted down and straight-on... I learned on the Rainier lesson with Randal that you can get more depth of field by tilting the camera down. Can you tell which one is which? You can't judge by the reflections in the water because I used different shutter speeds for both of them. oooo tricky ;)

As you can see, the waterfront was the "bling" part of the day.

"Ivar's sign" pretty self explanatory, but the neat thing about this shot is that it is intentially under exposed AND hand held.

Um, very bling. (yep, I used a star filter...)

There you go! Another round of pictures. I really like the night-time shots; they are so sparkly. (I am pretty sure Ansel would have used the term "sparkly"... right?) Thank you for looking at my pictures!

Wok on Fire

Last Thursday I escaped the office for a bit... these are the pics from my trip to the exciting town of Silverdale and beyond...

Raindrop Macro

After a quick drive through one of Washington's many fine fish hatcheries, we spotted a turn off with a trail that lead down to a marsh. Intriguing, yes? We startled a blue heron but don't have the pics to prove it. While waiting for that stubborn heron to move and keeping an eye out on some playful seals, I snapped this macro shot of the blackberry bushes. I wanted to focus on the water droplet and ended up doing a little bit of cropping when I got home. It isn't too interesting to look at (I won't be printing this one. no way man) but it was good practice.

Limitations

This is the view of the lovely marsh area. I am calling it "limitations" because it was the best I could do with the lens I was using. Silly me, I still had my 50mm portrait lens on my camera.

Joemma Beach

With the help of garm-garm we found a handful of peninsula beaches. Some were interesting, others were not so much. This one, though, Joemma Beach, is on the list of places to go back to sometime. That would be "sometime when it is not so rainy." We managed a few excellent frames before the rain came down, marking the end of another great trip.

Check out the differences in the water in the top and bottom pics. The top pic had a shutter speed of 1/10th of a second (with an aperture of f22 & ISO 400), while the bottom one was a bit slower at 1/2 a second (at f32 & ISO 100). Neat, huh?

I would have liked to try to get the dock at a slightly different angle, but there was a big ol' tree in the way. I tried a few different spots, but then, well, it became too rainy and my poor little microfiber cloth was getting soaked. Grrr. Rain. I love it, but grrrr.

Thanks!

Macro Monday

Today's mission was to become better acquainted with my close up filter. It is so frustrating to have this great love of macro shots without the skillset to create the images in my mind. The keys to that is of course, practice, trial and error, experimentation, and all that good stuff.

For today's lesson I headed over to the business park near my apartment. I was aiming for Day Two of my I-5 avoidance. Success! (I might even be able to avoid it tomorrow, too, although 405 is on the agenda. slight grrr). I headed to the business park because I notice flowers there all the time! Usually I am in a hurry to get to work (or a hurry to get home!) so I figured I would take advantage of the warm glow of sunset to get a few shots. I waited a bit too long, and sunlight was slipping away quickly. I managed a few interesting (and challenging) shots, though.

Fall Color

Determined to only use my close-up filter, I left my 18-55mm at home. Oh Man, what was I thinking? The red leaves on the tree were such a gorgeous contrast to the cloudy blue skies. I also (quite unintentionally) left the case for my close-up filter at home, so I couldn't even try a shot with just the 50mm. (You see, I have bad luck, and didn't want to scratch up my lovely, glass, expensive close-up filter. I know my stinkin limitations.) So, I took a pic of the leaves. I don't really like the blurriness of the front leaf, but tried a couple different f-stops and moved the camera back and forth without much luck. I didn't want to spend all night in this spot, so I called it good and moved on. No matter how much you want something, or the potential you can see in the situation, you gotta just move on sometime, eh?

Sunset Flowers 1, 2, 3 & 4

For my first series on this post, I have a group of shots of the same sweet little white flower, taken at different f-stops. I used Del's 2-4-6-8 approach for shutter speed, but applied it to aperture settings. I like the third one the best, f7.1

Sunset Flower f.18

Sunset Flower 4.0

Sunset Flower 7.1

Sunset Flower F14.0

Just for Fun
Ok, so, just for fun, I wanted to take one as close as I could at f1.8. This is what I ended up with.... I kinda like the bluriness of it, relaxes my eyes a bit.

Twilight Flower 1, 2, 3 & 4
I continued on about a 1/2 mile to this patch of loveliness that has caught my eye just about every morning. It used to be a gigantic bunch of blossoms, but I noticed the landscapers cut them down early last week. Shoot. I missed my chance! I managed to get a couple shots here. It was quite dark by this point, so I had that challenge, too. Joy! I took the first three at ISO 100, but with the aperture setting I had for the last one, I needed to bump up the ISO... it was a thirty second exposure even at ISO 200!

This group didn't turn out at all like I had expected, and I wish I would have moved my camera a wee bit over to the left so that the brown part of the flower would be in focus instead of the silly tip of the petal. But, oh well, I learned something about composition, eh? What I do like is how obvious the setting changes are; the sunset flower settings seemed to create slight changes in f-stop settings. I suppose a big factor, too, is the dramatic difference in shutter speed, too. The sunset flower shots were pretty similar in shutter speeds, all at a fraction of a second. The Twilight group though, ranged from 1/2 a second to 30 seconds! Wowie!

Enjoy.

Twilight at f1.8, 1/2 second, ISO 100












Twilight at f4.5, 2.5 seconds, ISO 100

Twilight at f-8.0, 13 seconds, ISO 100

Twilight at f-18, 30 seconds, ISO 200

And there you go! These pics are going to be useful for me as I progress, and not really "frame worthy." Actually, I just realized this afternoon that I haven't printed out any pics from my new camera. Weird. I'm going to have to do that soon, eh? I need some new pics for my living room anyway. The DC & New York Black and Whites are soooo 2007 :)

Just say No to I-5

For today's photo shoot I had intended on going to Pioneer Square (apparently, I have started a series?) but then I remembered that it was football season. A quick little look at the Seattle Times online, and yep, it is a home game, too. Yikes. No way was I headed to Pioneer Square! My other option was the Fremont/Ballard area, but sadly, it is Octoberfest in Fremont & I figured I should avoid that area, too. Could have been some fun shots, just not what I was in the mood for.



Oh, and the other thing... I wanted to AVOID I-5. I can't even count the miles I have spent on the freeway in the past few weeks... I needed a break. The good thing about being in the north end is that I can still access Seattle via HWY 522. So, that is what I did. I went to Magnuson Park, along the shores of Lake Washington. (I did need to make a run into Kits for a circular polarizer & remote control, but thankfully, I did not need to go on I-5 to find Northgate!)



Today's pics are, well, just OK. I am posting them more as a sample of what I worked on rather than anything nifty for people to look at. Um, enjoy?

Fin Art

I thought these are pretty dang cool. They are fins from old submarines used in the 60's. They are a symbol of peace. Check out a bit more about the fin project here.


Dang those Birds

I spent a while hanging out by the geese, too. At first, I started about 20 feet away, but couldn't really see over the bank from that distance. I was surprised though: as I approached they just calmly got in the water and went on to their next destination. I figured they would have flown away (Ok, ok, a little piece of me wishes they had flown away so I could get some cool action shots...). I still like the movement in this picture.



Its Black & White Kinda
I followed the birds along the grassy side for awhile, and found this area to take their pictures. It took awhile to set up the shot (I am s-l-o-w) so I missed the birds, but still like the neat leaves of the trees.

Looking straight into Autumn

From where I was standing for the black&white lake shot, I pointed my camera alllll the way up to get the shot below. fun. I didn't even do any composing, just tilted the camera and hit click.

The Dock

Then I kept walking. I ended up at the boat launch, which was kind of, well, sterile. Actually, the whole park seemed rather sterile. I think that is why my pics are turning out kinda just OK. Anyway, so here I am at the dock. weeee. I liked the big sky and clouds (you are right, DMA, contrasty cloudy northwest skies are interesting). My question, though, is this: is it better to have a straight horizon or straight stuff in the foreground? I think that the dock looks alright, but man, the Kirkland waterfront is a mess. It is falling off the screen.

pretty clouds... yes? hmmm hmmm hmmm? yes.

Signs of the Season

Yeeeep. In case you didn't get the memo, fall is here. I am feeling a little bitter-sweet over the end of summer. I like the seasons that we have here in Washington, but I was hoping to hold on to summer and its vibrancy for a little while longer. I noticed that many of the trees in the park were already losing their delicate leaves.

Hey, congrats, you made it through the entire post! Cool, thanks! I finally remembered to bring my tripod upstairs, so, who knows, tomorrow may be "macro monday"! woot-woot.

Its still a tradition

Last Saturday Del & I had quite an adventure... we returned to Mt. St. Helens for what has become our annual trip. It was great; we saw meadows, crazy bogish meadows, more meadows, pinky-like vistas, another meadow and climbed up, up, up. Our intention was to visit four lakes that are all very close to one another: Fawn, Elk, Hanford & Forest. Well... on that day our adventure only brought us to Fawn Lake. It was amazing, though. This Sunday we headed back to Mt. St. Helens, back to the lakes, back to one of the most beautiful places around. We used our newfound navigational skills to zip up to the Fawn Lake trail head via Forest Service roads and then continue on to the remaining three lakes.

Macro Wishes

We really did zip up the Forest Service Roads... and the place we happened to stop at... the Fawn Lake Trail Head (thanks GarmGarm!). While Del was trying out a "lori shot" I took some dandelion shots. I am naming this pic "macro wishes" because I have sooo many more macro skills to learn. My alias may be "macro supergirl" but don't let it fool you... I am still pretty clumsy with my macro shots. I do have a very, very keen interest in macro shots and love 'em, love 'em, love 'em.

The View from Jun Fork

We kept walking along the Forest Service road until we reached the next breathtaking locale: Jun Fork (unlike the extreme Pinky-focus of last week's trek, this week's Way Points were dedicated to dear little Junior). Just our luck, the clouds had mostly lifted and you could really really see the crater of Mt. St. Helens. Amazing isnt' it? I took the pic below using my UV filter & Cokin 2nd filter... I liked the way it turned out and didn't make any subsequent editing at home. Enjoy.

Daisies were in abundance along this part of the trail, but you can tell that the season is ending because the ends of the blossoms are starting to wither. So sad. They are beautiful though, and so very cheery. Oh, and, uh, for the record... I like daisies, too ;)

Vic'try for Washington

Woo-hoo! We made it! After a bit of off-roading, Del led us to Elk Lake! When we got there I just found a nice look out spot and enjoyed the scenery. I tried to take some macros of "death berries" but not even my camera would touch them... I ended up dropping my camera in the ash! OH NO! OH NO! OH NO! Luckily, I just received a blower thingymabobber for my birthday, so I was able to get most of those fine little particles out the way. Phew. I figured I would just call it a day for my little macro filter and switched back to my 18-55mm. Here is my pic of Elk Lake. It is a little crooked, but I don't know how to edit that, yet ;)

After Elk Lake we hit Forest Lake. I didn't take any pictures there due to super harsh lighting and rather tight quarters. No problem, though, I have a really beautiful mental picture still, and Del risked certain danger and managed a great shot that I can reference. OH, you can too: look here.

We literally turned around and BOOM, there was Hanford Lake. Wow. At this point, Del and I went our seperate ways. You see, this way we end up with different pictures... plus, I think sometimes he just likes to explore on his own. Now that he has the trusty walkie-talkies it makes it even that much easier for this kind of stuff. Wow, I just over-explained my picture. Ok, so the pic below is from the lookout above Hanford Lake.

While crazy monkey macro super panda dude was at the base of the lake, I stayed at the look out and spent the entire time messing with my star filter. Yes, the entire time. I had to crop this one because I kept getting the corner of my filter or my fingertips in the shot. BECAUSE there were stupid little mosquitoes all over the place, and they seemed to know just when my 10-second timer would go off and bite my ears/eyes/cheek/hand/you name it. The extreme irritation caused me to move a bit, so, basically, it took awhile to get some clean shots. I am calling this one Someday Sunshine because, someday, I WILL be able to use my star filter and someday I WILL be able to correctly photograph sunlight. Someday, sunshine... someday....

Well, this marks the end of my pictures. It does not, however, mark the end of the adventure. After this spot we still had to make it down the mountain. It was an amazing walk down. I wish you could have seen it -I have never experienced that kind of beauty before. The sun was setting on the right hand side, bright red and orange skies along the ridge line turned into pink hues in the sky falling behind the rolling hills of blue. Mount St. Helens was in front of us, with Sagittarius shining so brightly above it. The moon was rising on our left hand side. I had never watched a moonrise before - very cool. We stopped a few times and Del was able to capture some interesting and thought provoking shots.

As always, thanks for checking out my pictures and sifting through all of my over-explanations. I love lamp.