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!