Instead of Working

Coffee Break Canal, January 25, 2010
Lake Washington Ship Canal, Seattle, Washington
Taken with Palm Pre
Developed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.6

I don't drink coffee. I do like to walk outside and take photos. And sometimes Chase Jarvis is right. But having Lightroom helps quite a bit.

Light in Multiples

Night Light, January 23, 2010
Mukilteo Light Station, Mukilteo, Washington
Nikon D80, Tokina 12-24mm (AT-X 124 II) f/4.0 @ f/16.0, 30s, ISO 100
Developed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.6

My wife is a very kind woman with an incredible amount of patience for my hobbies. Last night I dragged her up to Mukilteo, a little port nestled between Puget Sound and Boeing's Everett factory. She thought I was merely on a beer run with the coincidental opportunity to take some photos, but it was actually the other way around. I was there for the photos, meaning my lovely wife felt a bit abandoned while I fiddled with the camera. Rather than hang out in the cold with me, she waited it out at the brewpub.

Admittedly, I wouldn't have even known that the lighthouse was there if I hadn't been investigating Diamond Knot's brewery and ale house on Google Maps. Street view is an amazing thing, though it was predictably out-of-date and failed to display the ongoing construction at the park. I was able to scramble over some rocks and invade the light station grounds. (I wasn't the only stray tourist inside the fence, either.)

This image is a composite on two different levels. First is that it was taken with multiple long exposures, combined in Photoshop. Second is that each of the shots required multiple bursts of light from my flash. In order to create the exposures, I had the shutter open on bulb and manually popped the flash multiple times from different locations. Must have looked odd, me starting the exposure at camera then running off to a different corner of the building to fumble with the flash controls through my gloves, eyes on my watch the entire time, finally running back to the camera to close the shutter. Honestly, I was hoping that just one of those exposures would have come out as a good photo, but the building isn't lit externally so flash from multiple angles was wholly necessary. I composited in Photoshop to balance the different exposures and eliminate shadows.

By the by, the beer at Diamond Knot was good. I recommend their Industrial IPA, if you can get your hands on it.

Thar She Blows

Kaua'i Spout, July 1, 2009
Spouting Horn Park, Kaua'i, Hawaii
Nikon D80, Tokina 12-24mm (AT-X 124 II) f/4.0 @ f/6.3, 1/500s, ISO 400
Developed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.6

No grand tales on this one. Spouting Horn was only a short drive from our hotel on Kaua'i and provided a easy afternoon diversion. There was a little souvenir market lining the upper lawn, nothing but disused sugarcane fields up the slopes, and feral chickens everywhere. Pure Kaua'i.

Waking Up Early on the Feast of Stephen

Dougan Creek Confluence, December 26, 2009
Dougan Creek Campground, Washington
Nikon D80, Tokina 12-24mm (AT-X 124 II) f/4.0 @ f/22.0, 1/2s, ISO 100
Developed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.6

On Boxing Day (aka the Feast of St. Stephen), Erik and I got up early to look for photos at sunrise. We made a slight miscalculation in that the time given for sunrise is when the sun actually breaks the horizon, which is significantly after the best light. Regardless, we were down in the canyon and well hidden from direct light.

Dougan Falls is up the Washougal River from my parents' house. The campground is now closed, but it's a short, pretty drive up to the falls. Clambering around on the slime-covered rocks below the falls is treacherous even in warm weather, and the windy at-freezing temperatures we found on Saturday caused us to use much extra caution when moving our tripods along the icy river bank.

This scene is found downstream from Dougan Falls, where Dougan Creek meets the Washougal River. I abandoned Erik for a while and clambered through the brush, looking for a better angle up river towards the falls. To my surprise I found Dougan Creek. You never know what you're going to find on St. Stephen's Day. (No old men gathering firewood, though.)

Deck the Phones

Here's a holiday treat for you folks. I took a few of my photos from winters past and cropped them into photos sized for use as a smart phone background image. The size is 320x480, the right size for my Palm Pre (and coincidentally the iPhone).




I'll dispense with the full image statistics this time. Suffice to say they were all taken with my D80 and processed with Lightroom. The first two were from December 2008, the last one is from December 2007. If memory serves, first and last were taken with the 50mm and the center one was the wide end of the 18-200mm.

I'm not wholly satisfied with the middle one; I think it's a bit too blue. I might fix that before I use it on my phone. Right now I've got the first one as the background on my Pre, and the ringtone is a cute little intro to "Jingle Bells" from a Mormon Tabernacle Choir album.

'Tis the season.

Spotlight on Green

Posing Lizard, July 1, 2009
Kiahuna Plantation Resort, Po'ipu, Hawaii
Nikon D80, Nikkor 18-200 f/3.5-5.6 @ f/5.6, 1/500s, ISO 400
Developed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.5

Ah, Hawai'i. I'm not through with you yet. I still have many photos of you in my catalog left to develop and publish.

This little guy wasn't camera shy. We found him while walking around the gardens at our resort, Kiahuna Plantation. The wife's sharp eyes caught him first, nestled in the leaves of a bush. I'm sure he's some sort of common lizard that Hawaiian residents sick the cats onto, but for us he was quite charming.

She Wears a Striped Hat

Street Corner in Paradise, October 16, 2009
Avalon, California
Nikon D80, Nikkor 18-200 f/3.5-5.6 @ f/4.0, 1/1000s, ISO 400
Developed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.5

Last month when we were in California the wife, her mother and I took a boat out of San Pedro to Santa Catalina Island. We didn't feel the need to rent a cart or pay for a tour, so we stuck with our feet and prowled through the alleys and shops of tiny little Avalon.

The house on the hill also tickled my photographic senses the last time I was on Catalina, some 15 years ago. I remember taking a photo of it with the medium format camera that I had borrowed from the high school photo lab. I recall that one didn't turn out well. It seems my photographic skills have improved over the past decade and a half, which pleases me.