The Perfect Lens for Being Drunk

The Space Needle After Half a Bottle of Wine, June 5, 2009
The Space Needle, Seattle, Washington
Nikon D80, Lensbaby Composer @ f/2.8, 1/80s, ISO 800
Developed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.3, ACR 4.4 profile

For our fifth anniversary the wife and I dined at SkyCity, the revolving restaurant at the Space Needle. Absolutely the best views in Seattle, especially at sunset. The food was not as spectacular; it was good but be clear that the significant prices are justified (just barely) by the view, not the food quality. Savvy shoppers will sign up for the SkyCity e-mail list, which netted us a free entree and a bottle of wine. The wife doesn't drink wine (well; the wife doesn't drink wine well), so it was up to me to absorb the value of our freebie.

After tottering back down to ground level, while we waited for the valet to bring the car (yes folks, the wife drove) I broke out the camera with Lensbaby mounted. I teetered underneath the tower and pointed upwards. I'm pleased with the results.

The tweaking in Lightroom was pretty extensive. I debated whether or not to try to kill the color cast on the outer ring, but decided that the shot looked boring in black and white. Maybe I could play with the color balancing for the grayscale conversion and get interesting tones. I'd have to be careful, as the high ISO tends to cause noise to pop out easily. That is one benefit to using the Lensbaby: all the blurring tends to mitigate the noise.