Seattle Skyline
Seattle Skyline from Kerry Park
I’m headed to Seattle next week and that put this picture in mind (a rerun on the blog). During our last Seattle trip the weather consisted of cold temperatures (50-ish) with rain — *every* day. The sun partially peaked out *one* afternoon for a couple hours. The picture above is a good reflection of that I think. To be fair, we knew in advance that the weather would stink that time of year but visiting family (with 3 new babies among us) was worth it and we had a great time. I have hopes of someday getting a clear-weather shot from Kerry Park with Mt. Rainier in the background but it’s not likely to happen next week as I doubt there will be much time for photographic adventures. In fact, I might not even pack more than the camera body, a single lens, and a flash (for the baby snapshots of course). We’ll see though — my tripod might sneak into the luggage.
Aside from a family photo shoot a couple of weeks ago (which I’ve been asked not to post online) I haven’t taken any pictures. Work at “work”, work at home, and family this and that have consumed all my time. That’s not a bad thing necessarily — those are the right priorities — but I hope to get out shooting sometime soon.
Dark Down Below
Stairway to nowhere…looks kind of eerie down there. HDR of an outdoor staircase in Snohomish, WA. One of many random(ish) shots I took while my wife was enjoying a massage in town. In keeping with my view that many HDR guys (and gals) go too far and bring out too much detail in the shadows, I tried to process just enough to give a sense of what’s down there without bringing it out completely.
Pike Place Market
Pike Place 50mm, f/2.8, 1/100s
A recent picture of two of my girls strolling in Seattle’s Pike Place Market. Looking forward to getting back to Seattle soon.
Tulips 50mm, f/2.8, 1/160s
I loved the contrast between the blues in the windows and the oranges/yellows in the flowers in the next shot.
More Flowers 50mm, f/1.4, 1/3200s
Peppers 50mm, f/2.2, 1/160s
I liked the possibilities in the next shot but didn’t execute it very well. The water and buildings made a cool backdrop through the windows IMO. I used manual mode and stopped down to f/14 to get a lot of depth of field and used a shutter speed fast enough for my shaky handholding yet slow enough for flash. It was a dark place relative to all the light streaming in the windows so flash was a must if I was going to keep the rainy mood in the background. I had no way to get the flash off-camera and bouncing didn’t work well so it’s not a lot better than a point-and-shoot. I’m sure I could have improved it with some effort but I didn’t want to stretch the girls’ patience too thin.
Portrait 50mm, f/14, 1/200s
Ru Paul For President!
This sign just cracked me up. Driving in Redmond, Washington almost two months ago I came across this doctored sign and without the iPhone camera handy I wouldn’t have been able to share it with you. I’m not a big fan of iPhone photography necessarily. It’s a fine camera but I’m not enamored with it to the point some seem to be and it’s frankly a pain not to have control of the various settings most of the time. That said, in a pinch it’s very handy to have around. The only edit was a crop done in one of my iPhone photo apps (don’t remember which).
The First Starbucks
On a recent trip to Seattle my daughters and I paid a visit to the first Starbucks. I’m not usually very interested in something like this but thought, “Hey, we were right here so we might as well do it.”. While the place isn’t that interesting or unique when viewed as just bricks and mortar it becomes a bit more when you think of what Starbucks has become. This location also operates in a different manner than your typical Starbucks — and that gives the place some charm. Upon entering the door an employee welcomes you, inquires where you are from, and directs you to the next available person to take your order. Once your order is taken, your cup is tossed across the room to the barista. We witnessed a couple of misses…maybe they were rookies. They were all having fun though.
Of course I had to take a few pictures. Using my 50mm @ f/1.4, I quickly figured out an exposure and fired away. There were a lot of people so I limited my shots a bit. For the image at the top my hope was to frame the counter, barista, the neon “Espresso…Cappuccino” sign, and Starbucks sign such that they were all completely readable but I never quite got it. Unlike some photographers, I’m not willing to sit there in everyone’s way, holding up the crowd, etc. just for my shot…just not that important to me. I could have waited for an opportunity but when I’m hanging with non-photographers (especially family) I try not to push their patience *too* much by spending all day taking pictures.
I processed the image at the top with the intent to make it look rather vintage and I added some grain to top it off. The rest were straightforward edits — basic tweaks.
You ordered HOW many shots?!?!
Seattle Skyline Snapshot
Moody Skies In Seattle 50mm, f/1.4, 1/4000s, ISO 200 – Click to view larger on Flickr
“If you own a house which faces west on an island in the Indian Ocean and your youngest sibling is left-handed and your primary vehicle is white, then subtract line 21 from line 13, multiply by 0.285, subtract your latitude and longitude and enter the result on line 85.” What’s that got to do with anything? I just did my income taxes and it seems like half the directions are as nonsensical as the one above. So, I’m just venting…our tax code is too complex and MESSED UP. It doesn’t matter what political party affiliation you claim, whether you think the system is fair or unfair, or you think the rich should pay more or less — I don’t see how anyone could disagree that it’s a mess. Solutions? I don’t get into those kinds of debates online 
In a previous post I showed a bokeh panorama (or “bokehrama”) from the same place the above picture was taken. The one above was a quick snapshot as we packed up to get out of the rain. I hadn’t planned on doing much with it but as I continued to see it among my photos it grew on me — I like the overall gloomy mood contrasted with the random colors of the skyscraper windows for example. Having a bit of detail and drama in the clouds helps too and I don’t think I would like it as much if the skies had been a flat gray.
This image is from a single frame captured with a 50mm lens. You may note the odd settings used — not typical for a landscape shot. The fact of the matter is that I had just used roughly the same settings for the panorama I linked to above. For this skyline image I sped up the shutter one stop with a flick of the dial (didn’t need quite the length of exposure that I needed for my daughter’s dark skin) and snapped this quickly so we could get going. Something like f/8 would’ve been sharper, etc. but there was no time to worry about that stuff. I cropped to a more panoramic aspect ratio (and cropped out another visitor to the park who was in the left side of my frame) then processed mainly with a bunch of curves and masks to selectively adjust contrast. I tweaked the white balance a bit to move from a completely black and white cast toward having a wee bit of warmth.
Seattle Skyline…Rained Out
Kerry Park, Seattle, Bokeh Panorama 50mm, f/1.4, 1/2000, ISO 200, stitched from 16 frames
My daughters and I went to downtown Seattle today to hang out and on the way we stopped in Kerry Park (thanks, Jim Nix for suggesting it). I had low expectations regarding the weather but did hope to grab a skyline panorama in any case. Long story short, the rains came and other visitors got in the way somewhat so all I managed was the quick, handheld bokeh panorama (from 16 frames) shown above. I look at it as making lemonade out of lemons — we did what we could given the conditions. I gave up on my plans for a high-res (zoomed in and in-focus) panorama since the rain was hard and blowing directly on to the lens. We headed to lunch at Pike Place Market and afterward the clouds broke and the sun peeked out. We headed back to Kerry Park on our way back home but by the time we got there it was raining hard again — could barely even see across the water. I didn’t bother trying any more photos. I may try some black and white treatments with this one someday…
Playing In The Snow
Snow Portrait 70mm, f/8, 1/125s, ISO 400, flash
We played in the snow today — quite a change from the warm, Texas weather. While I have no interest in living in a snowy climate again I do enjoy getting in the snow every once in a while. I took five of my children up to Stevens Pass in Washington for the express purpose of playing in the snow. There has been all sorts of snow up there in the past few days so we knew it would be fun. Things looked even better when it began snowing in the Seattle area before we even left the house.
After getting all wet and cold we headed back down the mountain and explored some side roads to enjoy the scenery. At one spot my daughter (the one in the picture above) pointed out a spot she thought would be nice for a group photo (below). At another nearby spot she asked me to take a few pictures of her in front of a bridge and the snow-covered trees (no one else wanted to get out of the car again).
Photo stuff…In the group photo below you can see the snow falling in front of our faces — we wanted to show the extent of the falling snow. However, in the individual shots we wanted to avoid the snow in the face and found a space under some trees which allowed that. However, it was so dark that we had to add some flash into the mix (no gels used). With the others waiting in the car I didn’t spend much time perfecting things but we like what we got.
The odd composition above came from just moving around trying different things out. I don’t like it…but my daughter does so I’m posting that one.
Snowy Group Portrait 70mm, f/6.3, 1/125s, ISO 640, no flash
Say ‘Cheese’!
Cute 40mm, f/6.3, 1/80s, ISO 800
Just plain cute. I grabbed this while my wife and her sister were trying to get our youngest to smile for the iPhone. Sometimes these are the best pictures.
Since this is supposed to be a photography blog I can’t leave out the processing…I hit the “Auto” button and did a couple other minor tweaks in Lightroom. Manual mode, flash bounced off the wall behind the camera.
Happy Ever After
Last month some of my family attended the wedding of my niece Jessica in Seattle. We would love to take the whole family to events like that but it’s just not practical in our case. The weather was what one might expect in Seattle — highs around 50 and wet.
Cold, Wet, Raining
I was asked to do some photography during the times when the paid photographer wasn’t around — rehearsal, early wedding morning — and grab a few extra pics at the reception. I had just acquired a Canon 5D Mark ii the day before we traveled and I got to try out its capabilities over the weekend. It has amazing low-light performance and I took full advantage of that.
Here are some pics from the weekend (here’s a link to one I already posted of the rings resting in the flowers). Some are just OK from a technical standpoint but are personally meaningful or interesting to our family.
Girls Going Out
The shot below was meant to focus on the ring (and it does) but it isn’t the greatest shot. However, I still like the general feel of it — soft light, very shallow depth of field so I included it. It was taken in passing as I wasn’t focused on taking pictures at that point. I’d love to have that opportunity again though. I’d get the ring hand fully in the shot, shoot from slightly higher to entirely fill the background with Jessica’s to-do list on the poster board while keeping the nail polish bottle fully in the frame as in this shot.
Early Wedding Prep
Some pics from the rehearsal:
Can You Spot The Happy Bride-To-Be?
Parents and Grandparents of the Bride
Think Dad's Nervous Already?
Final Instructions
Coaching For The Big Kiss
The wedding coordinator was concerned that the main photog wouldn’t arrive at the house early enough to get pictures of the miscellany like the rings, flower, shoes, etc. so she asked me to get some shots. Here are a few I came away with besides the ring shot:
Wedding "Stuff"
Wedding Bouquets
Pre-wedding pictures in church:
Group Photos...Look At The Camera
Group Photo
After the ceremony the wedding coordinator again commandeered me for a photo assignment. The hired photog was covering the bride and groom’s trip through the receiving line from a vantage point near the church doors. I was asked to cover near the end of the line and I’m glad I did — look at how happy they are!
Just Married!!!
Off To The Reception
During the reception I didn’t capture all that many shots but here are a few. Light was challenging in the reception hall. Bouncing flash was not that great (note the black ceilings) and I didn’t have 3 remote flashes on stands like the hired photog did. I still like the shots even with some of the shadows. I take comfort in knowing that there wasn’t a whole lot to be done without setting up extra lighting myself. I just kept a diffuser on the flash and pointed the flash either up and slightly forward or up and slightly behind me. As the night was winding down, Jessica asked me to take a picture of her with the bridesmaids up near the dance floor. I like how the light ended up just fine with the exception of how everyone’s hair disappears into the background. I didn’t have a second light to overcome that. When we walked to the front and lined up everyone and their brother got cameras out and started firing. Getting all the girls to look at me rather than the other cameras was a bit like herding cats. None of the shots had everyone looking normal so I just picked the best of the bunch.
Bride and Bridesmaids Impromptu
Toast
My In-laws On The Dance Floor
A candid of my beautiful wife. When she finds out her picture is here I’ll probably be in trouble. She never reads my posts so please — none of you go telling her. She never needs to know
My Beautiful Wife
The main photog had already left the reception when Jessica and Jonathan were making their exit so once again the coordinator asked me to take shots. I had the 50mm lens on and there was no time to fetch my 24-70 or really test out the flash to adjust compensation. I’d prefer a little different framing but I was zoomed out (with my feet) as far back as I could get and I wanted to catch some of the flag waving too. I got off 4 frames as they walked out and they capture the moment just fine. There was very heavy tungsten lighting in this little hallway. My flash was gel’ed with a 1/4 CTO and I could get away with cooling the color temperature more but I decided not to eliminate it completely. It’s a dilemma I often struggle with — Whether to keep some of that uncorrected color in certain shots. It can be a nice effect sometimes.
Off To Married Life!
To HDR Or Not To HDR?
Stairs, Snohomish, WA (Non-HDR version) 70mm, f/22, 1/2s, ISO 100
You know HDR is a verb, right? I didn’t realize until WordPress renamed my link that I’d used that title before (see that post here). Which do you like most? The non-HDR version (above) or the HDR version (below)? There’s no right answer of course but my favorite is the non-HDR image. I’d post them side-by-side but WordPress is giving me formatting fits…will update the post if I ever figure it out.
While in the Seattle area for a wedding last month my son and I went on a short photowalk in the little town of Snohomish. Snohomish is one of those cutesy towns with shops for tourists and all that. That morning it was just wet, dreary, and cold — somewhere in the high 30s with a stiff breeze to go along with it. The wet and dreary thing makes for decent HDR conditions typically but the cold I could have done without, especially having had temps in the low 80s when we left Austin the afternoon before.
On our walk I grabbed some brackets of these stairs for a semi-abstract image. It’s sort of urbex but maybe I’d call it “garden urbex” with all the moss growing (the stairs were surrounded by plants and flowers too). The dynamic range frankly wasn’t very high but as I’ve posted before one can get cool images just going through the tonemapping process. Last night I decided to process this scene but as I inspected the brackets I determined that using a single exposure would give me the image I wanted. Part of that decision was driven by the fact that I’ve gone through a few of David Nightingale’s (chromasia) tutorials and was itching to try my hand at some things. On a whim I took 5 exposures and did an HDR for comparison. It’s not an entirely fair comparison though as I only spent a quick 5 minutes tweaking the Photomatix output. However, I wasn’t really interested in trying to match the single exposure I processed. Rather, I purposely processed it without even looking at the single image so that I would rethink everything as I went through the process again (albeit very quickly).
Stairs, Snohomish, WA (HDR version) 70mm, f/22, ISO 100
Some details on the processing of the single-exposure image (shown at the top of the post): I began with the intent of going black and white but as I played with the channel mixer I ran across some color settings I liked. I ended up using -26 red, +129 green, and -7 blue. I used various curves layers to tweak parts of the image to taste (see the screenshot showing the masks below). All curves were simply adjusted on the RGB channel. This image was ripe for some individual color adjustments but I only have so much time for all this photo stuff.
A quick rundown on the curves layers: the darken and s-curve layers were blended in normal mode and the s-curve went a little stronger on the highlights side. The lighten and “curves 1″ (forgot to rename it) were in luminosity mode and as you see from the masks, targeted very specific parts of the image. Curves 1 was a very strong s-curve to bring out the contrast in the beam along the steps. “Lighten” brought out a bit of detail in the wet shadows in the nooks and crannies. I topped things off with a vibrance adjustment of +14 (the HDR image had a +25 adjustment b/c the curves layers I used didn’t bring nearly as much color as in the other image).
Non-HDR layers screenshot
Notice that the original (below) has a piece of peeled paint on the bottom step. I cloned that out since it interrupted the edge of the frame. It fit with the image but was just in the wrong place. That’s the only cloning I did.
Cropping was difficult. Not quite happy with it but I was less happy with the 17 other ways I tried.
Stairs, Snohomish, WA (Straight out of the camera) 70mm, f/22, 1/2s, ISO 100
Just Married!
Rings and Flowers 50mm, f/2.8, 1/8s
Jonathan and Jessica (my niece) got married in Seattle this past weekend. The flowers were going to be unavailable before the hired photographer was scheduled to arrive (I don’t remember where the flowers were headed…). The wedding coordinator asked me to grab some pics so I placed the rings on this rose and snapped away with my 50mm lens.
I also took pictures of the bride at various stages of getting ready, at the ceremony, and at the reception but I’m not going to post any of those because she may want other pictures to go public first.
Entrance, Queen Anne Baptist Church in Seattle 15mm, f/11, 1/6s, ISO 100
When we were at the wedding rehearsal I snapped this shot of the entrance of Queen Anne Baptist Church. A single exposure was used for most of the image but I masked in a darker exposure for the lamps (blown out in the normal exposure). I was asked to shoot pictures of the rehearsal itself and while it felt a little awkward (acting like a wedding photographer during the rehearsal) I was doing it at the bride’s request. Fortunately I was able to get some decent pictures both of the actual rehearsal and of our various family members who were there.
Congratulations to the happy couple!
A Most Blessed Event
The First Dance
I got to second-shoot my nephew’s wedding in Seattle a few weeks ago. Since I wasn’t responsible for the primary set of photos I spent my time experimenting and attempting to get some unique images. When the main photographer was using a normal lens, I mostly used my 10-20mm or my 70-200mm. If she was using a telephoto, I typically went normal or wide, etc. My goal was to capture things from a different angle (literally and figuratively) and get a different perspective on this blessed event.
For the shot at the top of the post I used my 10-20mm from about a foot off the ground. This was the bride and groom’s first dance and I shot the whole thing from that angle.
The shot below of the groom and his mother (my sister-in-law) was taken with a focal length of 200mm. It was tough getting this shot framed when zoomed in this tight on a moving couple. However, since the main photog was getting the normal shots I just went with it and hoped it worked.
The Groom and His Mother
As it got darker, things got tough. There was almost no light where the dancing was taking place. I shot with my widest aperture (f3.5 on the 10-20mm I used for most of these shots), bumped the ISO up, and then dragged the shutter a lot to get at least some ambient light from the background [I could write a whole post on how I played with flash/ISO/shutter/etc]. Here’s a shot from the dance floor well after dark:
Serenading the Bride
I had a great time, and while I certainly had to cull many images from the set, I ended up with many good images for the bride and groom to enjoy the rest of their lives.
Mount Rainier Panoramas
Mt. Rainier Sunrise
I spent last weekend in the Seattle area and had the privilege of second-shooting my nephew’s wedding. Maybe I’ll post some pics from that later.
Got to bed at 1:40am after the wedding and got up at 3:50am to take my daughter to the airport (she had another wedding to go). The skies had been quite clear during our visit so I had hopes of capturing some dawn shots of Mt. Rainier since I’d be further south toward the mountain.
After dropping my daughter off (at 4:30) I drove up to the 7th floor of the SE parking garage at SeaTac. There was a great vantage point so I abandoned my initial plan of driving further south toward the mountain — didn’t want to end up missing the first sunlight hitting the mountain.
Mt. Rainier Before the Sunrise
Shot a bazillion images. Bracketed some of them +/- 1 stop to be sure to get something decent. Captured the pano at the top of the post after sunrise, and this one above before the sun hit the face of the mountain. The sky was a bit hazy but I’m quite happy with what I got. In several other visits to Seattle over the years Mt. Rainier was only visible for a brief period one Sunday morning — never saw it again. I was fortunate to see it for several days last weekend.
Surely these aren’t the best panos you’ve ever seen but they do look quite a bit better when viewed large on flickr (click the images to go to flickr then click the “All Sizes” button above the image).
