Voyage of Discovery

A friend of mine, Nona who I met at a photography workshop

with Tony Sweet last fall, headed out to visit Seattle last week.

We met up with another of Nona's friends and wandered over

to Discovery Park looking for some sunset photo opportunities

overlooking the Puget Sound.

Discovery Park is right smack dab in the middle of Magnolia, no

more than a ten-minute drive from where I live in Queen Anne.

Exotic it is not.

That does not mean that there are no photo opportunities there, of course;

you just have to learn to have new eyes.

SoFoBoMo: DONE!

I finished my book!

True, the layout is very simple, and there aren't any nifty interactive features, video, music, or that sort of thing, but since it's my first book, I don't mind that.

I may go back and create another version that includes actual photo essays, but for a first book, I'm pretty happy with this effort, because I succeeded, a day early.

For those of you who take the time to check my book out, I hope you enjoy it!

SoFoBoMo: Point of the Arches

My first SoFoBoMo photo safari was quite succesful.

My friend and I went out to Neah Bay, 

and hiked out to Shi Shi. We

walked along the beach and found 

a camp site near Point of the Arches.

After setting up camp, we spent some time 

wandering about the tide pools

while the tide was nice and low, which 

kept us busy until the sun set.

The haze kept us from seeing the moon rise, 

so we just went to bed and

awoke at 4am hoping to see the moonset. 

The overcast took care of that

though, so we couldn't see the moon in the morning, either.

The rising sun burned off enough of the 

cloud cover to give us some nice soft

morning light, so we got some good 

photo opportunities during that

period. The morning tide was very low, so we 

were able to explore the tide pools

some more, and also get some alternate 

views of the sea stacks from

close up.

We found that little crab early in the morning after the sunrise.

Naturally, I'd left my macro lens back at the tent, so I used

the lens I had on the camera, which was my wide angle. It

worked out better than I hoped.

The waves were picturesque, and the fog layer on the

mountains was beautiful.

This hermit crab was feasting on this, as far as I can

tell. 

This ended up being one of my favorite shots from the trip.

That tree made its way into quite a few of my images, both at

sunset and at sunrise.

So my SoFoBoMo month has begun. It is on :)

Spring is here at last!

One of my friends organized a trip up to Mount Vernon on Friday. I left Seattle at around 4:25am, met up with the crew, and arrived in Mount Vernon at around 6:15. We puttered around a bit, looking for the "best" daffodil field, and parked.

The "best" daffodil field is a tough one to determine, because they don't look that different from each other. The one picked had a bit of a hill, and more space for us to park than the others. :)

The first shot here is an attempted HDR, showing the sky, the flowers, and one of the farmhouses in the area. I merged the HDR in Photoshop CS4. It seems to work fairly well; I'll have to keep experimenting. I have a lot to learn about working with HDR images.

Although I did do come up with some wide-angle shots like the one above, most of my images are, as usual, close-ups.

I found this bug while setting up a close-up on one of the many daffodils in full bloom. The insect didn't move while I set up the shot, so I had plenty of time, one advantage of being out there so early in the morning.

I don't know whether the insect was hiding there, or feeding. Possibly both. I need to learn more about daffodils and insects, I suppose :)

This was some dew that I found on one of the daffodils. I like seeking out little details like this, there's always something new to discover if you look closely enough!

The hard part is setting up the shots, more than just finding them. With the magnification that I was using (Nikon 105mm VR Micro + Nikon 2x teleconverter), there was very little depth of field available, so I couldn't get all of the dew drops in focus. Instead I had to pick one, and attempt to arrange a composition around them that that didn't require that the rest of them be sharp. Even then, it wasn't an obvious setup, and it took several tries to get it to this point. I'm still not entirely satisfied with this image, because I think it needs to be sharper.

I'll get a second chance when we go back to the Mount Vernon area in search of tulips. :)