I got in from work tonight, had some dinner and hit the road with the camera.  I wanted something new to post and thought a nice sunsety picture would look good.  A place I’ve been meaning to go now for a while is Seattle’s Boat Club.  As you drive over the 520 bridge into Seattle you cross Lake Washington, and the a smaller lake called Portage Bay before you get to Lake Union and Seattle.  Located in Portage Bay is Seattle Boat Club.

It looks pretty cool as you drive past on the free way, so tonight I thought I’d try and grab a picture there.  I found the boat club pretty quickly off Lake Washington Boulevard and found somewhere to park up.  The houses around this bay are really impressive, they overlook the water and are huge (we are talking multi-millions I would think).

Anyway I parked up, grabbed the tripod and camera and went for a walk.  There were 4 pier’s surrounded by boats and some of the boats were massive.  In the end I set up the camera between piers 2 and 3 and captured today’s picture.  The sun had just set over Seattle and the sky looked really cool.

The water reflected the sky and clouds and made I think a really nice picture.  I’d quite like to go back there when it get’s dark as the whole place is lit up and I’m sure will look amazing.  But that’s a shot for another day.

Tonight the guys decided to have some muffin.  Chocolate banana, yummy.

In yesterday’s posting I told you about visiting Ballard Locks in Seattle – I was lucky enough to get a few good shots and today’s posting is another one from the visit.   Yesterday’s tug boat entered the lock from Lake Union and to get out of the Lake and into the lock it had to get past the Ballard railway bridge.  I was there at exactly the right time to shoot the boat as the bridge raised and the tug boat sailed underneath.

The boat was moving pretty fast so I couldn’t HDR the image, I had to shoot just one shot and process that when I got home.  We had quite a bit of cloud cover (it rained a little on the way home) but it came out as very grey in the finished picture.  So I single file tone mapped the image to bring a bit of texture and color back.

The end result looked pretty good, with the yellow tug boat under a blue grey sky.

Ten minutes before I took this shot a train went across the bridge, it actually wasn’t that impressive so I didn’t take a picture, but it did show that the bridge was still fully functional.  I actually liked this image best but I let Lisa pick the image for yesterday’s posting.  This really was one of those moments when you knew you had a great shot the moment the shutter closed.

Carter wanted to play basketball this evening but the ball was flat, so he helped pump it up.

This afternoon we decided to go out for the day and headed over to North Seattle to Ballard Locks.  The locks link Lake Union (that also goes to Lake Washington), with Elliott Bay and ultimately the Pacific.  The locks are pretty busy and open and close daily multiple times.  If you want to ride through a lock there’s an Argosy cruise that takes you from Elliott Bay to Lake Union and they you get a bus back to Seattle’s water front.  We did the cruise a few years ago and it’s pretty cool.

But today we were their on the dock side watching the boats go through.  When we got there the main large lock (there are two one massive one and one small one) was empty.  They were just lowering the water level to let boats enter from Lake Union.  The first boat to come along was this massive tug boat called the Western Titan.  The bridge in Ballard had to raise to let the tug boat through (I got a great picture of that as well) and then moored up in the lock ready for the water to rise.

However being first is bad, as it takes around an hour to fill the lock up and raise the water level, so the guys on the boat got comfortable and sat back to wait.  In the interim they had to put up with loads of people with cameras taking their picture.  In the image below you can see the Western Titan at the front and a load of smaller boats in the lock behind.  This lock is HUGE and can hold a lot of vessels, it would have been nice to see them rise up and sail out but Abi was cold so we left before the rear lock gate closed.

These locks are really cool and definitely worth a visit Ballard also seems like a nice place to live – loads of bars and restaurants and trendy shops (Lisa liked it anyway).  They have some botanical gardens there too (photographed them as well) and a fish ladder for Salmon who want to swim up river to spawn.  But more about that in a future posting.

After visiting Ballard Locks we went to Red Mill Burgers across the road and Carter and Master Chief fell in love – with a Double Bacon Cheese Berger.

Sometimes to get ideas of what to shoot I’ll look on the internet.  Putting in the name of a city or region can display images and views you’ve never noticed.  I guess this could be construed as cheating, but I’m not looking to totally plagiarize an image, I’m just looking for locations and things to shoot.

Anyway, I had to go to work today and I was looking for something I could shoot tomorrow.  So I put “Seattle” into Bing and loads of really nice images popped up.  A few times the image of the coffee cup outside Post Alley appeared.  It would seem that this neon cup is kind of a Seattle iconic image.  Anyway I looked at the pictures and thought “I’m sure I captured that”.  So when I got home I looked in my back-log and sure enough I have the picture.

Obviously Seattle is famous for it’s coffee, it is after all that city the gave birth to Starbucks.  So this large neon coffee cup at the entrance of Post Alley in Pike Place Market represents Seattle quite well.

When I took this it was pretty dark and the market was deserted.  This was a long exposure and the dark sky came out blue.  I think the blue sky and neon sign look really cool together.  Anyway I hope you like the image.

The guys wanted to climb something today, so I pointed them to this – well it’s kind of a glass fake flower display thingy – and up they went!

I got home from work tonight and the sun was starting to go down so I thought I’d walk to the end of the road and see if I could get a picture of the water catchment area in our neighborhood.  I don’t go there very often (I should really as Roxie our dog loves running around the trails by the water) but I thought the low sun might make a nice image.

So I grabbed the camera (and Roxie) and Abi and I set off to see what we could shoot.  I should point out here that the other reason we don’t go there is because Lisa doesn’t like frogs.  Those of you who know here know that she can’t even say the word, she call’s them Ya-ya’s.  So we never visit the trails and water.  But as Lisa wasn’t coming with us off we went.

We actually picked a good time to go as the sun was shining on the trees and shrubs and it was really pretty.  The water reflected the tree line and the moon was even out behind one of the trees at the top.  I grabbed a couple of shots and we walked around the pond.  It’s a good job Lisa wasn’t there as there were Ya-ya’s everywhere.

The image I would have liked to capture really needed a wider angle lens, but mine’s in the shop so until that comes back I had to stand back a bit further to get a shot I liked.  The reflection of the trees in the water made this picture and the greens and yellows looked great.

For some reason tonight the guys decided to cook come spaghetti, getting it out of the pot though was a bit of a challenge.