What can I tell you, I HATE taking pictures of animals. It’s not that I don’t like them or anything, I just don’t have that patience gene that allows me to either sit over a hole in the ground for hours, stand quietly in a wooded area with a long lens or in my case this weekend, try to convince my stupid dog to sit still.

But as Lisa (my wife) wanted a new picture of Roxie our dog, that’s what I had to do.

Roxie is a Maltese Shih Tzu mix and just doesn’t like having her picture taken. She’ll sit there looking beautiful until the moment I pull the camera up to my face, at which point she runs for the hills.

Now I’ve read blog postings from other photographers who talk about offering treats and being patient for that perfect shot, but I just don’t have the patience – or quite frankly the desire!

But again as Lisa wanted a picture we grabbed the camera, one light and hit the garden with Roxie and a cheese stick. Roxie loves cheese sticks so I figured this might keep her still, but it had the complete opposite effect. She went mental.

Rather than sit still like all those amazingly trained dogs you see on TV, Roxie decided to dance around like a nutta. At all times she didn’t take her eyes off the cheese Lisa was holding, jumping up and down, spinning round in circles and when she did stop and sit still, the only shot I got was a great shot of the back of her head.

Have I mentioned I don’t like doing this?

Anyway, after lots of attempts (and I mean a lot), I managed to get four passable images that Lisa quite liked.

In every one I had to crop out Lisa who was holding the cheese and re-compose the shot so Roxie was nicely positioned in the shot.

Luckily Lisa got her image and I’m saved from having to do this again for a couple of years.

Here are the four we liked:

When we got back from Orlando I had a couple of days off before I had to go to work. So I figured that while I was getting up nice and early (due to the time difference) I’d go and shoot a sunrise over Seattle.

Now sunrise shots in summer suck as you have to get up at like 4am! But I did it and got all my gear together and headed off to the city.

Question was where to go?

To really get the sun over the city I’d have to go over the West Seattle to Alki Beach or something, but I’d done that before.

So this time I thought I’d try Kerry Park to shoot the city skyline as the sun came up on the left. Sure I wouldn’t get the sun in the shot, but I should see some nice light over the city as the sun broke over the horizon. At least that was the plan!

I got there with plenty of time and set up with my 18-135 lens and started taking pictures before the sun came up.

At first it looked like I was going to get some great shots, but as the sun started to provide more light it became clear that while the city looked great (really good visibility) there was a lot of low cloud cover.

The light was nice but I wasn’t going to get the spectacular shots I was hoping for.

Still, this is what can (and usually does) happen with landscape photography. The answer is to keep going and see what you can get.

So I stuck around for about two hours taking pictures while the sun rose and you can see some nice light hitting the buildings on the left.

Before I left I thought I’d try something a little different.

In Kerry Park, right by the location where people shoot the city is a large piece of modern art. I don’t really know what it is but it’s basically a big square thing with round holes all around it.

I was wondering what a picture of the Space Needle would look like if I shot through the statue.

So I moved my tripod and set up for the shot.

Ironically this is my favorite picture of the day, so I included that too.

When I got home I looked at all the images of the city and while they were nice none of them really jumped out and grabbed me! So I decided to add a few filters in Lightroom (no Photoshop here) with a little bit of dual tone action. I added some contrast and clarity and got an image I liked.

So that’s the one I’m sharing with you today.

Why oh why would anyone go to Orlando in July I hear you ask? Great question. The answer is of course because that’s when the kids are off school 🙁

Sure it would be great to go in November or February, but we wanted to go for two weeks and with children in High School and Middle School you just can’t do that.

So Lisa planned this great vacation to Florida in what was probably the hottest month of the year.

The question is, did we have fun? Bloody right we did 🙂

For those who haven’t done this foolish vacation in July, I’ll explain the problem.

Firstly it’s hot. Now that in itself isn’t an issue, I mean when you go on vacation you want it to be hot right? The trouble is this isn’t really a “sit by a pool and read a book” vacation. This is a vacation where you are walking for around 14 miles a day around amusement parks packed with people.

I know what you’re thinking. “Hang on, that’s not so bad, I mean a bit of heat is OK, just drink water and wear sunscreen”. All true, but it’s not just the heat!

At this time of year the humidity is insane! It’s like walking through water.

Basically early morning it’s great. Really lovely outside. That is until around 10am. Then it starts to get “sticky”. This stickiness increases until by 2pm you are just miserable. All sweaty, uncomfortable and just feeling yuk.

You also can’t breath as it’s just nasty outside, it feels like it’s about to poor with rain.

That is until 4pm when the skies open and torrential rain comes down. Now I live in Seattle and it rains here, but not like it does in Florida.

In fact I think it rains more in one day in Florida that it does in a month in Seattle! It’s like someone pores a bucket of water over your head, continually for an hour!

So you get wet running from ride to ride. And this would be (you’d think) ok, coz it’s still warm outside, heck even the water is warm. But when you get to the ride, you walk into a heavily air conditioned line and your nipples fall off.

Fun eh?

So you keep going until you can’t stand it no more – one day we stayed until 1am.

Then you go back to your hotel and shower and feel amazing. But then you have to go out again to get some dinner.

I know I’m making this sound like some kind of torture, and in some ways it kind’a is, but the good news is you laugh A LOT and have a great time.

Lisa got us an apartment at a golf resort called “Reunion” here’s a link so you can check it out. It was basically FANTASTIC.

We had a three bedroom apartment and the resort had 9 different pools and a water park with a slide and lazy river!

It was also five miles from Disney so getting to the parks was super quick.

So what did we do while we were there?

We visited:

• Disney Magic Kingdom twice
• Disney Epcot twice
• Disney Hollywood Studios once
• Disney Animal Kingdom once
• Downtown Disney twice
• Universal Studios twice
• Universal Islands of Adventure twice
• Universal City Walk twice
• Busch Gardens once
• So we were pretty busy 🙂

So what did we like?

The Magic Kingdom was (as always) great. I don’t care how old you are, you just have a great time walking around the park. Splash Mountain, Space Mountain, Buzz Light year, It’s a Small World are our favorites.

Epcot I think is our favorite park. We loved it there so went twice. Just walking around the world sampling different foods was great fun and we had a blast with the different attractions.

Hollywood Studios was a bit of a let down. I seem to remember this being better but we didn’t have a great time there.

Animal Kingdom was great and Abi and I had a lot of fun on some of the water rides getting totally soaked. Also the safari drive around the park was super cool. I got loads of great pics on that but didn’t include them coz once you’ve seen an elephant…

Downtown Disney was a bit of a mess this year. They are carrying out some MAJOR refurbishment and there were road works everywhere and parking was a bit of a mess. I’m sure it will be great when it’s complete but I think they are easily a year away. Still we visited our favorite shops and stocked up the kitchen with new cups.

Universal should really be re-named “Harry Potter World” as that’s what it’s becoming. Now if you are not a potter fan you shouldn’t go (I think) but if you like it – wow it’s just amazing.

They’ve build Diagon Alley in Studio and Hogsmeade village in Islands of Adventure and you can take the train from Kings Cross to go from one to the other. This who experience is just amazing and you can’t fail to fall in love with the stories and characters again when you visit.

The attention to detail in both locations is ridiculous. I was in Hogsmeade and asked for a coke only to be told “sorry sir, we don’t sell Muggle drinks here” – Brilliant!

Other parts of both parks are great too, but for me (as a huge fan) it’s all about Potter.

The big disappointment for us this trip was Busch Gardens. It was really expensive ($100 each!) and all the animals were hiding and the ride lines made you want forever. A real shame as I seem to remember this as a great place to go years ago. I definitely won’t be going back.

That aside we had a fantastic vacation. Both James and Abi had a great time, even being stuck on two rides was cool (one in Epcot and one in Universal – although Abi didn’t like being stuck in Universal as we were way high up and a thunderstorm was coming in).

The place we stayed was fantastic and while it was super hot we had an excellent time.

Seriously can’t wait until we go back.

On a photography front, all I took was the X-T1 with my new 18-135mm lens and the X100T.  Some days I took one out, others I took the other.  Here’s the shocker – I had more fun with the X100T than the X-T1 and think that many of the images I took with that smaller cheaper camera are my favorites.

Here are some shots of each park.

Magic Kingdom

 

Epcot

 

Universal Studios

 

A few days after our Seattle visit we decided to go back. We thought it would be fun to watch the sun set over the city from the Columbia Tower.

The Columbia Tower is the tallest building in the city and is 943 feet high. It was build back in 2007 and cost a whopping $200 million. The tower has 76 floors and the story goes that the Architect (Chester Lindsey) wanted 76 to celebrate his fathers 76th birthday. However the height of the building was going to be too high and violated Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rules as the building was under the approach flight path to SeaTac airport.

So Chester solved the problem by dropping the height of each floor by 2 inches, just getting under the approved height!

I have no idea if this is true but it’s a great story 🙂

Anyway the 73rd floor has a “Sky View Observatory” that costs $12 to visit and it gives you a panoramic view of the city.

We got to the tower about 8:30 (sun was supposed to set at 9pm) and I checked out the views.

My idea was to set the camera up on a tripod and start taking pictures as the sun was going down, and keep going until well after it had set and the city lights had come on.

For this shoot I had my 10-24mm ultra wide set to f/11 – that way I’d get everything in focus.

After walking round the building a couple of times I picked my spot shooting directly into the sun over the Olympics with the City (and Space Needle) in my foreground.

I put the camera on the Tripod, connected the shutter release cable and started taking pictures.

Now I should point out that I had my wife, two kids and father in-law (with his wife) with me. – I really should have thought this though, as by 9pm as the sun was going down they were all getting board!

So I had to keep apologizing as I wasn’t going anywhere for another half hour – at least!

So I just kept going.

I had a couple of close issues, my battery ran out at about ten past nine, so I had to change that without moving the camera, and a load of people kept coming by and got way too close to the setup.

Anyway by 9:30, my son came and told me that if I wanted to live I needed to pack up NOW – Lisa was not happy.

So I grabbed everything and we left with me hoping I had enough.

When we got home I started processing.

What I wanted was the sun going down over the mountains with a nice amount of light over the water, but with the city lights on. Obviously this is an impossible image as you can’t see both at the same time.

So it was clearly time for Photoshop magic.

In the end I picked two images. One at around 8:50 with the sun really low in the sky, and the other was the last one I took at 9:30.

I added some adjustments in Lightroom to both pictures to get a great sky and backdrop in one and a great city in the other, and then manually blended them together with layers and an overlay mask.

The end result is the image below.

OK, so this isn’t real, it’s art, but so is EVERY OTHER PICTURE like this you have ever seen 🙂 This is just my version.

It’s funny how when you live really close to a place how frequently you visit. I guess you keep telling yourself “I’ll go another day!” I lived 30 miles from London in the UK for many years and I never went into the city!

Well Seattle is kinda the same. We live no distance at all (it takes about 20 minutes to drive in) and we hardly ever go.

However recently we had some family visitors and we planned a day in the city. The weather was going to be beautiful so I grabbed my camera and off we went.

I had recently brought a new 18-135 lens for our upcoming Orlando vacation and decided to take the lens and check it out. Now it’s not that fast (f/3.5 when shooting at 18mm and drops down to f/5.6 as you zoom in) but the image quality seemed pretty good and as an all weather lens, it seemed a great choice for a family vacation.

As I’m a sucker for ultra wide lenses, I also took along my 14mm f/2.8 so I had some nice wide glass if I needed it.

I won’t bore you with all the family pictures (you will get enough of those when I go to Florida) so I just picked some nice pictures of the city.

I have to say I was REALLY pleased with the new lens. Sure yes it’s not as sharp as some of the primes I have, but being able to just point and shoot without having to keep changing lenses was great.

Lisa is not the most “patient” wife when I’m out with a lot of gear, so I’m adapting and trying to have to photographer persona’s.

There’s the version of me that takes loads of gear and spends lots of time taking the same image from different points of view with different glass, and there’s the husband who grabs the shot with one lens and moves on.

It was a lovely day and I got some nice shots of the city.

Looking forward to really putting the new lens through its paces when we go on our vacation.