A couple of weeks ago the family decided to have a long weekend in Portland.  Now I’ve been there before on business but only really for the day and then I didn’t see anything of the city so this was a new location for me as well as the rest of the family.

We drove down to the city as it’s only really about two and a half hours from Seattle and Lisa got us a lovely suite in the middle of the city.

One of the primary reasons for the trip was that Lisa is really into crafting and has pretty much decked out the bonus room in our house as her craft room.  She has two large tables full of cutting tools, knives, tape and paper and is always busy creating cool stuff.  Well this weekend Portland was the home of a large crafting expo.  So the plan was for Lisa and Abi to hit the Expo for the day and for James and me to go out and check out the city.

Portland has a pretty good public transport system with bus and tram stops everywhere and the time tables were great.  So James and I hit the road on foot and headed out to see what we could find (with the camera of course).  The girls went off to their expo and brought, well what looked to like paper and glitter but they enjoyed it.

James and I decided to get some shots of the city and I captured the famous “Portland Sign” along with the large paddle-boat on the river.  They have a really old town hall too so I shot that as well.  Then we decided to head out to the Japanese gardens.  The trip there was fun but kind of a disaster.  We got a city map and it showed that the tram service took us to the gardens and as we were by city hall and a tram stop we took that.  However the map was a little out of proportion once you got out of the city as when we arrived at the last tram drop off (which was at the zoo) we found out it was another three mile walk to the gardens.  For those who know me that wasn’t going to happen!  Not to be dejected we got a tram home and grabbed the car!  Anyway we went to the gardens and they were really nice.  Not much was in bloom but we got some nice pictures.

After the gardens it was back to the hotel to meet the girls.

For those of you who don’t know Portland is famous for a place called Voodoo Donuts.  Which is rather unsurprisingly a donut shop.  What is odd is that it’s open twenty-four hours a day and there is ALWAYS a line of people outside waiting to get their donut fix.  I found this odd as while the donuts were nice, I didn’t think they were really anything that special.  Still, we went (of course) and I got some shots of that too.

One the way home Lisa found us a cool waterfall to visit called the Multnomah Falls which was really big! This thing was over six hundred feet high and very impressive.

So, what did we think of Portland?

Well we had a great time that’s for sure.  Shopping is tax free so that’s good and there are some really great sites to check out.  As a city they seem to be obsessed with food trucks, they are everywhere and while it sounds kind-a cool, most look pretty dirty and for me uninviting.

We did however have some great food (there are some nice restaurants there) and the kids had fun.

Rather surprisingly I found the city pretty dirty.  We found a lot of graffiti, and there are a lot of homeless people in the city, so that wasn’t too nice.  But that said I’ll definitely go back again, probably next time not with the family so I can get more pictures.  So well worth a visit.

Here are some of the shots from the trip:

I was a little bored this afternoon as Lisa and Abi had gone out for a girls day out, and James was really engrossed in his XBox game.  So after lazing around all morning I went for a run and then decided to get the camera out.

It was a little miserable outside so I decided to photograph something indoors.  But what to shoot?  In the end I went for a self-portrait.

Now I’ve taken a few self-portraits before, but quite frankly it’s a pain to do.  You have to set up the lights without having the subject in front of you (because the subject is actually fiddling with the lights), then you have to turn the camera onto timer mode and run backwards and forwards and well take LOADS of pictures.  Getting good focus is a nightmare, you have to go to manual focus and then adjust, shoot, adjust, shoot etc., until you nail it.

I thought I’d do something a little different and as I spend my life in front of my computer I thought that might be a fun picture.  So out came the Mac, out came the lights and the setup began.

One of my favorite photographers is a guy called Joe McNally (he really is amazing).  Anyway I’ve been to some of Joe’s classes and one thing I saw him do was take a portrait picture of a guy on his computer.  What he did was place a piece of white paper on the computer screen and fire a light against the white paper that reflected back on the person’s face, this made it look like the computer was lighting the person – and it looked cool.

So that was light one.  I wanted to shoot the portrait kind of in the dark so I needed a back light behind me to provide separation for my hair and t-shirt.  So that was light two.  Things were looking pretty good, but the front of the computer was really dark, so that was light three.  The last problem was the Apple logo on the computer wasn’t bright enough, so I had to take a second picture without lights with a longer exposure to get the logo, and then put that into my picture in post processing!  Fun eh?

So that was the setup, next I had to take the picture.  So you’re probably wondering how many pictures is LOADS to get the focus right.  Well this afternoon it was 79 pictures.  79 attempts to get a picture in focus that I liked.  In reality focus took around 40 pictures, then nearly another 40 to get a picture of me that I was willing to share – hey, photographers don’t like being in front of the camera either!

Once I got the shot I had to do some tidying up in Photoshop and of course add that bright Apple logo to the front.  I didn’t do too much here, brought back some of the shadows in my t-shirt, sharpened the image and added some clarity (another form of sharpening) that makes me look all manly 🙂

Here’s the end result, and I’m pretty pleased with it too.  In the end it was a fun afternoon and well worth the time.

I’ve been posting images online now for a quite a while and over the last year I’ve made a lot of new friends on Facebook, predominantly because of my “Picture a Day” posts.

Well one of the people I met on Facebook (is that what you call it) is a guy called Mike Arntzen.  Mike and his wife Rosalyn are involved in a Redmond City board that’s advertising the city through a campaign called OneRedmond.  If truth be told I don’t know much about the campaign but Mike reached out and asked if they could use some of my images in a brochure and website for the city.

Obviously being an armature photographer I was delighted by the request and of course said yes.

There were a couple of images though that Mike suggested would look great in the campaign and asked if I would take the pictures.  I think I actually offered to shoot anything else they wanted but either way Mike came up with some suggestions.

The first idea was I guess pretty obvious for a campaign like this, Mike wants a shot of the City Town Hall.  The second idea was pretty cool and something I hadn’t thought of before.  Mike came up with the idea for me to shoot one of the fire stations in Redmond.

So today, being dry was the ideal time to go out and see what I could get.  First I went to City Hall and got some shots from around the building.

The building is pretty new and quite impressive, but unfortunately one side of the building was spoilt by a large crane in the background.  So I had to shoot from only one side.  Still the pictures came out OK.

Next I drove over to the fire station on 185th.  If I’m going to shoot something with people in it, I kind of think you have to ask first (only polite I guess).  So I knocked on the door to the station and some of the guys came out.

I told them about the campaign and they were incredibly helpful and opened up the doors and let me get some great shots.  I took loads of pictures and am uploading some of my favorites tonight.

Of course when I got home Lisa was furious that I didn’t come and get her first.  She really liked the idea of accompanying me to the station to get some shots, perhaps acting as my “assistant” (her words).  Either way she missed the opportunity.

Anyway, check out the pictures and I’ll let you know when the OneRedmond site goes live so you can all check it out.

Here are the pictures of the City Hall.

And here are the fire station:

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, so sorry about that.  But I think I was so burnt out after last year’s picture a day that I really needed a break.  That said, for the last couple of weeks I’ve really had itchy feet and wanted to go out, but ironically didn’t get the chance.  But this weekend the stars aligned and the weather was great so I visited Woodland Park Zoo with a couple of friends (Chris Pearson and Eric Bie).

I’ve actually been there a few times with the camera but the other guys hadn’t so we took our time (without wives or kids telling us to hurry up) and got some great pictures.

Just over three months ago the zoo got some new attractions.  One of the lioness’ gave birth to a litter of cubs.  I think there were four of them in total (at least that’s what I saw) but it’s hard to say as they are tricky to follow as they are seriously fast and very playful.  So you tend to watch one of them and get totally absorbed.

The zoo had been promoting the new arrivals for a while now and people were in line waiting to see the cubs.  The cubs were outside but the only way you could see them was through glass.  To challenge us a little the glass was pretty dirty so we were worried how the pictures would come out.  But we stood in line for about 20 minutes and got to the front of the barrier by the glass to get some pictures.

Cute just doesn’t do these guys justice.  They were amazing to watch, super fun either playing with twigs or logs in their enclosure or play fighting with each other.  Mum was there too and spent most of her time pacing back and forth making sure her four new babies were OK.

In all I took around 50 pictures of the cubs, but there was one cub that really held my attention – so most of my shots were of him (probably because he was so close to me) and I ended up with around a dozen images that I really loved.  I didn’t want to over do it and bore you with loads of pictures so I selected (with Lisa’s help) the best three.

Hope you like them.

A few months ago I attended a photography course at Bellevue College called “Shoot to Show”. The purpose of the course was to learn how to shoot pictures that people would want to buy, frame and hang them in a public showing and try and sell some work.

We had a window of a few months to go and take pictures that followed a theme. The class could pick its own theme and the one we selected was “The Beginning or End of Day”.  We spent ages picking the theme and even when we selected this one not everyone was happy.  In the end the images taken were supposed to make you think of the beginning or end of the day but having said that I’m not sure all the images were successful, but I don’t think it was really that important – we had fun.

Once we all took a load of pictures, we had to submit them to a jury to select their favorites. Our jury had four members, one of which was the dean of the college and they stack ranked your pictures in their favorite order.  We were only allowed to frame and hang 3 pictures and they had to be the top three pics from the jury.

I submitted nine pictures in total and the jury’s top pick was my favorite too, but the other two were a surprise.

• My first picture was taken on the west side of Lake Washington looking at a pier and in the distance Bellevue.  I had a neutral density filter on the camera so I had a long exposure and the water looked smooth like glass.
• The second image was taken of Snoqualmie Falls.  When I took this picture I got completely soaked.
• The last image was taken in Bellevue Downtown Park of a tree as the sun was setting.

I liked all three but they weren’t the ones I would have picked.  That said I framed all three for the show.  I went to Aaron Brothers in Redmond and brought some frames (they had a great deal on where if you brought one frame you got one for 1c).  I printed the images out myself and purchased some pre-cut mats (to keep the framing costs down) and framed the images myself.

Part of the course was instruction on how to frame your images.  Details on popular frame types and colors, how to select mats and how to finish the frame with backing and wire.  All stuff I really didn’t know.

Well today was the day that I got to hang the images.  I drove over to Renton and joined the other students on the course and we all learnt how best to hang your images for best effect.  (Trust me it’s more than just throwing them on the wall).  Ray (our instructor) asked us to provide details on the images and prices, along with a bio and head shot.  He printed out all the information and backed it on foam board.  Having hanged the pictures we added the details for each image and our bio and picture.

The showing opens officially on Tuesday night and I’m looking forward to see what happens. The whole course was very good, I learnt a load, and made some new friends and if I’m lucky, I make a few dollars too (not that that really matters of course).  The real reason I did this is that we have a load of coffee houses in the area and many of them let you show your work and sell it out of the shop.  So haven’t gained some experience I may try doing this on my own.

Again this isn’t really a big money making opportunity, but if it pays for some camera gear every now and then, that’s great.

After Tuesday I’ll let you know how it goes, but for now here are my three images hanging on the wall.

Here’s the three pictures.