When I left work tonight at 7:30 it had been dark outside for nearly 3 hours – how nuts is that?  So I’m driving home and you know what I’m thinking, what am I going to post tonight?  On the way home it was a really nice evening, the moon was full and looked huge and it was dry with a pretty clear sky.  So I decided to look for a night shot.

On my way home is Marymoor Park and they usually have these big flood lit sports fields so I thought it might be interesting to shoot one of those with the moon in shot.  So I detoured off into the park.  Unfortunately there were a load of people playing soccer and the fields were all full.  I really didn’t want to go through the process of asking people if I could shoot them so I looked for something else.

Marymoor is a pretty big park and they have loads of different sections for visitors, one of which is the velodrome.  For those of you who don’t know, a velodrome is a large circular bicycle track for cycle racing.  It has large banked corners so they can ride super fast around the whole track.  Tonight the place was completely empty and totally lit up with these huge flood lights.  So I had complete autonomy to set up wherever I wanted and got the chance to take loads of pictures from different angles.

Obviously I wanted to get the moon in the picture too so ended up selecting the image below.  Here I got the start line on one side and the observation building, some of the bleach seats and the first corner banking off to the left.  I angled the camera a little to accentuate the curve of the track and got the moon in the image too.

All I did for this picture was add a heavy vignette to darken the corners.  Other than that the image is right out of the camera.

Tonight the guys found a drum kit to play with, but all Master Chief could do was kick the drum!

It’s been a while since I posted an airplane, so tonight I bring you the “Hawker Hurricane Mk XIIA”.

This model helped turn the tide of the Battle of Britain, allowing the Allies to continue their fight against Nazi Germany.  The Hurricane made use of construction methods from its biplane predecessors, including a fabric-covered tail.  Because of its simplicity and adaptability, the Hurricane would serve in every major theater of air warfare in World War II.

While the Supermarine Spitfire is more famous, the Hurricane destroyed more German aircraft.  The Hurricanes were often dispatched to fight against lumbering bombers, while the Spitfires often took on the more agile fighters.  Historians still debate which aircraft was more important in the victory.

This Mk.XIIA was manufactured by Canadian Car & Foundry Company at Fort William, Ontario.  It was powered by a U.S. Build Packard Merlin XXIX engine.

This aircraft was was delivered to the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) on January 22, 1942, but never saw combat.  After the fighter was involved in a crash landing, it was discarded by the RCAF.  After it was recovered from a farm in Ontario, Canada, Hawker Restorations Ltd. rebuilt the fighter at Milden, England.  The first flight of the restored aircraft took place on March 15, 2006 at Wattisham, England.

While everyone “loves” the Spitfire (I do too of course) I have a soft spot for the Hurricane.  When I saw this plane I had to capture a shot.

The boys got nice and cozy with a pussy tonight.  Not sure the cat was that impressed thought!

The Bellevue Downtown Park is right next to Bell Square Mall – which by the way if you haven’t visited is a pretty impressive shopping mall, just ask Lisa!  Just by the Mall where the part starts is this large fountain surrounded by lamps.  I have no idea if it’s here to signify anything but it’s covered in flags.  I was there for the sunset and took this image just before the sun went down.

The challenge with this picture was getting a shot with no people and no wind.  Obviously I failed as you can see by the movement in the flags.  That said I didn’t really do anything to this image in Photoshop, this was pretty much what came out of the camera.

I liked the one tree at the front of the image, it kind of added some nice foreground interest and I liked the leaves and flagstones one the floor.  The sky looked cool too so the picture came out well.  I think this is my last Downtown Park image so don’t expect any more.

I had planned to take a load of images this week as I’ve been off work now for 9 days.  But it’s pretty much rained every day, been really crappy.  So not a good week for photography.  But I plan to get out soon and grab some nice pictures.  I’m still pretty amazed that I started this thing on January 1st, and here I am on November 25th and I haven’t missed a day.  Only 36 days to go and I made it.

Tonight the guys found a new balls game to play, I have no idea what it’s called but they seemed to be enjoying themselves.

It’s kind-a funny the things you chose to shoot and post when you do this kind of “picture-a-day” nonsense and tonight’s posting is a great example of what I mean.  30 years ago when I was but a “slip of a lad” (well I was actually 19 then but I was definitely young) I really didn’t notice much around me, that is of course unless there was a sign saying “Bar Open” or there was a very pretty girl in my field of view.  In fact put a pretty girl in an open bar and World War III could have taken place behind me and I wouldn’t have noticed.  I’m sure you get the idea.  (Oh and before any of my American friends get all moral on me, the legal drinking age in the UK is 18, so finding open bars and pretty girls was a common pastime for me and my friends.  (The fact that I worked in a bar when I was 17 is neither here or there – but I digress.)

The mere thought of me stopping to stare at a sunset, or field of flowers was just out of the question, in fact I can feel 19 year old Tony inside cringing as I type this.  But age does many things to a man, we become more open to our surroundings, have an higher appreciation of natural beauty and are willing to look a complete dicks arse (friend joke) staring at something beautiful a 19 year old would point and laugh at.  Don’t get me wrong, I still like staring at a pretty girl (as Lisa will attest) but 30 years ago did I every think I’d post to an online web site a picture of a fallen tree stump?  Clearly the answer is no, I mean the web didn’t exist 30 years ago, but I think you get my point.

I should point out that I had a couple of beer’s tonight so I’m rambling a little here but what the heck, only 38 days to go, I should enjoy this opportunity.

Anyhow, back to the picture.  I was walking along a beach on Bainbridge Island and I came across a fallen tree.  So what I hear you ask.  Well the tree was rather uninteresting, but the roots at it’s base had turned almost silver and gold.  I looked pretty amazing and I found myself staring at the said tree trunk for far too long (pretty sad eh?)  Anyway I thought I’d take a picture as I really liked the way it looked and figured it might make a nice image.

So not your everyday traditional picture, not sure if this should be classified as a landscape, or macro image, maybe it’s just “arty” either way I like the way it came out and am posting it tonight.  (Hopefully this is not the beer talking).

Tonight the guys decided to play a game of golf – thank you Valerie for loaning the set.

I don’t know why but I seem to have a thing for barns!  I found this one between Duvall and Carnation, I actually have no idea where it is but I’m calling it Carnation for this posting.  The barn was right next to a big cow shed full of cows eating and I took quite a few pictures of them too.  But it was a litte dark and the cows kept moving so the images didn’t come out as well.  I was also going as fast as I could as I didn’t want some angry farmer to come out and give me a hard time, fortunately that never happened.

Anyway the sun was going down and this barn looked really good.  I loved the textures in the wood and the things hanging inside the barn were cool too.  I took a few pictures of the barn, one from the side (this one below) and a couple from the front, but the frontal ones didn’t look as good – the building had too much wide angle distortion and  I didn’t catch the orange sky that’s off to the left in the image below.

The barn had a load of cables coming off the roof and they really ruined the image.  So I took all those out in post processing.  I also tone mapped the image to bring out some of the shaded areas and give the sky a little drama and ended up with the image below.  Oh there was also a huge tire in the bottom right hand corner that was just distracting, so I took that out too.  Pretty pleased with the end result though.

The guys unpacked their new Nokia 920 today, it’s a white one.  Very “stormtrooper”.