I live in Redmond, I actually live on the edge of Redmond at the top of a huge hill.  If you drive over the hill and go down the other side (away from Redmond) the road takes you to a valley between Redmond and Duvall.  To get to Duvall you have to cross the Snoqualmie River and there’s a road and bridge that get’s you there.

Today’s picture is of the road you take to Duvall that crosses the river.  I was driving around looking for something to shoot and decided to pull over and take a picture of the valley with the bridge.  I liked the look of the bridge and thought it might make an interesting landscape shot.  However, what I like most about this bridge is what happens in Winter.

Here in the Pacific North West we are well know for our rainfall.  This is probably a little unfair as there are loads of cities in the US that get more rain than us, New York is a great example.  However when we talk about rainfall we normally refer to inches of water.  While New York does get more than us, we have drizzly rain that falls more months of the year – hence the bad reputation.  What does happen here though is that each winter a lot of our rivers breach and water covers a lot of farm land (and unfortunately some peoples homes).

The Snoqualmie River breaches its banks in this valley every year.  So when they built the bridge they thought “lets raise the bridge higher so people can still cross”.  Great idea you say.  Well yes it is except they didn’t raise the road one either side.  So every year the valley floods and there’s this island in the middle with a bridge on it.  How funny is that!  Of course when this happens all the people in Duvall say they can’t come to work!  It’s not possible to drive an extra 10 miles to work I guess.

Tonight the guys decided to have a game of Monopoly.  But Master Chief got suck in jail and was there for most of the game.

The rain let up today for about half an hour so I grabbed my gear and headed out.  It’s quite funny what you see when you walk around looking for something interesting to shoot.  I was was driving out of Redmond towards Duval and I was driving down the hill I live on around this really windy road.  On either side of the road was heavy woodland and something caught my eye.  So I turned round and went back for a look.

Just off the road in the trees was a fallen tree trunk and someone had carved this bird on the bottom.  I had to dodge traffic and jump over a barrier to get the picture so I risked life and limb for this one.  But how cool is this?  Firstly I’m shocked I saw it, but after checking it out really close I’m really glad I did.

There was a lot going on around the carving (loads of trees and plants etc.,) but I wanted the focus to be on the bird.  So I selected a pretty narrow depth of field so plants behind were out of focus and added a vignette to the picture so the bird carving is the lightest item in the image.  I actually took a few versions of this art work, some from further away and others really close up and tight.  But this version was my favorite, it showed you all of the carving and placed it in context in the wooded area too.

Master Chief brought Carter a gift today, his own “Grow Tiger”, cool eh?  Now he just needs to find some water.

Sometimes the most interesting thing to photograph really is right behind you.  This proved to be true today when I shot this “interesting” tree in Bellevue.  There I am, walking about with my camera looking for something cool to shoot and I’m not feeling that inspired.  So I literally lean against this tree.  While I was thinking of how frustrating it can get some days I turned and looked at the tree trunk.

I don’t know what type of tree this is or what was happening to it, but it looked like the bark on the tree was splitting and peeling off.  Then I looked up and noticed that the sunset had given the sky an interesting hue.  I also liked the small number of leaves in the tree, the fact that they had all nearly fallen kind of helped the picture I think.

It was getting a little dark so I needed to put the camera on a tripod to take this one.  But I was worried that if the wind blew too hard the branches and leaves would all have motion blur. So I took lots of shots hoping that one of them would come out well.  Ironically they were all pretty good, but the one I’m posting tonight had (I think) the best focus.  The texture in the tree trunk is really cool here.   Quite gnarly with bits falling off and the sky is very interesting.  I shoot all my pictures in raw (that means I have all the data the camera saw when I get home) and while I usually leave the camera’s white balance setting on auto, I can fully change it when I get home.

Once I loaded the picture onto the computer the tree color was slightly off so I color corrected for the tree and the leaves and this is what gave me the blue / purple sky.  What I saw was kind-a dark blue, but this looks really nice so I left it.  I do think the tree and leaves are pretty close to what I saw.

Tonight Carter challenged Master Chief to a marshmallow tower building competition.  Let’s be honest, he didn’t stand a chance!

So the goal today was to go out and get some really nice pictures, but there was a kink in the day’s plans.  The weather was terrible, I mean really awful.  We had a major storm overhead and the rain was coming down unbelievably hard.  Now I don’t mind getting wet, but I can’t take the camera gear out in those conditions.  So I needed another plan.

Instead I thought I’d do something “arty”.  So while Lisa and I were out I popped into Home Depot and brought a couple of white tiles.  Then this evening I laid one of the tiles flat and placed the other behind it standing up.  I suspended one speed light over head and also suspended a pipette above (both on light stands).  Then the camera went on a tripod and I got out the cable release out.  I got some red paint out and watered it down and loaded up the pipette – you still with me?

Then the fun started, if you can call it fun.  I squeezed the pipette and took a picture, trying to time the picture for when the paint drop hit the tile.  This is the first shot I got. No it wasn’t, I just lied.  This was maybe the 50th picture actually.  But once I got the timing right I got loads of these.

Once I got all the pictures in to the computer we started a family “discussion” ove which picture or drop crown, looked best.  We all (Lisa, James, Abi and myself) had our favorites but we operated a very democratic mechanism to pick the best.  Yes, we chose Lisa’s.

Anyway the end result came out really well.  Paint crown looked amazing and the I got the shot I was looking for.   Hope the rain stops for tomorrow.

After doing something “arty” Carter and Master Chief offered to clean up – which was nice of them.

Tonight’s picture is another one from the Japanese Gardens in Seattle.  I caught the lake and the surrounding trees in this one and as this was taken just before all the leaves fell, there’s still some color in the image.

There were quite a few people on the other side of the lake and I had to take them all out in Photoshop.  But I liked the little bridge crossing the lake at the end of the picture.  If it looks like I’m standing in the middle of the water it’s because I kind of am.  At this end of the lake there were these huge stones in the water (and I mean huge), so I just walked out into the lake and took the picture.

For those of you who don’t live in the Pacific North West, you won’t know that it’s pretty green here all year round.  We are called the “Evergreen” state after all.  We have a load of evergreens here so it’s never really that brown, but the oranges and yellows definitely leave us.  We do suffer from pretty grey skies though.  In fact it’s raining outside now as I type this.

I’m actually off work all this week so I’m planning on going out each day to shoot some cool pictures.  I only have 40 odd days to go on this resolution and I’m going to see if I can get a large number of pictures to post while I’m off work (I do have around 150 pictures in my backlog but I don’t like those ones anymore).  So look for something new and different tomorrow night.

Tonight Carter and Master Chief sampled some nice Minty Balls, apparently they were very nice.