This weekend (just gone) I got the chance to stay at the Salish Lodge in Snoqualmie.  One of the interesting things about the Lodge, is that it’s right next to Snoqualmie Falls.  In fact my bedroom had a balcony that overlooked the falls and the view was just amazing.  I was actually there for a work event and I took my camera with every intention of popping out and capturing some great pictures, but I didn’t get the chance to shoot until it was time to leave.

It was late afternoon when I checked out of the hotel and it wasn’t raining (it was yesterday) so I thought I’d grab some shots before I headed home.

I walked out of the hotel (in the image below you can see the hotel at the top of the waterfall on the left) and down to the viewing area to get a shot.  The challenge was taking a picture before the camera lens became completely soaked!  The volume of water going over the falls was just incredible and as the water hit the river at the base, huge sprays of were thrown up to the observation area and then came down on any idiots watching like rain.  Obviously I was the only person there.

So set up the camera while I was facing the other way, and then turned around quickly and captured the shot.  The image I captured is below, and you can see some of the water drops on the lens in the top right corner.

I really wanted the water going over the falls to have that “ribbon” look you see in so many waterfall picture. So I attached a neutral density filter to the camera that dropped the amount of light entering the lens by 8 stops.  This allowed me to have a nice long exposure, so the camera went on the tripod and I took the shot.

Considering the amount of water being thrown up I’m really pleased with the end result.

Time to vote for the President of the United States!  How exciting…

Now I know I usually post landscapes but tonight I thought I’d do something different.  Abi and Valerie got the huge pumpkin in the kitchen tonight and decided to start carving.  Now Lisa has this book of carving stencils that you pin to the pumpkin and draw around.  Then you get out these funky little knives or mini saws and start to carve around the lines you drew.

All pretty simple really.  But of course Abi and Valerie never do anything simple, oh no.  They start by designing their own stencil.  Two eyes, one that looks like a big A (for Abi) and one that looks like a big V (for Valerie), some scary eyebrows and a fanged mouth.  Then they took turns curving out parts of the pumpkin.

All the time they’re joking and laughing and mucking about.  They were both so funny, I had to capture a picture.

Of course the moment they finished they ran off.  There was pumpkin guts everywhere it was a total mess.  So I cleaned everything up and took some pictures with “the guys”.

I should state that the original point of this site was to capture really nice image every day and post it to the site.  Now you might not think this is a really nice image, and question whether family pictures should be included too.

But I love this image, the girls look great and to me this fits all the requirements.

Now Abi and Valerie would like to take the praise for the pumpkin carving but of course we all know Carter and Master Chief really did it.

Last night I posted a picture of the Seattle skyline before the sun had come up.  Tonight I thought I’d post a picture taken from the same place 30 minutes later.  Sure this isn’t the same composition but it does nicely capture the sunrise above the city.

Just before I took this I was heading home, I’d agreed with Lisa to only go out for so long and my window of photography was coming to an end.  So I said my goodbyes to the rest of the class and started walking towards the car.  Once I turned round of course and saw this scene I had to stop, so I set up my tripod and started shooting.

This is another image that I didn’t touch in post processing.  This is pretty much exactly what I saw, the sky was blue with these amazing clouds and a yellow-orange sky.  It just looked beautiful.  I liked the big sky composition with the city in the corner so this is what I captured.  The water by now wasn’t really reflecting anything and there were no lights on in the city, so the buildings looked a little dark (almost in silhouette).  But as the sky was the primary subject I thought that was ok.

Anyway I really liked the end picture, hope you do too.

Tonight the Halo guys started to clean out their pumpkin in preparation for some carving tomorrow.

Can you believe it, today is day 300 and I haven’t missed a day.  I’m amazed I got this far and can’t stop now with only 66 days left.  Anyway I’m pleased I’ve made it this far, definitely on the home stretch.

So tonight I thought I post another picture from my early morning trip to West Seattle.  If you remember I went there for a sunrise picture and I got there just after 6:30 in the morning.  It was still dark the sun was nowhere near ready to go above the horizon yet, but I still wanted to grab some pictures.

I got the tripod out and set up the camera and started shooting.  The problem I had was that the camera’s meter was trying to make the image look like daylight with a really long exposure.  The result looked ok but it wasn’t what I was seeing.  So I set the camera to manual mode and started to play with different shutter speeds.  Very quickly I go the image I’m posting tonight.  This is pretty much what I saw.

As the exposure was still quite long, the water came out as pretty flat and still, but I still got the city lights across it so I thought it looked pretty cool.  I’m not sure I like the horizon in this picture being in the center of the image, but I liked the buildings and the lights on Elliott Bay, so I left it there.  The Great Wheel looks a little strange as from this angle is it just looks like a white pole, but there’s not much I can do about that.

If you’ve visited my site before you know I love Photoshop, but I can honestly say this is pretty much out of the camera.  I adjusted the contrast a little and sharpened it but that’s all.

Tonight the boys were comparing their Halloween Balls.

Tonight I had the opportunity to join my new team for dinner in Bellevue.  We had a reservation in Daniels Broiler (which by the way is a lovely restaurant) at 6:30, but I thought it might be nice to get into the city a little early and grab some pictures.

The center of Bellevue has some fantastic restaurants and a really great shopping mall.  Most of the shops and restaurants are positioned around the same part of town, an intersection between Bellevue Way and NE 8th St.  On one corner of the intersection is the Hyatt hotel and Daniels Broiler, on another corner (across the road) is a large shopping and office area called Lincoln Square and joining the two together is this funky walking bridge across the road.

My plan was to walk onto the bridge and shoot some of the cars driving past on the roads below but as I approached the bridge I thought it might make a good image in it’s own right.  Luckily my timing was really good and got a couple of shots of the bridge with nobody on it.  As the bridge has a lot of chrome, glass and lights it looked really cool.

Of course once I took this the world decided to come across the bridge, so I was lucky to get this shot.  Then I moved to the center of the bridge and started shooting traffic.  I got some nice shots but really liked the bridge image best so that’s what I’m posting tonight.

The boys were going out this evening for a night on the town.  I caught them getting ready before heading out.