Abi and I were driving along Lake Washington Boulevard right by the lake looking for something to shoot.  We were in a pretty expensive area on the western shore driving through Coleman Park when I found the perfect subject.  We drove under the I90 Lake Washington Bridge and I thought it would make a great picture.

So we parked up right outside a waterfront house that was two houses away from these bridges.  I mention this as the house was for sale and while it was really beautiful, it was pretty much under these bridges.  And the cost… 2.2 million dollars.  So you have to ask yourself, how much does one cost that’s not next to huge bridges like these?

Anyway, Abi and I grabbed the tripod and ran past the houses and down a small embankment to the waters edge.  Set up the tripod and captured the image below.  Looking through the view finder I knew this was going to be a nice image, but even I was blown away when I got home and processed the shot.

Some of my images are nice I think, but this one made me gasp!  Lisa and the kids felt the same so I’m betting everyone else hates it – haha you never can win.  As the sun was going down, you can see the red glow of the sunset on the other side of the lake, the underside of the bridges were really dark.  So this is actually a seven image HDR picture.

The land you can see at the end of the bridge is actually Mercer Island in the middle of Lake Washington.  Over to the left on the other side of the lake you can make out some sky scrapers.  This is the city of Bellevue.  The colors in this image came out really well, with the sun hitting Mercer and the blue sky, and the light on the water, this could be one of my favorite pictures of the year.

Master Chief wanted to have a go at escapeology, but found he sucked at that and Carter had to help him get out.

A friend at home (Kathryn Skinner) asked me if I had any nice black and white images, so we looked though my image collection and both decided I didn’t.  As a result I thought I’d try to capture a picture that would make a good black and white.  So this evening Abi and I went out to see what we could get.

We found ourselves over on the west side of Lake Washington down by the I90 bridge and stopped by a small park with a pier.  The sun was starting to set so the pier was no longer directly lit and I thought the dark wood of the pier might look good against the sky.  Ideally I would have been there a little later so I could have taken the picture with a nice long exposure to smooth the water but I had Abi and couldn’t really hang around.

At the end of the pier were three fishermen and under the pier were loads of kids swimming.  Every now and then they would climb up onto the pier and jump off.  I spent some time in Photoshop removing all the people until the image looked as it does below.

I actually had a couple of lenses with me, one of them was my wide angle “landscape” lens, but unfortunately it started capturing images that were way over exposed.  So that’s going back to Nikon tomorrow.  As a result I took the image below with normal zoom, but I think it came out really well.  So I’ll show this to Kathryn and see what she thinks.

Nothing like a nice game of pool, but as there are three colors on the table I have NO IDEA what Carter and Master Chief are playing.

Today was a lot cooler than earlier in the week and it felt a little “muggy” out, like a thunder storm was coming.  That said it was still warm  so we decided to take the dog out to Marymoor Park.

Marymoor covers around 640 acres and provides loads of outdoor facilities for Redmond residents.  They have baseball and soccer fields, nature trails, a velodrome for keen cyclists, a concert area where they are currently showing movies at night, a huge area for model plane enthusiasts and an off leash pet area where dogs can run free and play.

We take Roxie there every now and then and she loves running the trails and meeting other dogs.  One trail takes you along a large lake and loads of dogs fetch balls and swim in the water.  While on the trail we came across one dog, called “Ballmer” who was playing with his ball in the water.  We watched as his owner tried to get him to drop the ball for around 15 minutes, I was exhausted watching the dog who wouldn’t give it up.  He kept jumping into the lake and splashing everyone, clearly the dog was having a great time but I really felt for his family, Ballmer needed a lot of exercise!

Roxie on the other hand just watched from the side, relatively uninterested.  She doesn’t like water much, and James’ hobby of holding her over water to watch her “swim in the air” probably doesn’t help.

We were out for around 40 minutes and on our way back to the car I took this picture of Abi and her friend Charlotte.  They were both having a great time and gladly jumped into the long grass so I could take a picture.

It’s a little early to say Summer is over, but things are definitely cooling down, so getting these out door pictures now is kind of a good idea.  We had a great time walking in the park and on the way home got some bagels from Blazing Bagels (definitely worth a visit).

Today the guys spent some time in the garden chasing bubbles

While visiting the Flying Heritage Collection museum we got to see LOADS of planes.  But one of the challenges was to capture a plane on its own without others in the way.  The hanger the exhibits were in was full (I say exhibits but they are all working planes that are taken out “for a fly” regularly).  So when we saw this old Messerschmitt I couldn’t resist taking a picture, it was, well so alone!

This model plan was considered the first truly modern fighter plane.  With its all-metal stressed-skin and mono-wing design with enclosed cockpit and retractable landing gear there was nothing like it.  It was also the fastest military plane in the air until it was replaced by the Focke-Wulf Fw 190.

This particular plane was commissioned in 1940 and was shot down over Dover in an air battle.  The pilot managed to get the plane back to France but didn’t survive the landing.  In 1988 somebody walking along the beach in Calais saw a tip of the planes wing sticking out of the sand and the plane was excavated and sent to England for restoration.

Now, living in Everett Washington, the plane looks brand new.  I’d love to see this flying over head, perhaps with a spitfire on it tail, definitely something you don’t see everyday.

This plane reminds me of an old joke, which I probably shouldn’t tell but it’s my blog so here goes.

An old World War II British fighter pilot is being interviewed on the radio and the host of the show asks him what his most terrifying dog fight was like. “Well” say’s the veteran, “I was over Dover and out of the sun came this Focke straight for me, I was so surprised I had to bank quickly to the right, where I found two more Focke’s.  They came at me so fast I was terrified.  We fought in the air over the channel for 10 minutes and it was terrifying.  Fortunately I hit one Focke in the wing, and another Focke in the tail, then the other guy flew off”.  Sounding a little concerned the host of the show reassured his audience by saying “I should point out to all you listeners at home that the Focke-Wulf was a German plane”.  “That’s true”, said the pilot, “but these Focke’s were Messerschmitt’s”

Well I didn’t say it was funny.

You know how sometimes you feel like you’re carrying the world on your shoulders? Well Carter actually is!

When you go to these car shows it’s pretty hard to get a nice picture.  Firstly there are hundreds of people there and they ALWAYS walk directly in front of you every time you try to take a shot.  Secondly, these shows are never held just before sunset or just after sunrise, so there is usually direct sunlight on the car.  So the cars are surrounded by people and the exposure is horrible (lots of blown out parts of the picture).

So here I was at the Redmond Exotics Car show and I found this bright red Alfa with nobody around it.  The bodywork color just popped against the green bushes and trees behind, so I jumped at a shot.  To try and get over the terrible lighting conditions, I took 5 bracketed pictures each one with a different exposure.  Then I HDR’d the images together in Photomatix to get the picture below.

People were starting to approach so I didn’t have much time, ideally I would have looked for another angle to showcase the car, but in reality I’m just pleased I got the shot.  I tilted the camera to give the image a little “interest” but I may have over done it haha, but what the hell, I really like the picture.

Usually I try to tell you what model the car is but there was nothing on the car to tell me and the owner wasn’t around (I sometimes ask).  But this time no info, so you are just going to have to enjoy the nameless red Alfa convertible.

Tonight I found the guys fighting over a very dangerous toy!  At least I think that’s what they were doing.