Today was probably the hottest day of the year.  We hit 91 degrees in our garden and it was so hot that Lisa couldn’t sit outside and sunbathe.   The skies were a beautiful blue color and I wanted to capture a picture that showed you all what a lovely day it was in Redmond.  I can honestly say, that when the weather is nice the Pacific North West is one of the most beautiful places on earth.

So I grabbed my camera and tripod and jumped into the car and headed off to find some inspiration.  As it was really, really hot, I didn’t want to do any hiking, I needed to find somewhere I could park the car, leave the safety of the air conditioning and run (or walk briskly) to a photography viewpoint, take a picture and get back in the cool car quickly.  At least that was my plan.

On the way out of Redmond Ridge where I live I stopped by the side of the road to shoot some berries against a blue sky, they came out well but didn’t convey the magnificence of the day.  So on I went.  Eventually I found myself in the Redmond Watershed which covers acres of land that’s preserved for wildlife.  I parked up and got my gear and started to walk.

After 5 minutes (which incidentally was far to long as I was starting to sweat), I found this small lake.  The trees on the other side of the lake were really grand and topped by the blue sky and there was this great reflection in the lake.  The lake itself was a bit messy with logs and “stuff” floating on the surface, but there was nothing I could do about that so I set up the tripod and took some pictures.

I think the image came out really well and Abi sat with me this evening while I processed the image and posted it to the site.  She also contributed to this posting making suggestions on what I should write (she wanted to say I was sweating like a pig but she wasn’t there so how would she know?)

Today we had a barbeque and Lisa made some corn.  Carter and Master Chief wanted some too and pinched it when we weren’t looking.

I’ve posted a few pictures from Fort Ward State Park over the last couple of days but I haven’t really shown you what the beach looks like.  This image was taken by the wooden poles in the water picture that I posted a few days ago.  You can see the stones on the beach, not a grain of sand to see anywhere.

The things that caught my eye when I composed this image were the trees falling over towards the water, the large bolder in the water and the state of the clouds.  The wind was blowing while we were there so these clouds didn’t stick around and as you have already seen on the way home the sun came out and the clouds parted to give us blue sky.  But here it looks almost gray.

Where the trees were falling there were some uprooted trunks and I got one call picture of the very bottom of a tree, looking at it’s roots.  It’s a little odd as you can’t really tell what it is but I may post that in the future.

In the far distance you can just make out the mainland.  You can’t see Seattle from here as it’s kind of round the corner to the left, but you can see Bainbridge is not that far away from Seattle.

Well the weekend if finally here and I’ll try to get out tomorrow to shoot something new.

After watching Gabby Douglas last night the guys were inspired.  Here’s Carter practicing his beam routine.

Today is my birthday and despite requests for a birthday cake picture, I decided to post this shot of some blackberries.  I took this picture on Bainbridge Island by the water in Fort Ward State Park.  There were blackberry bushes all along the waterfront and the berries were just starting to come through (as you can see).

I have a really nice lens that I take out with me that I used here (for the technical amongst you it’s a Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 VR II) and it can capture images with really nice bokeh.  Bokeh is the creamy out of focus background you see in the image below and usually appears as circular highlights.  What the lens really does is take a picture with a very narrow or shallow depth of field, this means only a small part of the subject I’m shooting is in focus and everything in front and behind is out of focus.  It’s nice for taking pictures that concentrate on the subject without having distracting backgrounds – very big in portrait photography.  As I take a lot of landscape pictures I don’t do this very often as for landscape you want everything in focus.  Here it’s really great at capturing the blackberries.

When I got home and looked at the images my first reaction was, Oh no, there are cob webs all over the bush, but after a while I decided I actually liked that about the image, it gave it for me a rustic, wild look.

Anyway I hope you like my image.

So anyway, back to the birthday, what did I get?  Well Lisa got me a fantastic color printer that prints out professional 17″ x 22″ photographs (again in case your interested it was an Epson Stylus Pro 3880).  Over the coming weeks I’m planning on printing out and displaying some of my images around the house (and maybe at work too).  I’m quite excited about this as creating really good prints is something I know little about.

The kids got me some great books on photographing locations around Washington State and Oregon.  The books are brilliant and have some wonderful locations just a drive away.  I actually wish I had these at the beginning of the year, but they will help me capture some really cool images for the rest of this year’s picture a day resolution.

I should point out that Lisa also made me a fantastic birthday card.  She’s really into the craft thing and makes cards for everyone but mine was something she has never created before, a DSLR Camera.  I think it’s brilliant and will be pinning it on my wall at work. (You can see the card below in the Halo picture).

Here we have Carter and Master Chief posing by my cool birthday card (of a camera) – made by Lisa, and a birthday balloon.

When we left Bainbridge Island on the ferry the sun had definitely come out and we even had patchy blue skies above us.  The ferry ride is about 30 minutes from the Island to the Mainland and Chris and I stood at the ferries bow the whole time photographing everything that crossed our path.  This included another ferry (going in the opposite direction), numerous private boats of various sizes, peoples homes that faced the water front and lots of seagulls flying next to the ferry.

Some of the homes on Bainbridge are just beautiful, I’d love to live there but Lisa would hate it.  While we were driving around the Island it was almost deserted but there aren’t a lot of shops there and no Target!  So Lisa would never move there.

As we approached Seattle I started taking cityscape shots, the sun was shining on the city so a lot of the buildings were bright and shiny and quite colorful.  We have the new ferris wheel in Seattle (not been on that yet) and it was slowly going round so I wanted that in the shot, I also wanted some of the tall buildings in downtown and some of the piers and took the shot below.  As I composed the shot, I saw the plane going past (top of picture) and caught it too – I think this actually adds to the picture.

When people think of Seattle they also think of the Space Needle and while it would be nice to have that in shot too, it’s quite a long way off to the left.  So if you try to get the Needle and downtown in the same shot, it almost has to be a panorama, so no Needle in this image.

Considering I took this on a moving ferry, I think the image came out really well.  It’s also nice having a shot from the water, not always an easy or obvious point of view.

The guys spent a lot of time today watching Kerry Walsh and Misty May, and then decided to have their own beach volleyball game.

While taking pictures at Fort Ward State Park on Bainbridge Island these three guys turned up with their Kayaks.  Chris and I sat and watched as they started to unload their cars with a load of gear.  I walked over and asked if it was OK if I took some pictures and they said it was fine.  They probably thought it was a little odd that some stranger wanted to photograph them but they said go ahead.

As we watched them set up their kayaks and store all their stuff we started to ask them why they needed so much “gear” and where they were going to.  They told us there plan was to paddle for a couple of hours – I think they said they were going to Blake Island State Park (but I could be wrong) where they were going to camp for the night – kind of a boys weekend away.

One of the three was moving away to California and this was his swan song trip with his mates.

Some of their “Stuff” consisted of cans of beer – quite a few in fact, so they were clearly going prepared.  While they were getting in the water they were trying to photograph each other, so I offered to take some shots and if they emailed me I could send them all the masters.  They liked this idea so took a copy of my business card.  That said I haven’t heard from them yet so a number of things could have happened.  Either they were eaten by orca’s on the paddle over, eaten by bears in the camp site, lost my card or just decided I was an idiot and not worth contacting.  I’m guessing it is probably the last one.

One of them had never been in a kayak before (the guy in the middle) and was a bit wobbly getting in the kayak.  But they did manage to paddle together for a group picture.  I hope they do email me as I got loads of pictures and I’m sure they’ll like them.

Carter and Master Chief were inspired tonight watching the synchronized diving, so they thought they’d give it a go.