One of the advantages of driving yourself to a location and not using a tour bus is that you can stop any time you want to take a picture.  This is exactly what happened yesterday on the way home from Mount Vernon.  I was driving towards Conway when I saw this barn.  It looked pretty old and not in great shape (which always makes a great picture) so I parked up and grabbed the gear.

The barn was quite far from the road and in front of the barn was a ton of dandelions.  The yellow flowers against the green grass were the thing that actually caught my eye.  To the left of the barn was a load of farm equipment (tractors, plows etc.,) which really looked terrible, so I figured out two options to composite the picture.

The image I’m posting tonight was the first one I tried.  Placing the barn just off center to the left let me get a load of the yellow dandelions with out the farm equipment.  The second attempt was of the farm directly in front of the camera.  The second image looked OK (in fact Lisa said it was her favorite), but it didn’t have many flowers and wasn’t, in my opinion, a good composition – this huge barn in the center of the screen was too obvious – too much “in your face” so I went with the first (my favorite).

The sky in the picture looks quite cool but didn’t look like that to the human eye.  I had a very thin layer of cloud above that looked almost white.  It was pretty boring but you never know what it will look like on the computer.  When I got home I added some contrast and dropped the color temperature of just the sky to make it look a little more dramatic.  This (I think) really helped the sky and made it a valuable part of the image rather than something that you want to distract the user from.

Cater and the dudes decided to chill out in the hottub today with a load of ducks!

Lisa was on the internet last night and visited the facebook site of the tour company that took me to Mount Vernon a couple of weeks ago.  It appeared that the tulips were now out in full bloom and they were posting pictures.  So as I now had proof that the fields were full of color I decided that today I would head back – this time on my own – and get the pictures I wanted.

Initially I thought I’d leave really early and get there as the place opened, but then I remembered that I got up every day this week at 6:30 and it was Saturday and I was totally knackered.  So I convinced myself late last night that I’d either go later in the day or Sunday instead.

So this morning I got up at 10am (how fab is that) made the kids egg and bacon and asked everyone what they were planning on doing today.  Abi had a Girl Scout trip to the movies planned, James was going Skateboarding and Lisa wasn’t doing anything.  I asked them all if they wanted to go to Mount Vernon with me and thankfully they all said “No”.  Now it’s not that I don’t want my family with me, it’s just that when I have a camera in my hand I can become a little, what does Lisa call it?  Oh yeah – BORING.  And they all start to nag me after about 10 shots!  So after breakfast I grabbed the camera and tripod and headed of to Skagit Valley.

It’s only about 70 miles away and it’s pretty much freeway the whole trip, but it still took around 90 minutes.  I went straight to Tulip Town, found a parking place and paid my $5 entrance fee to get in.  It was about now that I remembered why the “get up early and get there as they open” idea was such as good one.  The place was packed!  Literally hundreds of people were there with cameras either stamping over the flowers or walking out into the tulip fields so their partners could take a picture of them surrounded by tulips – you get the idea.

While this was definitely a pain, it didn’t stop me getting some great shots.  I’ve found that if you don’t have patience photography is not the hobby for you.  By taking my time and waiting for people to move, oh and giving the odd person a really nasty stare, I managed to get my pictures.

Today’s posting is of some red tulips which is actually the most popular color – see you learn stuff by coming here too.  The challenge I had here was that they were VERY VERY red, almost too red and dark but they looked fantastic and I wanted to capture that “lost in a sea of red” look.

I took over 380 pictures in all over around 2 hours and then headed home.  Got in with enough time to mow the lawn and post this before going out with Lisa on a date.

Hope you like the first one, there will be more tulips over the coming week (trust me by next week you will be sick of them).

At work we have these really nice coffee machines that grind and brew fresh Starbucks coffee.  But that are quite hard to use when you’re only 4 inches high.  But having found the stationary room Carter get some tape and overcame the challenge.

Tonight I thought I’d post this image of the Snoqualmie River in Fall City.  I was there as the sun was starting to go down and was fortunate to pick up some red sky.  While the river was high, it wasn’t that high which is surprising when you consider the rain we’ve had.  But then at this time of year rain’s to be expected.

This shot was taken early evening and there were loads of cars on the road to my left.  I’ve become completely immune to the stares I get when I get the camera out, but I still find it funny that people get so interested in someone with a camera.  I think passersby are terrified they’re missing something, hence the usual “what are you doing?” question.

It you look at the river bank you can see some tulips and daffodils.  I tried to photograph them too but almost slid down the bank into the river.  I take a ground mat with me in the car these days so I can lie on the floor and not get too dirty.  I placed it on the bank the got on the mat and started to slide!  Not a great idea.

I think the image came out really well, it’s a pretty city and the river bank park is very quaint.

Carter and Master Chief went exploring at work and found the Stationary Room.  Apparently when you’re very small bulldog clips and elastic bands can give you hours of fun!

After posting yesterday’s windmill I thought I’d post some more!  Today’s windmill picture was taken at Roozengaarde in Mount Vernon.  Roozengaarde have some manicured gardens that exhibit the flowers then grow and center stage in the middle of the garden is this windmill.

I was waiting for everyone to get out of the shot but I waited and waited for ages.  Families kept coming up and posing for pictures in front of the thing and I was losing patience.  In the end I thought “sod it” and took this shot with some women standing off to the right.  In the end I removed the women in Photoshop (love that product) so my picture is people free.

I lost the Halo guys at work today, so I went looking for them and I found them in the Drinks Fridge pounding cans!

I had a conversation with someone at work today (Lucia) and was asked when I found time to capture the pictures I post.  I explained that I try to photograph whenever I can, be it during the day or on the way home from work.  I’ve even come home, had dinner and gone out again for a picture idea.  So to show it’s possible I took this picture of the windmill in Marymoor Park in Redmond on the way home tonight.

As we had a nice blue sky I thought the windmill might look good so I drove into Marymoor.  I grabbed the tripod and took a number of pictures of the windmill from different angles.  I really liked the tree that’s in the foreground and tried a few with that prominent in the picture with the windmill behind, but it just didn’t look right.  I also tried shooting the windmill from the other side with the sun as a back light, but as the sun was quite low in the sky I got LOADS of lens flare (a little is OK but too much ruins the image).

By far the best picture is the one I got below.  I would say that the detour on the way home cost me around 30 minutes.  The selection and processing of the picture around another 30.  So it goes to show everyone can do this.

To be fair (in case people didn’t read my earlier posts and realize this) I don’t take a picture every day, it just wouldn’t be possible.  So when I go to a good location I might take 3 or 4 that I like.  I then hang on to the ones I didn’t use that night and post them later.   When I first started this I didn’t have any back up pictures as the rule I set myself was that only pictures taken in 2012 could be posted.  But now 3 months in I have around 50.  The frustrating thing is that while I like the images when I take them and put them in my backlog, a couple of weeks later I’m not so keen!  Hence the reason why I’m always looking for something new to shoot.

Carter and his friends decided to play on a kids climbing frame today – they got to the top and got all excited, apparently it was quite high up.