As I mentioned yesterday the weather outside at the moment sucks, so until it gets better you had better start expecting images from around my house coz right now I’m not changing out of my PJs.

As I spent a fortune yesterday on a new fish tank (that was to be used for “artistic” pictures only – no fish in my house), I thought I’d better use it again.  So today I filled the tank up (again) set up my lights (again) and put the camera on a tripod (again).

This time instead of dropping slightly bruised fruit, Lisa dropped some food coloring into the tank.  You have to move pretty quickly when you do this as once the coloring is in, the water is shot and you have to change it if you want to do it again (assuming you didn’t get the shot you wanted of course).

Lisa actually had a few different colors and got quite excited with the effects she got.  So I took around 30 shots as she was dripping the coloring in and selected the one below to share.  One of the nice things about this is that every time you do it it’s different, you never get the same effect twice.

For Christmas Carter got this 1000 piece puzzle and put the last piece in tonight. To capture the moment I took this picture.

Horrible day today, snow at home and really heavy rain when I went into town.  So I was wondering what should I photograph today.  Then it hit me, I really felt like dropping a strawberry into a fish tank.

I had two problems though, I didn’t have any strawberry’s and I didn’t have a fish tank.  So I went shopping.  I actually brought a new fish tank from Petco ($13 for a 2 foot fish tank – seriously), and got some strawberry’s from Fred Meyre.

I got home and set up this ridiculously complex scene with the fish tank full of water, two speed lights, one on either side of the fish tank and my mac tethered to the camera which was on a tripod.

Then Lisa started dropping the strawberry into the tank, it took us a couple of go’s to get our 3, 2, 1, now system working and the result is below.

I remember when my dad used to say “DON’T PLAY WITH THE FISH TANK”!  I’ll grant you I was 18 at the time, but now I can play with it all I want (That’s what she said!)

Lisa collected 50 boxes of girl scout cookies today.  Then all day we had people coming by to pick up their orders.  It appears that the Halo guys stole their own stash, this is what I found them doing this evening.

I was trying to figure out what to post tonight (didn’t get home from work until 8:30) and I found this image below.  I took this one evening on the way home just after we had a bit of snow fall.  I literally saw this pond by the side of the road, pulled over and got my camera out.  I’ve been doing that a lot lately (and people look at me like I’m nuts).

The sun was setting and it looked nice over the water and I saw the long grass by the side of the road and thought it would add to the picture – something in the foreground to catch your eye.  Fortunately the snow wasn’t here for very long, having said that it’s forecast to come back again this weekend (not good).

I don’t know about you but I love to play Battleships and it appears that our Halo chums do too!

Microsoft campus is located in Redmond right on the Bellevue city border.  Just down the road from the campus (in Bellevue) there is an old Mall, which I was told is one of the oldest Malls in the state.  The Mall is really fun and full of eclectic stores.  It has a food court where old dudes play chess on the floor (with massive chess pieces) and outside the game shop (Uncles) you find guys (without girl friends) playing dungeon and dragon type games.

Anyway I digress, at the Mall is a movie theater (that’s a cinema to the Brits who read this) and at night they light it up and it looks fab!  A funny thing about this theater is that in the past Microsoft has hired out the whole place so the company can go a see a film (usually it’s something terribly geeky like Starwars).  The company calls it a team building event and I’ve been to a couple of these myself.  I just think it’s odd that Microsoft want us to “Build our team” in a dark room where nobody talks.  Odd eh?

Anyway I like the building at night and on the way home tonight I grabbed the shot below.

I don’t know why I like this one, maybe it’s what my imagination thinks the two guys on either side of Carter are saying!  I just think it’s funny.

What can I tell you, you can’t keep a good man down.  Even though they hate me in Redmond Town Center (see this posting) I went back and captured the image below.  I have no fear, nobody scares me…

Ok, so I made sure no security guards were around and was in and out in 30 seconds, but it’s the thought that counts.

This image was taken on the top floor near James’ favorite store (Game Stop).  Note the absence of people (and security guards) in the picture.

Tonight we find the Halo guys at a team event – they went bowling.  Carter is demonstrating his amazing skills.