Today is a sad posting.  We have lived in Redmond now for 9 years and love our neighborhood.  Within walking distance of our home we have a small shopping area called the “Marketplace” which has a gas station, bank, restaurant, a few shops and a coffee house.  Or at least it did have a coffee house, as today Sorrento’s closed.

Lisa has been going there every day for 9 years and today I found out that she has spent $9,027.25 in coffee!!!!  So I guess I should be pleased it’s closing down, but I’m really not.  The place was great, the people who served there were really nice, knew our names and exactly what we liked to drink and were always friendly and welcoming.

We would often visit Sorrento’s on a Saturday or Sunday taking the dog for a walk and even use it as a meeting place for friends when we were heading out on a road trip.

Well, the recession has finally started to impact us in Redmond – I know that sounds really bad as for many it’s been going on for years now and yes it’s true we live in a bubble (especially with me working for Microsoft).  But we love this shop and are sad to see it go.  As today was it’s last day (closing at 1pm) we headed down there at 12 noon and had our last coffee and talked to Glen who ran the shop and said goodbye.

I took a couple of pictures, one inside and one outside to remind us of the shop and the fun we’ve had there in the past.

Below you can see Danielle, Glen and Lisa who work at the shop and serve us our coffee.

To add to the disappointment of the day, one of the Halo guys was viciously attacked by a soft cuddly toy!  Fortunately our hero Carter was there to save the day and fight off the rabid animal.

Not a great day today.  I drove to Seattle to get some nice sunset shots but when I arrived in downtown the sky opened and it REALLY started to rain.  I mean really heavy.  I drove around for 30 minutes hoping it would ease up but it actually got worse, so in the end I came home.

As a result tonights image is from my backlog.  I haven’t posted a picture from the Museum of Flight in a while so I thought I’d grab one of those.  This is the SR-71 Blackbird “Spy Plane”.  When you go to the Museum of Flight (something you should definitely do if you get the chance), you’ll see a number of exhibit areas.  The largest area is filled with around 50 planes either around the floor or hanging from the ceiling.

The Blackbird takes center stage and is the main exhibit in the middle of the room.  You can walk all round the plane (and underneath it too) and it’s pretty impressive.  When I was driving to the museum, this is the image I was going to get, I knew exactly what I wanted and pretty much got the shot.  I took another one of the plane from the rear looking underneath and that’s a cool one too, I’ll probably post that in the future.

I think Carter was getting bored or something, tonight he decided to play with Hello Kitty.

Tonight I thought I’d do something completely different.  I’ve taken loads of landscape shots lately and felt like a change.  Just over a year ago I saw someone produce some great smoke sculptures and I thought I’d give it a go.  Basically you set up a black background, fire a flash up into the air and in front of the flash light some incense.

You then start taking pictures of the backlit incense smoke.  When you have a few images you pull them all into photoshop and create a picture from lots of “interesting” shapes.  You can really go wild and make anything you want.  For my first attempt I thought I’d try a sea horse (the shapes I was pulling in helped).

When you’re done, you can add a color cast using photoshop blend modes. It’s actually a lot of fun and I’ll definitely do it again and I guess the beauty of this is every time you do it you get a completely unique image.

I appreciate that this is completely fake and a composited image, but you need a camera to do this so I class this as photography.

Anyway here is my first attempt.

I think the Halo guys are getting board, we left them in the kitchen and came back to find them “playing” with utensils!

There’s kind of a golden rule in photography; when you get the camera out look EVERYWHERE.  Look up, down, both sides, in front and behind.  Don’t just see one opportunity and shoot that.  So that’s the goal, truth is though, like most people once I get an idea I kind of get caught up in that one thing.  I always think after “oh I should have looked around, or tried something different”.  Trouble is I kind of get this revelation on my way home!

Anyway I was in Alki and standing on the pier taking shots of downtown Seattle across Elliot Bay.  For once I thought, what if I shoot over here instead?  The picture below is the result, I have Elliot Bay behind me and not in the picture at all, instead I’m shooting into land.

There was actually a huge trash can on left under the pier light and I pulled that out of the way before taking the picture (I’m so pleased I thought of that too as it would have been a pain to remove in post).

When I got home I was really pleased with the image and like the look of the light on the pier and the way the pier draws your eye back to the shops and apartments on the water front.  The sky has a stormy look about it as well that adds to the picture.

So I get home tonight and to my surprise I find the Halo guys photocopying their butts on my scanner!  This is ridiculous, I mean it’s not a Christmas party or anything like that and both of them were sober!

So normally my primary image is an attempt at a serious picture, but for a change I’m swapping things round (just for today).  My lead image is a Halo picture.  I wanted to do something “special” for Valentine’s Day, something fun, something  romantic, something RED.

So I thought, what represents love and Valentine’s Day?  Immediately I thought of roses and immediately after that I thought of American Beauty.  You know the scene, Mena Suvari lying naked on a bed of rose petals (I think that’s the image – I can’t really remember).  This was the inspiration I needed.  I ran out and brought some red roses (which are pretty abundant at the moment), got home and cut their heads off.

We made a bed of petals and posed our Halo hero.  The resultant picture is below – and I’m really pleased with it.

Happy Valentines Day.

My secondary image was taken at Kirkland waterfront (by Marina Park).  They have this massive gazebo there, I have no idea what it’s there for or who uses it, but I thought it might make an interesting image.