Tolt McDonald Park in Carnation has a really nice picnic area and in the middle of it is this huge barn that contains all the picnic tables. Only in Washington State would you find a covered picnic area that’s full of tables. I guess it’s usually too wet to eat outside.

Anyway I really liked the look of the barn and the grain of the wood in the ceiling. So I took this picture not really expecting it to come out, but when I got home I was really pleased with the look.

Not being a picnic kind of guy I doubt I’ll ever eat in this place but it made a cool picture.

As it’s cold outside and Carter had an ear infection they decided to stay in and play some more games.

Snoqualmie is small city not far from Redmond on the way to the Cascades.

It got it’s name from a Native American tribe and is well known for it’s water falls (see my shot on January 21st) and in 1990 David Lynch used the city as a shooting location for his series Twin Peaks.

The reason I came here was that Snoqualmie is also home to the Northwest Railway Museum and as you drive through the city you see a number of old trains on display.As the snow is now starting to melt (hopefully that’s it for this year) I drove to the city to look for something to shoot.

This image is of the city “Depot”, but it has this great old train outside and it kind of looks like an old train station to me (so that’s what I’m calling it).

When too much snow arrives and you play outside you can suffer from too much water and snow in your ear.  So you have to clean them out!

Today was wet, snow melting and rain failing, so I thought I’d try something else. I happened to see Abi looking out the Window and thought it would make a nice picture.

By the time I got out lights, the rain stopped, so I had to ask James to join me in the garden and point the garden hose at the window! The picture came out ok though.

Interestingly, since I have been posting images I’ve had a number of questions from people about Photoshop. So I thought I should comment.

Every single professional image that’s posted anywhere is Photoshoped. From magazines to billboards, post processing is here to stay. Now some people say that this doesn’t count as photography and consider it “cheating”. But even the famous Ansel Adams was a king in the darkroom and spent hours perfecting “dodging and burning” while images developed. Today, he would do this in Photoshop.

So what kind of things do I do in Photoshop? The answer depends on the image. At a minimum, every picture is sharpened and color corrected so it accurately represents what I saw. If necessary I can change everything, from color, tone, exposure, brightness and noise reduction to lens and distortion correction. If that’s not enough I can remove blemishes and wrinkles, smooth skin and even re-sculpture a face or body. I can also remove distractions and composite a fake image from multiple parts.

At the end of the day the goal is to create an image that draws you in, makes you think and insights some kind of emotion.

In reality I’m still learning how to do all this well. I have some successes but shoot thousands of images for a few nice ones (literally). And to be honest there are very few I personally like.

So what can’t Photoshop do? Well it can’t create a good composition if one wasn’t captured and it can’t regain complete darkness or blown out highlights. So you have to know what you’re doing with the camera in the first-place and know how to use ambient light and how to augment or replace it with your own.

Hopefully at the end of the day you end up with a picture that looks great.

Today’s image was sharpened and I added a small vignette (to make the corners a little darker and draw you in). Hope you like it.

We went out for Mexican tonight and I had a Margarita.  I turned my back for 30 seconds and found this scene…

This afternoon I went out with the camera to see what I could shoot. I drove round Snoqualmie and got some great shots of the old railway station house and some of the old trains and on the way home stopped by Snoqualmie falls.The conditions really weren’t that good for photography. A lot of snow is melting and there was a huge amount of water going over the falls, so much so that the water spray at times came up to the observation area like rain. There was loads of mist and I was lucky to get the shot I did.The observation area is quite high up and doesn’t really do the falls justice. While not that wide, these falls are 268 feet high (that’s 100 feet higher than Niagara Falls). In the background (top left) you can also see the Salish Lodge & Spa which is a very nice (posh) hotel.

Maybe later in the year I’ll do the hike down to the bottom of the falls and get another picture from a better position.

After a busy week you need  a break, maybe a date out to the movies?

So I’m really tied of the snow so I thought I’d post a snow free picture today. This shot was taken in Tolt McDonald Park. There’s this great suspension bridge that crosses the river and on the other side is the park with nature trails and BBQ and picnic areas. The bridge actually sway’s as you walk across it very cool.

I like the cables in this picture that start in the corners and lead up to the top of the first tower. That and the slightly blue sky peeking through looks great.

More snow tomorrow, probably.

Using Bing to find out information is a daily occurrence for me, so when the Halo guys said they needed some information I pointed them there…