This weekend Lisa and I flew to Fresno to attend Abi’s “White Coat Pinning Ceremony”

This recognized a phase in Abi’s doctorate where she has passed sufficient exams to start her clinical rotations. She has almost completed her first year (of three) and in two months starts gaining practical experience as a Physical Therapist at an outpatient practice.

The weather in Fresno was really nice (around 70°F or 21°C) warm and sunny so we got some great pictures after the ceremony. The ceremony was nice (and short) and her professors helped her into her white coat and gave her a pin – the White Coat has to be given back on Monday lol.

It was great seeing where she studies and we saw where she spends all her time (either in a classroom, a lab with her cadaver or the library where she studies)

The sad part of this bit of her education is she doesn’t really have any down time over summer and is expected to work in a PT practice in-between school semesters without any pay!

This feels very wrong to me, a lot of the students in the doctorate program are borrowing money to pay for their education and pretty much for 3 years they aren’t given the opportunity to earn any money. All the clinical rotations are considered part of their schooling/education. Yet the PT Practices get a student PT for free!

Oh well, it’s an important part of the process I guess and it’s only 3 years.

Anyway, we had a great (short) visit, and it was lovely to see her in Fresno.

Here are some of the pictures we took over the weekend:

We are so proud of Abi. We just got back from San Diego where we saw her graduate Magna Cum Laude from San Diego State University (SDSU) with a Batchelor’s Degree in Kinesiology.
For Abi, it’s a couple of months downtime before she heads to Fresno State University to get her doctorate in Physical Therapy.

Lisa, James and I had a wonderful weekend, lots of sun, sea, food and drink celebrating with Abi, her boyfriend Aidan and his family, and friends and family from Washington State and England (Thank you Nikki and Craig and Tania and Manesh for coming so far).

She’s now over halfway there, just 3 more years to go.

I took the camera and captured some pictures of her around the university and down on the beach. SDSU is a really pretty university with lots of white stucco buildings with Spanish tile roofs, makes a great backdrop for graduation pictures.

Here are a few shots (from the many I captured).

Again, congratulations Abi.

Friday turned out to be a really beautiful day and as we had family (Regan) in town I decided to take a day off work and go out and enjoy the weather.  We all voted and picked Seattle as the location thinking the view from the Space Needle would fantastic.

So first we hit Pike Place Market.  The temperature was over 80 degrees and the tourists were out in force but we had a great time walking through the Market grabbing pics along the way.  I love the flowers, fruit and veg stalls and took a load of pics at each.  We found an interesting pasta stall and I got some great close up shots of pasta, I can see some of these making great wallpapers.

We walked past the gum wall which was recently cleaned and found that people had once again started to “decorate” the alley (much I’m sure to everyones delight – I don’t think anyone wanted Seattle to remove all the gum).

Then it was onto the Space Needle.  Now I’ve taken so many pictures of the Needle it’s difficult to come up with something new or interesting.  I got one shot I quite liked standing below the needle looking up and a couple of others getting the needles reflection in the “Experience Music Project” (EMP) building.

As expected the views from the top of the needle were amazing.  You could see for miles and even Mount Rainer was super clear.

To end the day, we finished up in Kirkland grabbing some Seattle Hot Dogs (you definitely need to try a Seattle dog if you never have) and then spent some time sitting by Lake Washington.

I took (as usual) a TON of pics, I’m just posting a few here today.

Really pleased I took the day off as I’m typing this on Saturday morning and it’s raining outside – you gotta love Seattle weather!

This weekend my new Fujifilm X-Pro2 camera body arrived and I have to say I’m delighted with it, I LOVE this camera and think it’s probably the best one I’ve ever owned (and I’ve had quite a few).

It’s beautifully made, feels great in the hands, super fun to use and full of features. The rangefinder look and feel is great fun (just like my X100T) only now with 24 mega pixels and the new Arcos film simulation. I now also get my ±2 stops for exposure bracketing (about time fuji) so I can’t wait to get out and shoot some landscapes.

So what do I shoot for the first time? Well those of you who know me know I’m not a huge fan of pet portraits. Actually strike that, I don’t like shooting any animal period! I just don’t have the patience (or probably the talent) to get a good picture.

But this weekend Roxie was just sitting in the kitchen looking at me with a brilliant “I’m guilty” look on her face. I have no idea what she did (must have been something) but I thought I’d try and get a shot anyway. What was amazing was that she just sat there and didn’t move. And I got (I think) a great shot.

So here’s my first posting with the new fuji (I love this camera – have I said that yet?), hope you love the Guilty Doggy image 🙂

I recently bought a couple of new lights and they were pretty cheap too – which is actually unheard of in the photography world.  So I thought I’d check them out and see how they perform.  So I set up the lights out on the deck and convinced Abi to let me shoot her – and being the good sport she is we took some pics.

I should state that it was REALLY cold outside so we didn’t do this for long, I think we were only out there for around 20 minutes.

Anyway, one of the lights was behind Abi and I put a small grid on it to focus the light at her hair, this hair light provided some separation for her hair, as the trees behind were pretty dark.  The other light was in front of her and that had a small soft box on it also with a grid.  Both lights were on almost no power and just added that little kick of light to brighten Abi’s face and hair.

We took quite a few shots, some of them with Abi pulling the most bizarre funny faces (none of those are posted – if I did that she’d never let me take her picture again), the ones here are “sensible” except perhaps the last one which I had to post as I think she looks super cute.

At one point the light behind Abi fell down the stairs (not sure how that happened – but it did), the light hit the floor and came off the stand.  Amazingly, the light was fine, only a small $8 cold shoe broke – so I was super lucky there.

I think the images came out really well and am really pleased with the lights (at $70 each – which is 3 times less than I usually spend – don’t tell Lisa – I’ll be getting some more.)