So here we are super close to the Holiday’s (that’s Christmas for those of you in England), and we needed some new pics to put on our cards.

In the past this has been a pretty painful experience for everyone. I wanted to create some nice pics for Lisa (so the pressure was one) and James and Abi were made to clean up and pose for pictures (which they hated).

However, over the last few years I’be got a lot faster at capturing these types of images and this year I wanted to be especially quick as we were planning on taking the pictures outside in the rain! Redmond town center has a nice Christmas tree and we thought it would be nice to shoot the kids in front of that. As you would expect the weather was crappy with a light rain coming down the whole time.

To make this super fast I grabbed my Fuji X100T camera which is a fixed focal length (35mm) camera so I couldn’t zoom in or out with he camera. This made me “zoom with my feet” and enabled me to quickly position the kids in front of the tree and grab the shot.

Obviously it was dark out (these shots were taken around 6pm), so I needed some light on their faces. Now I could have gone nuts and got out any number of lights and light modifiers but I again chose to go really simple. I grabbed a single Nissan i40 speed light that I triggered off camera using an infrared trigger. The camera, light and trigger all fitted in my coat pocket and were super easy to set up and use.

I just held the light at arms length off to my left pointing in the general direction of James and Abi and took the shot.

Each image took around 15 seconds and we captured the shots we wanted super fast. James’ girlfriend Bale was with us and he wanted a couple of shots with him and her and we captured those really quickly too!

Lisa was pleased with the images and James and Abi were happy as they didn’t have to stand in the rain for a long time (something that would have been the case a couple of years ago). I’ve clearly come a long way.

Anyway here are the three images that are going on the cards.

What can I tell you, I HATE taking pictures of animals. It’s not that I don’t like them or anything, I just don’t have that patience gene that allows me to either sit over a hole in the ground for hours, stand quietly in a wooded area with a long lens or in my case this weekend, try to convince my stupid dog to sit still.

But as Lisa (my wife) wanted a new picture of Roxie our dog, that’s what I had to do.

Roxie is a Maltese Shih Tzu mix and just doesn’t like having her picture taken. She’ll sit there looking beautiful until the moment I pull the camera up to my face, at which point she runs for the hills.

Now I’ve read blog postings from other photographers who talk about offering treats and being patient for that perfect shot, but I just don’t have the patience – or quite frankly the desire!

But again as Lisa wanted a picture we grabbed the camera, one light and hit the garden with Roxie and a cheese stick. Roxie loves cheese sticks so I figured this might keep her still, but it had the complete opposite effect. She went mental.

Rather than sit still like all those amazingly trained dogs you see on TV, Roxie decided to dance around like a nutta. At all times she didn’t take her eyes off the cheese Lisa was holding, jumping up and down, spinning round in circles and when she did stop and sit still, the only shot I got was a great shot of the back of her head.

Have I mentioned I don’t like doing this?

Anyway, after lots of attempts (and I mean a lot), I managed to get four passable images that Lisa quite liked.

In every one I had to crop out Lisa who was holding the cheese and re-compose the shot so Roxie was nicely positioned in the shot.

Luckily Lisa got her image and I’m saved from having to do this again for a couple of years.

Here are the four we liked:

Why oh why would anyone go to Orlando in July I hear you ask? Great question. The answer is of course because that’s when the kids are off school 🙁

Sure it would be great to go in November or February, but we wanted to go for two weeks and with children in High School and Middle School you just can’t do that.

So Lisa planned this great vacation to Florida in what was probably the hottest month of the year.

The question is, did we have fun? Bloody right we did 🙂

For those who haven’t done this foolish vacation in July, I’ll explain the problem.

Firstly it’s hot. Now that in itself isn’t an issue, I mean when you go on vacation you want it to be hot right? The trouble is this isn’t really a “sit by a pool and read a book” vacation. This is a vacation where you are walking for around 14 miles a day around amusement parks packed with people.

I know what you’re thinking. “Hang on, that’s not so bad, I mean a bit of heat is OK, just drink water and wear sunscreen”. All true, but it’s not just the heat!

At this time of year the humidity is insane! It’s like walking through water.

Basically early morning it’s great. Really lovely outside. That is until around 10am. Then it starts to get “sticky”. This stickiness increases until by 2pm you are just miserable. All sweaty, uncomfortable and just feeling yuk.

You also can’t breath as it’s just nasty outside, it feels like it’s about to poor with rain.

That is until 4pm when the skies open and torrential rain comes down. Now I live in Seattle and it rains here, but not like it does in Florida.

In fact I think it rains more in one day in Florida that it does in a month in Seattle! It’s like someone pores a bucket of water over your head, continually for an hour!

So you get wet running from ride to ride. And this would be (you’d think) ok, coz it’s still warm outside, heck even the water is warm. But when you get to the ride, you walk into a heavily air conditioned line and your nipples fall off.

Fun eh?

So you keep going until you can’t stand it no more – one day we stayed until 1am.

Then you go back to your hotel and shower and feel amazing. But then you have to go out again to get some dinner.

I know I’m making this sound like some kind of torture, and in some ways it kind’a is, but the good news is you laugh A LOT and have a great time.

Lisa got us an apartment at a golf resort called “Reunion” here’s a link so you can check it out. It was basically FANTASTIC.

We had a three bedroom apartment and the resort had 9 different pools and a water park with a slide and lazy river!

It was also five miles from Disney so getting to the parks was super quick.

So what did we do while we were there?

We visited:

• Disney Magic Kingdom twice
• Disney Epcot twice
• Disney Hollywood Studios once
• Disney Animal Kingdom once
• Downtown Disney twice
• Universal Studios twice
• Universal Islands of Adventure twice
• Universal City Walk twice
• Busch Gardens once
• So we were pretty busy 🙂

So what did we like?

The Magic Kingdom was (as always) great. I don’t care how old you are, you just have a great time walking around the park. Splash Mountain, Space Mountain, Buzz Light year, It’s a Small World are our favorites.

Epcot I think is our favorite park. We loved it there so went twice. Just walking around the world sampling different foods was great fun and we had a blast with the different attractions.

Hollywood Studios was a bit of a let down. I seem to remember this being better but we didn’t have a great time there.

Animal Kingdom was great and Abi and I had a lot of fun on some of the water rides getting totally soaked. Also the safari drive around the park was super cool. I got loads of great pics on that but didn’t include them coz once you’ve seen an elephant…

Downtown Disney was a bit of a mess this year. They are carrying out some MAJOR refurbishment and there were road works everywhere and parking was a bit of a mess. I’m sure it will be great when it’s complete but I think they are easily a year away. Still we visited our favorite shops and stocked up the kitchen with new cups.

Universal should really be re-named “Harry Potter World” as that’s what it’s becoming. Now if you are not a potter fan you shouldn’t go (I think) but if you like it – wow it’s just amazing.

They’ve build Diagon Alley in Studio and Hogsmeade village in Islands of Adventure and you can take the train from Kings Cross to go from one to the other. This who experience is just amazing and you can’t fail to fall in love with the stories and characters again when you visit.

The attention to detail in both locations is ridiculous. I was in Hogsmeade and asked for a coke only to be told “sorry sir, we don’t sell Muggle drinks here” – Brilliant!

Other parts of both parks are great too, but for me (as a huge fan) it’s all about Potter.

The big disappointment for us this trip was Busch Gardens. It was really expensive ($100 each!) and all the animals were hiding and the ride lines made you want forever. A real shame as I seem to remember this as a great place to go years ago. I definitely won’t be going back.

That aside we had a fantastic vacation. Both James and Abi had a great time, even being stuck on two rides was cool (one in Epcot and one in Universal – although Abi didn’t like being stuck in Universal as we were way high up and a thunderstorm was coming in).

The place we stayed was fantastic and while it was super hot we had an excellent time.

Seriously can’t wait until we go back.

On a photography front, all I took was the X-T1 with my new 18-135mm lens and the X100T.  Some days I took one out, others I took the other.  Here’s the shocker – I had more fun with the X100T than the X-T1 and think that many of the images I took with that smaller cheaper camera are my favorites.

Here are some shots of each park.

Magic Kingdom

 

Epcot

 

Universal Studios

 

So it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything to my blog – I know I’m a bad photographer 🙁 The reality is work has been rather busy so I’ve spent a lot of time there and when I get home I’m just too tired to spend time writing up my day, plus my days just aren’t that interesting.

But I have been out and about with the camera, arguably not as much as I’d like but I do find time. So I thought I’d spend some time today doing some catching up – post some older entries with some pictures.

This posting is all about the Washington Skagit Valley Tulip festival. This takes place every year in April and May and is well worth going to.

They have fields and fields of tulips in full bloom and it’s beautiful.

Now I’ve been going for a few years now and have a few posts in this blog on my visits and I’m sure many of the pictures look the same (I mean how many different ways are there to shoot a Tulip?)

That said I took the camera and got some nice shots so thought I’d share. What was different this year though was that I leant Abi (my daughter) a camera and she took some pictures too.

After a first few shots I told her to come up with some interesting compositions as all her shots were from above looking down – basically what you would see if you went there and walked around. I showed her how I got down really low and also how tilting the camera (or just shooting up) can give a different perspective.

Well after that she went nuts! She was lying in the mud, turning the camera upside down and really coming up with some amazing shots. At the end of the day I learnt a few things from her 🙂

Unfortunately I don’t have her images to share, they are on her computer (probably just as well as some of her’s are more interesting than mine lol) but I think she has a talent here that I’ll continue to encourage.

Anyway, enjoy the images.

This weekend Lisa and Abi were out of town attending a gymnastics meet in Bellingham.  So I was left at home alone all day Saturday and most of Sunday.  Now I say alone, but that’s not really true as James was home too, but he lives in his room on his computer and I didn’t see him all weekend so I was basically alone.

So what to do?  One thing I did find out is that I suck without Lisa – it appears (don’t tell her this) that having her here telling me what to do all day actually keeps me busy.  Here I was, on my own, the whole weekend to myself and I didn’t know what to do.  Talk about “Trained”.

By Sunday afternoon I was literally going nuts – bored stupid.  So I’m on the internet reading one of my favorite Fuji camera sites http://www.fujix-forum.com and came across a post I found interesting.

The post was basically discussing the value of camera sensor size and whether a full frame sensor was that much better than a Fuji APS-C sensor (I told you I was bored).  Now I don’t expect you to understand any of this but I’ll tell you that the Fuji sensors are a little smaller than some professional high end digital cameras from Nikon and Canon (that’s all you really need to know).  Now I used to have one of those expensive high end larger sensor cameras and sold it to buy the Fuji gear I have to day.  I love my fuji cameras and think they are just as good as any Nikon or Canon.

The article was basically saying that with my camera when you take a portrait shot, you don’t get the “soft – out of focus” look the professionals like.  (This is called Bokeh.)  I don’t agree and have achieved this MANY times.  So I decided to do a test to show you can get nice bokeh in your pics.

But what to shoot?

As everyone was out I decided to try a self-portrait.  Now I should point out here that one of the reasons I take all the pictures in my family is that I don’t like having my picture taken.  So this was going to be “fun”.

So I got out my tripod, one of my nice portrait lenses, one light and a small soft box.  I set it all up in the dining room and got out my phone.  Yes that’s right, I got my phone which has an app that talks to my camera.  Using my phone I could stand in front of the camera, see on the phone what the camera was looking at, focus on the phone, look up and take the shot!  Cool eh?

This is basically what I did.  Of course I had to do it probably 30 times before I actually got a picture I half liked, but that’s it.  The end result is below and hopefully you can see the nice bokeh (soft focus) behind me in the garden.

Now as my whole family know I live in Photoshop and since I took this shot I’ve been asked several times if I “Photoshopped” the image.  I’m not quite sure what they are actually asking here.  Do they like the image and think I made me look better?  Or do they not like the image and think I should have made myself look better? Who knows.

The answer to the question however is YES.  The image was loaded into Photoshop and I sharpened it and added a vignette to make it look nice.  The rest is (unfortunately) all me.