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.)

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.