Now this is a terrible thing to admit but I’m not a huge fan of shooting my kids.  If you need to ask why, you don’t have kids yourself!  Basically most people who ask me to photography them actually want me to do it.  Sure people aren’t necessarily comfortable in front of the camera but they try – and it’s my job of course to help them.

But my kids… they DEFINITELY don’t want to be photographed, in fact they hate it!

So when Lisa asked me to get some shots of James and Abi, with their cousin Regan I thought “oh no” and adopted an unhappy face.

But not to be perturbed I got some lights out and grabbed the camera.  But things were not right – something was wrong!  Abi was in the shower getting ready (this never happens), then James got in the shower!!!!!  Regan put on Seattle Seahawks t-shirt (his new favorite team) and then all got in front of the camera.

Then they smiled – I’ll say that again – THEY SMILED!

So either, I’m getting better at this (unlikely) or they just wanted to play tonight (probable).

Anyway here are the shots.

For those that don’t know I don’t live in Seattle.  I actually live in Redmond which is around 20 miles to the east of Seattle.  Now here’s the dumb thing, it takes NO TIME at all to drive into the city, but we never go.  I used to live about 30 miles to the west of London and it could take over 2 hours to get into town.  But here it takes 30 minutes to go into the city, so there’s no excuse! But we still never visit.  That is until someone visits us.

Over the last few weeks we’ve had a visiter from the UK staying with us.  Regan my nephew has now been with us for 3 weeks and as a chef he was really keen to go to Pike Place Market.  So on Saturday morning off we went.

As I don’t go to the market that often I took a camera (of course) and took a load of pics.

The weather was pretty good, a little cold but dry and the sun was out.  So I captured lots of shots.  We had fun walking though the market so I grabbed the usual fruit, vegetables and fish pictures, then we went outside and I shot some of the buskers performing in the street.

I got a few shots of Regan (that looked better in black and white – nothing to do with him I just thought they looked cool) and one of Abi and one of James.

It was actually a lot of fun and I’m very happy with the shots, especially as I only took the X100T.  This is a camera with a fixed prime lens (so no zooming at all).  If I wanted the subject to be closer I had to move closer.  It was actually really refreshing to not have to worry about the focal length, instead I basically had a nice low ISO (200), Aperture typically at f/8, and that’s it.

Just had fun shooting interesting stuff.  I can’t begin to describe how nice this camera is, it’s fun to use and the images are just beautiful.

I say this every time but I’m definitely going back again soon, it was a lot of fun.

It’s that time of year again, when Lisa asks me to get some shots of the kids for a Christmas Card.  Usually this is horribly painful – ask any photography what it’s like when they have to shoot their own kids – it’s a nightmare!  Anyone else is fine, but your own kids just don’t want to play – at all.

But this year things were different – don’t know why, but Abi was great, she got dressed when I asked her and ran out into the garden with a big smile on her face.  The night before we had some snow come down so it gave us the perfect backdrop for some nice portraits.  I shot Abi Saturday morning and everything went great, but James was still in bed – in fact he stayed in bed until 3pm and by the time he had got up and had breakfast the sun was no longer visible and everything was in shade.

Initially I thought it was going to be another terrible year.  But then Sunday morning comes along and James comes down stairs at 10am all dressed and said “I’m ready, let’s take the pictures”.  He stood where I asked, posed how I asked and smiled on queue.  NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE.

I can honestly say it was a pleasure taking the shots.

I took a few images of both James and Abi and gave them all to Lisa and she picked a couple of go on our card that she has ordered already.  I’ve picked four images below that I really liked.  I should say that the third one down (of James) I really thought was great.  I told him not to smile but to kind of look serious. It came out really well.

One day I’ll get a nice picture of James without his beanie but until then I’ll settle for the pictures below.

By now we’ve thrown the original list away and started making up new topics on Friday.  I don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote the original list but we didn’t like the subjects anymore.  But carrying on we just needed a new topic for the week.  Week 8 we decided should be “Motion”.  We had a long conversation of what do we mean by motion and we talked about capturing something that looks like it’s moving.  Pretty straight forward really, but what to shoot?

Saturday afternoon it came to me.  What about an action shot of James on one of his skateboards?  That would be great?  Trouble is James isn’t big on action – too much like his dad.  But he does take the board out and go round the neighborhood.  So I came up with this cunning plan.  Lisa drives her car with me in the trunk with a camera and light.  The trunk is open and behind the car James is riding his skateboard – I mean how hard can this be?   The answer was actually pretty easy!

We discussed doing it Saturday evening, but James wanted to wash his hair first – which I should point out is crap coz he them put his beany hat on!  Go figure!  So Sunday was chosen as the day.

We needed to take the shot late evening as the sun was going down, as I needed to use a slower shutter speed so the background looked blurry showing James was moving.  If he was in bright sunlight the shutter would be quick and it would look like he was stationary on the board and I just took a shot – that wouldn’t be “motion” at all.

So 7pm Sunday night arrived and out we all go.  I jump in the trunk with Abi who’s my lighting assistant.  Lisa is behind the wheel and James is all clean in his beany 🙁 ready to go.  We found a road in our neighborhood that had a nice hill that wasn’t too busy or steep.  James and I tried the location the previous night and he reached almost 30 miles an hour.

So back we went to get the shot.

In total it took us three runs down the hill where I shot off around 40 shots a run – just pointing at James and holding the shutter button down.  The first run helped me get the exposure right, the second two helped me get the one in focus picture that looked great.  We quickly found out that shooting him while in Shade looked best, and every now and then his face would hit some sunlight coming through the trees to light him up.  If only I could time it right to get THAT shot!  Then I wouldn’t need any lights.

On the third run we nailed it and I got the picture below.  This has very little post processing.  It’s pretty much right out of the camera so we were lucky I guess.

I’m REALLY pleased with the shot and feel it does capture the feeling of motion – even James liked it.

I’ve been on vacation to Hawaii a few times now, it’s one of the real benefits of living in the Pacific North West as the islands are only about a 5 hour flight away.  If you’ve never been you probably have a romantic view of what it’s like.  Maybe you’ve see Hawaii five 0 (the new series or if you’re old like me the old one with Jack Lord).  Perhaps you even remember Magnum PI with Tom Selleck (as a kid I loved that show – talk about a man crush!)  Either way let me tell you this, Hawaii is everything you ever dreamed… only better!

It truly is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen, the beaches are just stunning, the scenery is amazing and totally exotic and if you want to relax, it’s the only place on earth to go.  At least that’s what I thought!

We’ve been to Maui a couple of times, Kauai once, and this year we went to Oahu.

People at work who haven’t been to Hawaii asked me how the islands differed.  The easiest way I could come up with to explain the difference was as follows.  Kauai is a small village with a couple of shops, if you like big malls or crowded places Kauai is not the place for you, but if you want total piece and quiet, it’s heaven.  Maui is a small town, nice shops, good restaurants (all your favorites) a little touristy with lots to see.  On Maui you can lie on a beach in the morning and shop in Tiffany’s in the afternoon (been there done that).  Then we get to Oahu.  For me this was a big city to Maui’s town or Kauai’s village.  Oahu has it all going on, mad busy beaches, big cities, HUGE shopping complexes, a massive navel base and traffic like Seattle in rush hour.

If you like the beauty of Hawaii but need the hustle and bustle of home Oahu is for you – it’s just not for me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m really pleased we went but I want to go to Hawaii to relax, not sit in traffic for 90 minutes after going to one of the biggest open air malls I’ve ever been to get back to my hotel.  While there we stayed in Aulani the Disney Hotel and complex in Hawaii.  This is a place where you need to take a LOAD of money as it was the most expensive hotel I’ve ever stayed in.  Now I like Disney as while it’s pricy you get value for money, but the food in Aulani was just terrible but still SUPER expensive and as they have you as a captive audience on the west coast, you kind of have to eat there!

Anyway, Oahu it was this year.  Issues aside we had a wonderful vacation, the pools and facilities in the hotel were really nice and the kids had a blast.  While there I took a few pictures 🙂 and really enjoyed visiting Peal Harbor and walking on the Missouri (that’s history for you right there!)

Will I go back to Hawaii again? No question a huge YES.  Oahu though? Probably not.

Here’s a selection of some of my favorite pictures.