I was looking through my backlog of pictures tonight looking for something to post (when you get to work at 7:30 in the morning and don’t get home until 7:30 at night, trust me when I say you are too tired to go out with a camera), and I found this image from our family vacation to Maui.

I’m not sure how I missed this one while I was there and didn’t post it, but I clearly kept it so I could share it with you tonight.  This was another shot of the Grand Wailea Hotel’s grounds.  The sun was just going down and the lamps by all the paths had just been turned on.  It was clearly dinner time as there is nobody in the picture (I have no idea how I managed that).

I liked this path leading to the small pagoda and the sunset over the trees and the sea was kind-a pretty.  The hotel has a lot of grass grounds like this but we didn’t go to this side of the hotel very often because this was the “Adult’s Only” section.  At the end of the path is the 18 and over pool and a large lawn area with a load of beach loungers for those who luv to sun worship.  So with two kids 15 and under I didn’t go here very often.

All I’m gonna say here is that Slinky’s are dangerous!

This weekend I went back to the Redmond Exotic’s car show with Regan (my nephew visiting from the UK).  They didn’t have a theme this week and in truth there weren’t that many cars there but we did find this really cool old Chevy Truck.  Now I have no idea what year and model this was, the owner wasn’t around, but I thought it looked great.

Add to that, my brother-in-law (Craig, Regan’s dad) is refurbishing an old Chevy Truck, so Craig, this one’s for you.

There’s a show I love to watch on TV (from the UK) called Wheeler Dealers where two guys (Mike and Ed) refurbish old cars and in season 8 they did a Chevy 3100, they did a great job and this truck reminded me of the show, so if you like cars (and trucks) check out Wheeler Dealers.

It was very very hot when I took this and the sun was pretty much over head.  Two things that (for me) don’t produce that great of a picture.  So the fact that this came out and looked ok was pretty lucky.  There are though a lot of hot spots in the picture where the sun blew out the color and detail, but I don’t think it ruins the image.

Carter got the chance to visit his first Sonic today.  He enjoyed a footlong quarter pounder coney hotdog, and a chocolate shake!

My nephew Regan Smith is visiting us from the UK for a couple of weeks and he’s an aspiring chef.  He cooks for us most evenings and loves to visit food utensil shops (like “Bed Bath & Beyond”) to check out the American equipment.

On TV Regan likes to watch the Food Network and one of his favorite shows is “Man vs Food” with Adam Richman.  When Regan got here there were a number of places he wanted to visit and one was a restaurant featured on Man vs Food called “Red Mill Burgers”.  Now those of you who follow or have seen Adam in the show know that he basically takes on food challenges, but in one particular show he was visiting Seattle and just went to Red Mill Burgers as the burgers there were SO good.

So Regan (who after all wants to open his own burger joint) decided he wanted to check out the restaurant.  So today for dinner we gave it a try.

The restaurant is in Green Park North Seattle but the I90 bridge was closed.  As a result we decided to go round Lake Washington via Lynnwood, and got there around two in the afternoon.  The place is tiny, very little seating and next-door to a Starbucks, literally in the middle of nowhere.

Having said that, the restaurant was packed, there was a huge line of people coming out of the store and fortunately most were getting take-out.  We got in line and I found a table and we had bacon burgers, fries, shakes and onion rings. (The onion rings are to die for, and the burgers are very good too – although rather big).

We had a great meal and all ate too much and now I’m home writing this I think I’m stuck in my chair for the evening!

So why am I telling you all this?  Well on the way out of the restaurant I took a quick peek over the counter (Regan told me the kitchen staff were “Really Hot” – his words) and I saw this unbelievable pile of bacon!  (Clearly I’m getting old as I didn’t notice the girls).

In my “bacon” frenzied excitement I asked the girl behind the counter if I could take a picture and she said sure, and invited me into the kitchen.

I appreciate that this is “unusual”, but look at it!  It’s beautiful!  If you like bacon you will definitely know what I mean.

So go to Red Mill Burgers in Green Park and check out the burgers, onion rings and pile of bacon – you won’t be disappointed.

Carter told me today that he wanted to work on his target practice, I thought he meant with a gun, but clearly not!

The other day I posted an image of the Suspension Bridge at the Botanical Gardens in Bellevue.  You find this 150′ bridge if you follow the “Ravine Experience” nature walk through the park.  Usually I take wide angle shots of structures like this so you can see the whole thing.  But lately I’m trying to find an alternative perspective (that’s a posh photography or “arty” way of saying a different or interesting view).

With modern cameras anyone can take a correctly exposed picture that’s in focus, in fact it’s quite hard not to.  But the difference between a holiday snap and a beautiful picture is all about reading, understanding and manipulating light and learning how to compose scenes that draw the eye in and either tell a story or leave the viewer with a strong emotion.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting I’m good at this or know how to create those strangely compelling images that you can’t stop looking at, but I’m trying.  What’s funning is as I’m a total geek and cameras have so many knobs and buttons, sometimes I go so excited about the technology I forget the composition.

If nothing else, this New Years resolution has got me out of the house and forced me to take a LOT of pictures and I *think* I’m getting better.

I really liked this image.  You can clearly see this is a suspension bridge and you can see it’s surrounded by forest.  I liked the texture of the brick in the base pillar and to draw your eye to it I kept that in focus and made the rest of the bridge slowly fall out of focus.

Tonight Carter and Master Chief decided to do some ironing and we witnessed a terrible accident!

A couple of months ago I posted a picture of the new Seattle ferris wheel (called the “Great Wheel”) at sunset.  To capture that image I stood at the end of a pier, but today’s picture was taken from a ferry in Elliott Bay.  We were approaching the pier and city and I had a few seconds to capture the wheel with the city and Space Needle behind it.

When I took this everything was moving.  I was moving on the ferry as it approached the dock and the wheel was going round.  Luckily it was lovely and sunny so I had loads of light and could shoot the image at a really fast shutter speed, this nicely froze all motion and gave me the picture below.

I’m really pleased I got the Space Needle in the image too, here it looks like it’s close to the tall buildings but it’s pretty far away from downtown.  I think the colors of the piers and the buildings, and the blue sky make a really nice picture – at least I’m pleased with it.

I’ve been told that one of the gondolas on the ferris wheel has a glass bottom.  So I’m really keen to take a ride on that and see what pictures I can get.  I’ll try and do it over the next few weeks so I can get a Summery image and share with you all here on the blog.

Work has been a little manic lately with very early starts and super long days, in the evenings I’m just exhausted so have to rely on weekends to capture new images for the blog.  This week we have family visiting from the UK as well so I suspect we will be going somewhere fun on Saturday or Sunday and I’ll get an opportunity to capture something new – at least that’s my hope.

I try to get out of town at least once a month and go somewhere new on a photo trip and have some very exciting plans coming up, with all sorts of trips like the Olympic National Park, the Oregon Coast and Las Vegas.  I can’t believe I’ve kept this going for 222 days and am confident that I’ll make it to the end of the year.  Trust me when I say I have seriously considered stopping this several times, but with only a few months left and some cool trips on my calendar, the end of this year long resolution is definitely in sight and success feels possible.

Carter and Master Chief are definitely getting into cooking.  Tonight they hand rolled 45 meatballs!