While on Bainbridge Island Chris and I headed over to Fort Ward State Park to see if we could get any cool pictures.  When you get there you find this long very stoney beach that’s pretty much covered with old tree trunks and drift wood.  There’s a boat ramp that leads you down to the beach so Chris and I grabbed our gear and walked down the ramp.

Along the beach we saw this wooden frame with loads of birds on the top, we thought it might make a nice picture and it didn’t seem that far away, so off we went.  There wasn’t a path to follow you just had to walk over all the stones and carrying all my camera gear I nearly went over a couple of times.  Also while at first it didn’t seem that far, it took us ages to get there (these things always seem closer than they are).

When we arrived at the wooden poles we set up the tripods and took some pictures.  I thought it might look cool if all the birds took off so I picked up a stone and threw it towards the structure to try and startle the birds into flight.  I was totally pathetic!  My stone didn’t even make it half way and the birds didn’t move at all.  I’m clearly getting very old, either that or I have totally unrealistic expectations over my athletic ability (probably both).

While I was attempting this I didn’t notice that the tide had started to come in and was already over the base of my tripod.  So we moved back a few feet, took some more pictures and headed back.  The water was really coming in fast and we only just made it back to the boat ramp before the beach was cut off.  I’m so pleased we made it, but I guess it would have been a more interesting story here if we had got wet, luckily though that didn’t happen.

I actually think the picture below came out OK, the water was pretty still but you still get the wobbly pole reflections in the water.  It was so peaceful there, really quite beautiful.  I left the beach quite jealous of all the homes with a beach view.

Lisa made some Potato Salad today and when she wasn’t looking Carter and Master Chief pinched some!

Today my photography buddy Chris Pearson and I decided to take a ferry from Seattle to Bainbridge Island and see what we could shoot.  So at 8am this morning I picked Chris up and we hit the road.  We got to Seattle pretty quickly, the roads were relatively empty at that time and drove to the ferry port.  We got there at the exactly right time to drive straight onto a waiting ferry and cross Elliott Bay.

I guess 8:30 in the morning on a Saturday is too early for most as the ferry was empty and we got the chance to take some shots of Seattle as we left, and Bainbridge as we arrived.  On the way over the sky was very overcast and it looked like it was about to rain, fortunately as the morning drew on it got warmer and warmer and blue sky even came out.

I got some really good pictures on Bainbridge Island and will post those in the coming week, but tonight’s picture was of the ferry as it approached Bainbridge to take us home to Seattle.  Chris and I parked up near the front of the line to get on the ferry and had time to walk down to the ferry port ramp where you drive from the Island onto the ferry.  I took this picture as the ferry was coming in.

I liked this image as I caught the ferry as it was about to turn towards dock and had the Seattle skyline in the background.  I also liked the depth of field in this picture too with the dock just out of focus.  It doesn’t look it here but it was quite warm by this time with blue sky poking through the clouds.

We had a really good day and I got a good dozen postable images, and for 6 hours that’s really good.

Here’s Carter enjoying a run on the beach.  Clearly the sand is very wet as his feet are sinking!

I was walking around the some of the fresh water ponds in Maui trying to get some pictures of water lilies.  I wanted a picture of the lily as in Maui they are just so perfect.  They flower and sit on the lily pad in the water and just look beautiful.  However all the lilies I could find had floated to the waters edge and didn’t look as nice – you can probably imagine the shot I wanted, that perfect flowered stem on a number of lily pads floating in the middle of a pond.  I did take some pictures but didn’t get the shot I was looking for.

To be honest I was just shooting other plants out of frustration, I mean I came out with the camera I didn’t want to go back with nothing.  But I didn’t think I would post anything.

When I got home I was going through my pictures and came across tonight’s image.  I had to look this plant up, it’s called a Bromeliad, or at least is from that family, as is the pineapple.

What caught my eye was the fact that this plant caught and held water and had small blooms in it’s center.  I looked up on the internet about these plants and it’s all incredibly boring so I won’t bore you here, but I think they look really interesting.  They do say that you shouldn’t shoot plants and flowers and add them to your portfolio as plants are expected to look beautiful, so if you do shoot one, it needs to be especially stunning or very different.  For me this plant falls into that second category.

I took a few pictures of the plant, some with the plant entirely in the shot and others like this one where I just catch part of the plant.  I really liked this composition, your eyes are drawn to the bottom right corner and I think it makes the plant interesting as you spend a couple of seconds looking at it asking yourself “what the heck is that”?

So definitely not a typical picture, but one I really liked.  Hope you like it too.

Here we can see Master Chief and Carter clearly not following the “rules” as laid down by the hotel pool!

You can’t come to Maui to shoot a picture every day and not post a picture of a gecko.  I mean, they’re everywhere aren’t they?  What I learned was that they are everywhere when you don’t have a camera in your hand.  But if you go out and want to shoot one, well you had better bring some patience.

I posted a picture yesterday of the gardens in the Wailea Grand Resort and Hotel and would go there every day looking for one of these guys to shoot.  The first time I found one I got all excited and pushed my lens too close and the little guy bolted!  I couldn’t believe it, it took me three days to find a gecko on a leaf for a picture and the bloody thing ran off.  So I waited, and waited and, well you get the idea, I waited a long time – unfortunately without any luck.

Next time I was in the gardens I got my opportunity again, only this time I went slower.  I started taking shots from some distance away and slowly moved in.  I guess once I got a few pictures under my belt I got a little more adventurous and got closer still.  Eventually the gecko moved but he went up the leaf and I got this shot today.

When I got back to my room, I found that photographing a gecko and photographing an “in focus” gecko were two entirely different things.  Most of my images had a nice blurry gecko but the one below came out really well.

I actually had a different picture in my mind that I wanted.  Shooting these leaves into the sun captured really beautiful colors and having a gecko on the other side of the leaf poking his head around would produce a great leaf with a gecko’s face appearing around the leaf and the silhouette of the gecko’s body through the leaf.  I even got one of these and if it had been in focus I would have posted it tonight.  That said, I’m pleased with this one.

Carter enjoyed a go on the water slide, here he is hitting the water at the bottom.

I’ve mentioned (a few times now) that the Grand Wailea Resort was really big facility.  One of the areas of the hotel I haven’t really talked about are the gardens.  Directly below our hotel room are these amazing Koi Carp ponds that are surrounded by beautiful gardens.  Each morning I’d go down to the gardens to take pictures and I got quite a few that I really like.

I spent a lot of time looking for little geckos to photograph that would come out in the morning sunshine to warm in the sun.  I had one successful morning and got a gecko sitting on a huge green leaf, I’m sure I’ll post that in the future.

There are paths that take you through the gardens that cross the ponds that the are linked together and the water is full of huge Koi Carp.  The little wooden bamboo bridges you walk across and bamboo stairs that take you to different levels within the garden are really cute and there are also several little water falls joining different pools and levels together.  Also every now and then you come across a thatched roof gazebo.  These provide lovely places to chill out and avoid the direct sun in the afternoon and enjoy the serene atmosphere of the gardens and I’ve even seen people enjoying breakfast in the gazebo’s in the mornings.

A lot of the palm trees (at this time of year) have really small coconuts which are the size of a small potato.  In the evening we’d swim in the pools and find these baby coconuts at the bottom.  The kids called them potatoes and used them as dive targets to retrieve from the bottom of the pool.  The naughty thing we did with them however was take them to our room on the 9th floor at the end of the day, and throw them off our balcony into the Koi ponds – this was completely Lisa’s doing (nobody is going to believe that) and I spent lots of time suggesting it was a bad idea.  Fortunately she never hit a fish and nobody saw us or kicked us out.

Today’s picture was actually taken on our last day.  I wanted an image that had a bamboo bridge, part of a pond, a fish and a thatched gazebo in it, and ironically this was the only one I got.  I even got a tiny waterfall under the bridge.  The vibrant colors really capture the gardens and hopefully help you appreciate just how beautiful this place was.

When we got to the airport, Carter and Master Chief spent a lot of the time looking out the (very dirty) airport windows at the plane that was going to take us home.