I was in Seattle the other day down by the water front, like you do, and the sun was setting, like it does, and it kind-a looked really cool.  So I thought I’d take a picture, and the pictures looked, well just OK.  I think what grabbed my attention for a picture was the sunset and the moon high above, but in all my pictures I didn’t really get the right shot, principally because I was shooting in landscape, not portrait.  So I turned the camera on its side and captured the shot below.

Now there are advantages and disadvantages of shooting in portrait orientation.  I think the image I wanted (and got) worked really well in this format.  I really like the layers in the image; you have the calm water at the bottom, then that beautiful sunset with fluffy clouds, then above that some darker mottled clouds and finally some clear sky with the waxing crescent moon (I had to look that up).  The layers for me really make this image.

Unfortunately I don’t think portrait images work that well on the blog site (hence I don’t post them very often), but on a positive side, I now have a new phone lock screen image.

Yesterday Master Chief got to meet Carters horse, not to be out done, he got his ride out today.

As I’d exhausted my backlog of cars, I decided to go back to Redmond’s “Exotics” car show.  This show is on every weekend (weather permitting) and each week they have a different theme.

This weekend it was “British Car” week, so I went along to see what I could find.  I expected to see lots of Lotus and Jaguar’s (and wasn’t disappointed), but there were loads of manufactures that were conspicuous by to their absence.  For example, only one TVR (and it was it poor condition), no Triumphs (couldn’t believe that), not one Spitfire or Stag (my favorite) and only two MGs and no MGBGT – a wonderful car.

So it was a little disappointing and if I see one more Lamborghini at these shows I’ll scream – sorry James, I know you love them.  Having said all this there were some beautiful cars there and I got some nice pictures.

Despite the British theme, my posting tonight is a Porsche – funny eh?  This is an old Porsche 356 Speedster.  It was parked in a great position with some nice bushes behind, and nobody was in shot!  That’s pretty rare at these things you have to have the patience of a saint as there is always someone in the way.  But for this image I was lucky.

I loved the cream/yellow color of this car and the chrome on the front really set it off.  It was in fantastic condition, absolutely beautiful.  If I owned a Porsche, it would have to be one of these – but as it’s a convertible, it’s not really a car for Washington State.

This afternoon Carter decided to show Master Chief his new ride.  I think Master Chief was a little jealous.

Ask yourself this question.  You make your first billion dollars, what do you do?  Well if you’re Paul Allen (co-founder of Microsoft), you might start collecting World War II aircraft and decide to display them in a massive hanger.  I don’t know when he started to do this but that’s exactly what Paul did.  He purchased aircraft from all over the world and shipped them to Everett in Washington.  What’s more, he insisted that they all work and are taken out and flown each year.

His collection is exhibited by what’s called the Flying Heritage Collection.  So today I drove to Everett with a friend (Chris) to check out the collection.

There were no planes flying today, but we thought we’d check it our anyway.  On their web site all the planes appear to be outside on grass or on the runway.  But when we arrived they were all inside a large hanger.  This was both good and bad.  The good part was that there was no hard sunlight on the aircraft making lighting and pictures difficult.  The bad part was that the surroundings weren’t as nice.

As a result I took a lot of close up shots, trying to minimize the other planes and distractions around the subject I was going for, but I couldn’t help myself take some wide shots of a complete plane too, and at the end of the day I captured a lot of really nice pictures.

Today’s image is a B-25J Mitchell Bomber.  These planes were used by all the allied forces in World War II and in 1942 the B-25 was the first U.S. aircraft to bomb mainland Japan.  This particular plane was build towards the end of 1944 in Kansas City and severed in the Royal Canadian Air Force for 10 years before being sold as surplus in 1961.  After spending some time as a “fire-bomber” carrying water for the Cascade Drilling Company in Calgary it was purchased by the Flying Heritage Collection.

The aircraft is both amazing and terrifying at the same time.  The thought of sitting in the nose cone shooting the enemy just scares me to death.  I talked to some of the retired pilots and none of them talked of fear.  They were all young at the time of active service and just talked about the thrill of battle and the exhilaration of “winning”.   I served in the Armed Forces for 9 years but I don’t think war is like that.  I suspect the years have somewhat romanticized their experiences, but they were all amazing characters to talk to.

So look for more planes in the coming weeks, I’ll try to spread them out so you don’t get them all at once.  Enjoy.

After today’s visit to the Flying Heritage Collection (Museum) Master Chief had an OCD moment and insisted on washing all over in Purell!

Today was a beautiful day, 80+ degrees and blue sky.  So this afternoon I decided to drive over the Seattle and grab some pictures of people enjoying the sun.  In the end I found myself by Lake Union watching the boats on the lake.

Lake Union is also a landing strip for sea planes and I took a few shots of some planes taking off and landing.  But I wasn’t really in the best place and while some of the images were OK, I felt I could get a better shot on another day.  So the sea plane images went in the trash.

There were some beautiful sail boats on the lake too and they were moving at a heck of a pace across the water.  One I saw was almost on its side as it cut across the lake, it was really impressive.  But the boats were on the other side of the lake too far away even too far for my longest lens (Lisa I need a longer one) and the images I captured were also not great.

Then I saw these two ladies paddling past on their boards.  I grabbed a shot as they passed Gas Works Park in the background and I loved the image when I got home.  The water looked pretty smooth and they were traveling quite fast.  This sport amazes me, probably because I have terrible balance and would suck at it.  It looks so graceful (and I’m quite envious) so I decided to post this one tonight.

Lisa got the suitcases out today – we aren’t going to Maui until next Saturday!  But Carter and Master Chief got inspired and decided to do some Maui research.

Back on February 17th I posted a picture of the SR-71 Blackbird spy plane that was taken at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.  Here is a link to the posting SR-71 Blackbird.  The image I shot was the typical kind of picture you’d expect.  Taken from the front, just above the plane so you saw it in all its glory.

However while there, I saw another opportunity for an interesting picture. This time from the other end and underneath.  I stood behind the plane, got the tripod and shot the image below, of the planes underbelly.  There was a lot of orange light highlighting the plane and I hoped it would create a nice image.

When I composed the image there were a lot of people walking about and I really didn’t want any of them in the image.  So I decided to take lots of pictures and then splice them together in Photoshop using parts of images with no people and in them and then produce a clean people free photograph.

The end result came out (I think) really well.  The plane looks super cool and there are no people in shot.  The lights under the plane came our really well too and lit up the plane to create a great image.

Today the guys got hold of some sprinkled cookies.