Seattle considers itself a bit of a “hip” arty city and you can see evidence of this everywhere you go.  Along the waterfront there are a number of sculptures in our “sculpture park”, we have a large amount of urban art like the troll under the bridge eating a VW Beetle – I’ll photograph that one one day.  We have weird paintings and murals around the city – we even have a gum wall (that’s a wall covered in chewing gum) and of course the “Hammering Man”, a 60 foot animated sculpture outside the Art Museum that is literally a metal dude with a hammer! (No I don’t get that one either).

So we are progressive, and cool and very arty, as you would expect from the city that gave us Jimmy Hendrix and Grunge music.

What’s unusual is that you tend to encounter the “art” in the most surprising places.  For example, the Seattle Public Library.  This is an amazing building that actually justifies a photograph in itself (an idea for another day).  The building is predominantly glass and is bigger at the top that it is at the bottom – really cool.

Inside the Library they have brightly colored escalators (check out my posting on January 28th) and then they have the “Red Room”.  This room is the subject of today’s posting and it’s quite appropriately named.  Basically the Red Room is a room that is completely red! (Told you it had the right name).  The floor, walls and ceiling are all red.  Why is that, you may ask.  What purpose does it serve?

Well, I have no bloody idea!  I even asked at the Library and they just said “because” and then nodded at me in a knowing way.  So they don’t know either.  The bottom line is Seattle is cool and arty, the Public Library is cool and arty, and the Red Room is cool and “RED”.

Does make an interesting picture though…

Carter and Master Chief had a tough day at work today and needed some love – a bit of a cuddle in fact.

Now I don’t know much about cars, but I know what I like.  Obviously coming from the UK I’m much more familiar with European cars as there really isn’t a market for US models as they are usually very big and drink a load of gas.  And petrol (that’s what they call gas over there) is around $10 a gallon.  So it’s very rare to come across a V8 – they’re far too expensive.  Also a majority of US roads are pretty straight and the suspensions are set up for going in a straight line at speed and then slowing to turn.  In Europe (and England especially) the roads are really windy (technical term), and well people drive a little faster there so the car suspension is much firmer and feels very different.

So why am I telling you all this?  Actually I’m not sure I wandered off a bit there but I did find something out over the weekend, apparently I really like old Corvette’s – who knew!  Now I’m definitely no Corvette expert but I’m gonna guess that this one was made in 1962.

There were all these cars in the town center and people were all excited over the Lamborghinis and Ferraris, and this Corvette was sitting in the corner all on it’s own.  Nobody was checking out the car.  At first I just went over to take a picture without loads of people in the way but it was beautiful.

Now I don’t normally do this but I took a couple of shots of this car and couldn’t decide which one to post, so in the end I thought I’d post them both.  Check it out, what a really beautiful machine.

Master Chief needed his hair brushed but wouldn’t sit still, so Carter came up with a clever way of holding him down.

Today’s image is not going to be to everyone’s taste, but I like it (and so does Lisa) so up it goes.  This shot was taken in the Train Museum in Snoqualmie.  There were loads of trains there – all shapes and sizes and I took lot of pictures.  But there was this one wagon that was really in bad shape.  It was obviously very old and weathered.  The sun, rain and every other element had hit this wagon hard.

So I took loads of pictures including the close up one below.  Some of the things you should look for in “interesting pictures” is texture and this train had plenty of it (in fact it was falling off the thing and all over the floor).  I really liked the peeling paint and rotten wood (keep with me here I’m being sincere) and the orange and blacks looked great (I thought) so this was one I was pretty pleased with.

But I’ve been holding off posting it as it’s not what you normally see from me – and I appreciate that most people wont “get it”.  Lisa asked me if I liked it and I said yes, I love it!  So she said them post it, the site is for you not for readers.  (She clearly had a bad day).

So here you are, a close up of rust and rotten wood on a decaying old train that literally is falling to bits.  Enjoy…

What with the nice warm weather outside Cater decided to play ball in the yard.

Today was a great day.  Firstly we had temperatures of 80 degrees with blue skies, and secondly, Redmond held an “Exotics @ Redmond Town Center” event.  The Exotics event is a car meet in the middle of town where around 200 cars are put on show for the adoring public.

Some of the cars relatively modern or even new, in fact there was a company there with a few of it’s cars looking to make a sale.  But there was also a lot of people who refurbish old cars and and you could see the love and pride they had in showing their “babies” to other fanatics.

Obviously you see the usual suspects at the meet, there were loads of Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Porsches and if that’s your thing you’d love it.  But for me I like older cars and there were plenty of them there too.  I shot Corvettes, Ford GTs, Jaguar’s and even an Austin Healey and they were FANTASTIC.  So you should expect some cars being posted in the coming weeks.

But I thought I’d start with a 1966 MK III Shelby Cobra.  There were a couple of these cars parked up at the meet and they looked amazing.  They have this large opening at the front and catches air and funnels it to the car’s radiators (for water and oil) which looks like a big mouth.

Today’s picture was shot from the ground looking up.  I wanted something very low capturing that big mouth and the vertical bumpers that I think look like teeth.

The Cobra originated in England in the early 1960’s and was built by AC.  Shelby in the US wanted something to compete against the successful Corvette and worked with AC to come up with a challenger.  These days AC still builds the cars in Germany and you can buy a new MK VI for around $175,000.  Needless to say, Lisa is lucky I’m into photography.

The Halo guys had bad breath today, so we told them to give their teeth a real good clean, I captured the moment for you…

Yeah yeah I know I said no more tulip pictures, but I like this one so suck it.  This picture was taken in Mount Vernon at the tulip festival (now that’s a surprise).  Can you see all the people walking in the field?  No?  Well that’s the magic of Photoshop!

I liked this one as the tulips looked beautiful and the leading line of the row on the right going off to the distance draws your eye to the trees, hills and mountains behind the flowers.  That white peak “poking” over the hill top to the right of the barn is Mount Baker.  I also liked the barn behind the tulips.  It kind of provides a feature of interest between the flowers and the sky.

When I took this picture I actually took several versions all with varying depth of field, some had everything in focus, others (like this one) had the flowers at the front in focus and the focus dropped off into the distance.  I liked this look most of all so I picked it for today’s picture.

Obviously this wasn’t taken at work as that would be quite naughty, but the guys found a bottle of scotch somewhere!  (My Dad will like this one).