Continuing my quest for all things Union Jack’ish tonight I found a T-Shirt.  Unfortunately it didn’t fit me so Abi kindly agreed to model the item for a light painting picture.  Now the trouble with light painting is that you have to take a 30 second exposure, and it’s pretty hard to stay still for that length of time. (Go on, try it – no blinking, sniffing, moving – nothing).

Abi did pretty well, she sat there in the dark while I waved a flashlight all over her.  She got about 20 seconds in and started to laugh.  As a result this is definitely not the sharpest image I’ve ever taken, but I’m calling it deliberate soft focus.

Anyway I think she did great and now totally understand why you don’t take light painting pictures of people.

Incidentally I asked Lisa tonight how many things we have that have a Union Jack on them – there are LOADS.  However I’m definitely getting  board of this subject matter, and will possibly try something different tomorrow.

In case you didn’t know, Lisa is into card making and when I got home from work I found the Halo dudes busy at work!  Who knew they were so creative?

My philosophy in life is when I find something that works, keep doing it.  So after light painting a Union Jack guitar last night (and liking the results) I figured I’d keep going.  The goal for the rest of this week I think, is going to be find as many things in the house that have a Union Jack on them and light paint them.  (Actually I could keep this up for a month but I doubt people would keep coming back to the site – so one week it is).

Tonight the “lucky items” are a pair of Dr Martin boots that Lisa owns.  We found these in Nordstrom Rack a couple of years ago.  I think Lisa was feeling a little home sick (or nostalgic, I don’t know) and was super excited and brought them.  Anyway I think she has worn them maybe 10 times (she will tell you different but don’t listen to her).  I actually had to wipe dust of them tonight before I took the picture.

I popped them on a table, put the camera on a tripod and grabbed my flash light (that’s what she said).  I have to say I really like the results you get from light painting and it’s fun too.  However my flash light isn’t big enough (that’s what Lisa said) so I need to go shopping I think.  I wonder what I do tomorrow!

Lisa made some banana bread tonight, ‘nough said!

For those who don’t know, I’ve played the guitar since I was nine years old.  Throughout my life I’ve had times when I’ve played and times when I haven’t.  Right now I’m in a “dry spell” probably because of my photography hobby.

However a couple of years ago I was all about the guitar, I even got hold of a 1952 telecaster (it’s an absolute beauty).  Anyway Lisa was walking through Target around Christmas and saw an electric guitar with a Union Jack body and she brought it for me.  I have a few guitars now (five in total) and hang them on the wall in my den and Lisa thought the flag guitar would look great in my collection.  And it does.

So for tonight’s picture I thought I’d photograph the guitar.

Now at first I placed the guitar on a table, got out some lights and started shooting.  The images were horrible.  Every one was either heavily over exposed or just looked plain bad!  I was getting really frustrated and got a whole new appreciation for photographers who take product shots.

Then I got an idea.  Light painting!

Light painting involves turning off all the lights in the house and setting a long exposure on the camera (something like 30 seconds).  Then you take a picture of a subject and make sure that the image is totally black.  Then you get a flashlight and take another shot, this time shining the flashlight on the subject.  You get to wave the light around for the 30 second exposure and light the subject however you like.

This definitely takes practice and you have to go through the process of shooting an image, looking at areas that are too dark or too light, and then trying again.  I had to shoot the image of the guitar several times and every time got a different image (each one slightly better).

In the end I got a shot I really liked.  So for the rest of this week I’m going to be taking light painting pictures.  Let’s see how things work out.

We are still in “Girl Scout cookie week” so it wasn’t a surprise to find Carter and Master Chief tonight playing Cookie Tic-Tac-Toe.

Late posting today but I just made it (by 12 minutes).  Lisa and Abi went out this eventing to see a friend complete in the Miss Seattle Pageant and James and I were left at home.  I figured if the girls can go out and have some fun, then the boys can too.  So James and I jumped in the car and went to Seattle.  I grabbed the picture below and we went for dinner at the Metropolitan – fantastic steak if you ever get the chance.

This shot is taken overlooking downtown Seattle in a rather “dodgy” area.  James and I forced marched from a car park to the spot where I took the shot, took the picture real quick and ran back to the car – how sad is that!  Anyway it came out ok (especially as it was a rush job).

On the way home we drove past Pike Place Market and it was all lit up, I’m definitely going back to catch a night shot of that.  Anyway here is todays picture.

Carter found some bubbles tonight and I caught him playing with them, here is the shot.

After a few days of portraits I thought I’d go back to landscapes today.  This picture was taken in Carnation looking east towards the Cascade mountain range.  I liked this image mainly because of the sky, which is odd when you have the mountains center picture.

Coming from the UK (and London at that) I never saw landscapes like this, the tallest thing near where I come from is the Canary Wharf building in the city.  We had no mountains, in fact the tallest “mountain” in England is in the Lake District and it’s a sad 3200 feet!  90 miles from where we live here in Washington is Mount Rainier, that’s 14,400 feet.

The best bit is in the morning when I drive to work I get a fantastic view of Rainier.  On the way home I see the snow capped Cascades in the distance.  Pretty good for a London boy.

Now here is a blast from the past.  I wonder how many people viewing this post actually owned a Stylophone!  I had one, and so did David Bowie – just listen to Space Oddity.  Anyway, Carter found mine and started to blast out some awesome tunes.