12.31.2008

Happy New Year's Eve

We had a really nice if lately planned New Years.  Basically Yachi worked and I worked some from home then cleaned the house.  Then we had a bunch of people over and bailed out of going to the bars with them to celebrate at home by ourselves.  It was a good night though.

Walking to Vivace I saw my favorite soldiers:

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And managed to get a self-portrait due to glass installers walking past Vivace:

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I also played more with the window and manual focus.  I still did not get this quite as sharp as I would have liked but it was fun taking it:

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Ryan celebrating at the house:

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And Ella about to head to Barca:

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The rest of the shots ended up being to blurry.  Possibly related to the number of glasses of champagne I had but probably not :).

12.30.2008

The Camera's First Trip To Work

And found a couple of good things to take shots of.  I like the reflection and blue building in this but am not a huge fan of the rest of the composition:

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This is a little more abstract photo that I ended up taking because the tree was way too backlight to be able to take a shot of:

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The parking garage at work with every floor lit up and only two cars in it:

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Waiting for the bus with a single light:

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And a trail of breadcrumbs home:

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12.29.2008

Looking At His Subjects

Should have tried using the camera flash and some kind of diffusion (like a napkin) to light up his face a little bit.

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Worth A Thousand Words

But I will add some anyways.  Again taken over the last couple of weeks but these were more about capturing a particular moment than anything else.

One of the first mornings with crazy snow and the bus drivers were still filled with hubris.  They thought they could make it up the hill where all of their colleagues had failed.  If you count you can see two stalled buses and the third trying to pass them:

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The way that they moved a lot of the stalled buses was by running into them with a smaller truck to get them moving again which I thought was a little weird but what do I know:

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Another bus related issue that apparently made CNN were the two buses that ran off the road in the middle of a random neighborhood over the highway.  I am not sure how these charter buses ended up on that road but they definitely could not easily navigate.  My favorite were all the passengers trying to make it to random places with their luggage.  You will have to look close for the buses.  This is the first situation in which I wanted a lot more length on my lens than I have.  Normally I would just walk down there but the cops were keeping everyone out:

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Due to all the snow the garbage situation got pretty awful as it could not be picked up.  They finally got that resolved this weekend but it started to really stack up everywhere.  Here was right outside of Nordstrom's flagship store:

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As they say though one man's garbage is another's treasure.  Here are a pile of sleds for Denny that look a lot like garbage to the untrained eye:

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In addition to the garbage trucks not running, the delivery trucks were halted as well.  This meant no holiday cinnamon rolls for me and no milk for a lot of people (unless you wanted lactaid or soy):

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Yachi and I also fell down quite a bit on the really snowy / icy sections of road which was funnier than I remember falling on hard ice being:

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On an animal related front, this dog was really excited by the snow and dragged this chair along with him in his effort to really experience the weather:

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Our cats were much more sanguine about the whole deal and decided to relax instead of heading out:

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All in all it has been quite a crazy past couple of weeks that has been really enjoyable.  You can always find more pictures of the above mentioned times here.              

12.28.2008

Sweaters And Love

Here is a sweater that Yachi made for Andrew's baby that is really cute.  It took a while to get the right measurements as apparently baby arm girth means not what you would expect on the internet:

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And here is the Maxi love:

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Local Write Up

http://www.nwsource.com/ae/scr/edb_vd.cfm?c=&ven=63771&s=nws

Calla Bridal got a nice write up in NW source which is pretty cool.  hopefully it translates into more people coming into the store :).

A wedding related photo of Adam and Cindy dancing at their wedding:

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People Who Love People

Still catching up on photos from the last week or two.  Here are some that involve people that I really like for whatever reason.

Yachi at the end of a day of walking all over:

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Biker on the street deciding to walk the bike instead of skating on the ice:

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A biker who decided to just keep trying to get through the snow:

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Another hidden soldier:

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Someone braving Denny on the iciest section:

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Yachi's bright socks:

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And a shy model:

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And the rest here.   

12.27.2008

Fuzzy Lights

Took a lot of shots in Six Arms and although some were fuzzy I enjoyed how they turned out.

This was actually at Calla and although simple I like it:

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The dregs of the beer:

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Lights from inside lined up pretty well with the tree outside:

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And the lights inside were just pretty cool:

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So was the name board:

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12.26.2008

Watery Goodness

Or just way out of focus asphalt.  Taken at the bus stop in an attempt to use headlights to make some interesting effects.  I like how this turned out and how the texture looks nothing like asphalt.

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12.25.2008

Christmas Fun

Yachi and I had a great Christmas where we did not even leave the house.  I setup the camera on a timer to take photos of us opening presents in the morning which made Yachi realize what a dork she had married and how traumatized our children will be by my dorkiness. 

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12.24.2008

Happy Birthday Baby Jesus!!!

Sorry I had to add this in it's own post.

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABY JESUS!!!!!

 

 

In the spirit of big baby jesus, I wanna give a shoutout to everyone who made this year so great and amazing.  I love you all and wish you the best in the coming year.  Let's make it count.

Snow In Seattle

So after a week of taking photos of the snow here are my six favorite.  Surprisingly there are not that many pictures of just snow.  Turns out to not be that exciting or I am not creative enough to make it interesting.  Although if you check here there are some photos of snow to give you an idea of how crazy it was here for the last week.

Today it started raining / heating up so we will probably have snow for Christmas but not much beyond that.  I am a little sad that the days working from home are going to be over as I was able to gain back two hours a day from commuting and put that towards having fun.  Maybe I will look for a job in Seattle...  In this economy I think I might wait.

This was taken off the balcony one morning before sunrise with the tripod.  I really like the flare of the light as it reminds me of getting a super clear in Katamari II:

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This is outside of our condo.  I like the contrast of what I always think of as a tropical plant (which is an incorrect belief) with the snow.  Weird to see such green with the snow:

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This is a random shot that I really liked.  I was happy with this as I did not need to crop any.  Finally starting to get the shot right in the camera which is what I am aiming for:

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Walking home one night on Pine when the traffic was crazy backed up due to the snow.  For those in the know it went from Pine and Boren to 11th.  It was bananas.  I really like the colors and the lack of structure.  I have been working on a post called "Pretentiousness Ahead" which goes more into this idea and really lives up to its title:

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This was a morning shot when the snow was finally breaking.  I like how different the layers of clouds were and how pretty the sky looks:

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This is from today and I like the difference in the focus on the birch trees.  It also reminds me of growing up as we had a big (for a birch) birch tree in our front yard we used to climb and play on:

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Overall the last week has been awesome in terms of me feeling like I am growing in learning how to take pictures.  I am glad we got the snow and oh yeah happy birthday Baby Jesus.    

Ghost In The Shell

More fun with slower shutter speeds.  This was in between calls to my family as I was waiting at Pacific Place for Yachi to finish shopping.

I really like this effect and need to take a day to spend messing around with it.

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12.23.2008

Caught Up!

With 365 posts at least.  I still have 70 more photos to post of the past week.

One thing I am appreciating about the whole 365 exercise is how much more attention I pay to my surroundings now.  These little guys were hiding on top of a sign.  The look like they are preparing for a charge around the corner.  I also think the lens got a little weird on the skinny guy but like the effect.  Also there is not much noise for being bumped way up to ISO 1600:

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This was just yet more fun with the tripod and manual focus.  I think I am obsessing a wee bit about the manual focus thing.  I was trying to figure out how to take a self-portrait without having to use auto focus.  I like how I managed to get only the sleeve in focus:

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Let The Flood Begin

After a day of lounging around the house I have finally caught up with the many shots I have taken recently.  Look for a lot of backdated posts.

Also if anyone knows of a good program that lets you do basic RAW image editing and quick viewing let me know.  I heard lightroom is good but the price tag is scary.

Purposefully Blurry?

Not really.  The goal was to have the objects in motion and the background remain still which I managed to catch in a few but not all.

This was easily my favorite as the background is mostly frozen and I was able to catch the car and the lights which I think looks pretty cool.

As a random side note I almost got frostbite in my fingers from taking these as it was soooo cold that night:

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This was my second favorite and I will need to spend more time playing around with this concept.  I think the juxtaposition of the images is something I have liked since I fell in love with Magritte.  I have been thinking about it a lot and am looking forward to taking some time to figure out how to make better versions of this idea:

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Even though everything is moving here I like the sense of motion and the sky:

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This just kind of looks like spiders on the orange which I thought was fun:

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As always more here.