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. 

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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.

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:

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:

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:

 

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:

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

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

 

As always more here.

Lots Of Favorites

This was probably my favorite session this week.  The sun was finally out and we wandered all over seeing a lot of cool things.

The before-mentioned sun.  I am not sure what the term is for the sun looking like that but it is one of my favorite effects.  It also made the trees turn out really crisply.

I little rust to stand out from the snow:

And the absurdity of a naked person on a sign in the middle of six inches of snow.  What I am really liking about these photos is the color seems to be staying a little more strong.  I changed to use a different color space (?).  I am not entirely sure (or even a little sure) what that is or means but it seems to help:

Macy's star and a colorful tree.  The star is a little blown out but I love the tree and the blue dot:

Some more manual focus fun at the Gap:

Keeping Warm

In his new favorite spot.  We had to remove the rug as he was getting too close to the fire.  I was a little disappointed cause I was using the tripod and I still feel like the photo was not quite as crisp as I wanted.  I also should have composed the photo a little more by moving the stuff around Max.

The First And So Far Most Lasting Snow

So I am writing this on Sunday night as my laptop froze up with over a 1000 pictures from the last week on it and I just got it working.  I have a lot to catch up on and this is the first snow we got.  I wandered around Greenlake last weekend and got a lot of decent photos of the snow. 

It was good practice for the rest of the week as it has been ridiculous here with most of the city closed down due to the heavy volume of snow.  Today there has been at least 18 inches (or probably 4) but a lot nonetheless.  Now that things are working I will get those 1000 pictures posted :).

This is not necessarily the snow but just a shot I really liked due to the dress out of focus in the foreground:

Lots of snow on the bushes:

And in the boulevard:

And even put together into a snowman:

The best though was this guy feeding the gulls on the lake.  The gull kept looping around and pulling up to eat basically out of the guys hands.  Overall it was pretty awesome:

 

As always more here.

More Bread

Apparently a new development in my father's life is a semi-obsession with new loaves of bread every day.  By the time they left we had ones from Costco, QFC, Bellingham, etc...  The day before they left we decided to get one more at the market.  It was also a good opportunity for those that had never been there to see what it was all about.  Surprisingly there were very few people so it was actually pretty pleasant to walk around.  We saw the fishes being tossed and lots of food.  Like these apples:

And some colored churro looking pastries:

The Walker family proved themselves to be terribly literate as they were all reading various magazines at the news stand:

And just being all around cute:

Until shoved in the baby sling when Calla got a little unhappy originally:

and then proceeded to pass out. 

More here.

Morning And Night

Morning:  Before Santarchy (where I did not bring my camera even thought the photo opportunities were ripe) I cleared off Calla Bridal's sidewalk with morton's table salt and my feet.  It was awesome.

I do like the depth of field in this though.

Night:  After much carousing I headed home for some pizza and a lazy session with the tripod where I did not take it outdoors.  I learned about reflection and ambient indoor light in a big way though.

Random Catch

Thank god Bauhaus is a single occupant bathroom as this would have been weird if there had been others in there with me.  I really like the contrast in this shot.

Wrapped And Still Cold

During the first city stopping snow, Yachi and I decided to grab a bus to her store.  The wait was long but got to take a lot of fun photos.  I had the most success in capturing the snow with manual focus which started a week long fascination with trying to control the focus.

Headbanging Kitty!!!

I have been looking at some of the photos I have taken recently and I think the pics are a little soft as the shutter speed is too slow.  I am going to try to speed it up a little and see how things change.  Meanwhile Eileen will be rocking out with her...

W.V.E.

I could only make it too 1:32 before I had to stop it.  The song has always been a known atrocity but the video takes it too new levels. 

The Long Way Home

As mentioned earlier we took a couple of trips.  One of the reason my sister's fam is out here is that they are looking for a new place to live hence their visit to Oregon.  While they were here they decided to head up to Bellingham as they had heard nice things.  I tried to talk them out of it as I had never heard anything about it but after we all went up there I was proven wrong.  It is a really nice area.

So we had lunch and decided to come back without using 5 as much as possible.  We drove around and saw lots of pretty areas and then headed over to Anacortes to check out Deception Pass.  We got there with about 5 minutes of daylight left (Thanks winter) and appreciated the natural beauty quickly as it was cold and raining:

Then someone decided the quickest way to get home was to go down through Whidbey and catch the ferry to Mukilteo as opposed to going back to 5 (Thanks Yachi).  I tried to convince them of their folly but we decided on this path anyways.  Unfortunately it was pitch black at this point so there was not much of a chance to see the island.  The ferry proved to be fun though.  Yachi got hungry and had to be removed from the baby:

Morgan took a rest after watching the boat go through the water with Kip:

My dad took a nap on Calla's head while she was the epitome of grace:

We even managed to get a good family shot while running back to the car as we were docking:

 

More here.

Gorilla Pimp

This was the only sharp picture out of 15 which means I need to spend more time taking photos in low light.  I really do like the lens I have though as I don't have to jack the ISO up too high to get a decent shutter speed and aperture.

Do You Even Know What A Plethora Is?

I do indeed which is why I am giving you a plethora of shots for today:

Dancer in the dark, hahahahahahaha.  Actually more tripod fun with a decent single color background by way of our shelving unit.

 

Who is that handsome devil?  I am actually amazed I caught myself in this shot even though it was not by much.  The focus is a little off but I can deal with it.

Crazy eyed killer.  Again I am not sure how I managed to take this with respect to the light in his eyes but here is my homage to the spaghetti westerns:

Kicking It

Around the house and at the store. So as a little back story after my sister's family headed to Oregon my father and step-mother came out for a week and eventually the Walker's returned. 

It was a pretty relaxing time with lots of hanging out and a couple of trips taken.

We visited the store so they could see it:

While Yachi hung out with one of her dress makers for a second trunk show:

 

And I got a little bored so started taking pictures of myself from various unseen vantage points (At least I am easily amused):

Back home probably the most excitement we had was Max protecting his house from the intruders, specifically Kip.  For some reason they really did not get along:

Other than that we mostly cooked and chatted.  Here is Cathy in one of the times she was not making a great dinner with my dad:

And of course we spent lots of time with the baby:

As always more are here.