Random Shots Around Seattle

That don't really fit anywhere else.  These were primarily messing around with my camera wandering from place to place or stuck waiting for others.

Waiting for the bus and playing with composition a little bit:

A slightly different view of the space needle:

Manual focus fun with the tripod in the snow storm.  I really like how the tree ended up looking:

Waiting at Pacific Place for Yachi to buy me a Christmas present.  The lattice in the ceiling skylight is something I have been taking a lot of pictures of lately and this is one of the few to look even remotely presentable:

A cropped piece of graffiti:

Some garish lights downtown:

Cops at the bus situation mentioned previously:

More here.

Cats

One of my goals for this year is to pick a technique and try shooting a lot of it for a month to improve with it.  For January I think I am focusing on flash which limits me to using the on camera one as I do not have an additional unit but it will force me to be a little more creative with how I approach things.

These were both taken with flash and look better than I would have expected so I will keep playing with it.

Relaxing:

And with me reflected in them:

Landscape And Bond

It was a beautiful day to work from home and I got to enjoy a really clear day.  This also allowed me to take a couple of interesting shots of the sky from various places but falling back on the balcony and the tripod:

The sensor in my camera is getting crazy dirty which you can see as tons of specks in the photos but I just ordered some cleaner so we will see how that goes.  Hey the worst that could happen is the sensor could be irreparably broken.

Sunset progressing:

And my planned evening after work and taking the photos:

What A Pose

How could you resist such a cute photo, even if it is way too soft on the focus:

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:

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

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:

Ryan celebrating at the house:

And Ella about to head to Barca:

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

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:

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:

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

Waiting for the bus with a single light:

And a trail of breadcrumbs home:

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.

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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):

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:

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:

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

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.              

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:

And here is the Maxi love:

 

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:

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:

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

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

Another hidden soldier:

Someone braving Denny on the iciest section:

Yachi's bright socks:

And a shy model:

And the rest here.   

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:

The dregs of the beer:

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

And the lights inside were just pretty cool:

So was the name board:

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.