Posts in Category: Seattle
Space Needle from Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle
Space Needle from Seattle Olympic Sculpture Park
Having a couple of hours on my hands yesterday afternoon in Seattle while my client did other meetings, and being the best day in Seattle so far, I took a walk down to the waterfront park, and south along the waterfront to the Olympic Sculpture Park, and back around and uphill to the hotel again. I have to think that the Space Needle was an integral part of the artist’s conception here. The possibilities of framing the Needle through the sculpture are too many, and too apt, for it not to have figured into his thinking. 🙂
This is another in-camera HDR from the Sony HX400V at 24mm equivalent field of view. After my normal processing in Lightroom, I made a virtual copy and used the Vertical alignment tool to automatically pull the background buildings upright and eliminate the perspective distortion. Worked like a charm with a single click.
Seattle!
view from the roof of my hotel 🙂
I am in Seattle for a few days, working on a digital imaging project for a client. They put me up at the Mediterranean Inn just up the hill from the Space Needle. They have a roof garden/observation deck on the roof that offers this classic view of downtown Seattle. It rained all day, until about 4PM, and I got back to the hotel just in time to catch the low afternoon sun across the bay lighting up the city.
In-camera HDR with the Sony HX400V. 24mm equivalent. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Busy Bee: Seattle Washington
The small demonstration garden at the Center for Urban Horticulture in Seattle, the first week in October, was definitely in Northwest Autumn mode. There were actually a surprising number of flowers still in bloom. I am sure the layout of the sunny courtyard with its stone flagging and walls help create a kind of micro climate that prolongs the blooming season. And the bees were certainly taking advantage…busy putting up the last of the season’s pollen to be made into honey for the winter hive.
This telephoto macro was taken at 1800mm equivalent from about 5 feet…that is the full optical zoom of the new Canon SX50HS plus the 1.5x digital tel-converter function. The optical image stabilization of the SX50HS allows for this kind of hand-held extreme telephoto macro.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. f6.5 @ 1/160th @ ISO 200. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Form and Light (otherwise Flower)
Sometimes it really is about form and light and how they interact more than about the subject itself. Abstract is too angular a word, too, well, abstract, to describe the pure play of light we occasionally see and catch in nature, but I can not, off hand, come up with a better.
What I like here are the big bold colors obviously, orange on green with spikes of red…but it is more about the range of the orange, the shadings and shadowings, the texture of the orange surface, the burning translucency, contrasted with the solid points of the furled petals. And running through it, the single filament of spider web, catching the sun. (If you look closely you can see the author of that thread on the third spike from the left 🙂
This is, I believe, some sort of giant exotic iris from the demonstration gardens at the Center for Urban Horticulture in Seattle Washington. It is part of at least 3 blooms, stacked by the telephoto perspective.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1200mm equivalent field of view, taken from about 15 feet. f6.5 @ 1/640th @ ISO 200. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Handsome is as handsome does!
The crows are back in New England, after a few years of heavy decline due to West Nile Virus. They are around the yard most days. This fellow, however is in Seattle, on my first evening there, when I made a short visit to a park near the hotel. Crows were working the lawns and the tide-line with equal vigor…looking, in crow fashion, for whatever they could get.
They are really a handsome bird…not flashy or colorful…and certainly not cute the way some warblers and sparrows are…but solidly handsome. This is at the full 1200mm optical reach of my new Canon SX50HS, and is actually the very first bird shot I took with it. Low light in the shade of the trees (and the darkness of the subject) pushed the ISO to 800. I am actually quite pleased with the results. The jury is still very much out on the camera as a whole. The SX40HS is a hard act to follow. But so far so good!
As above. f6.5 @ 1/100th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Blue-eyed Darner: Seattle WA
There were a lot of these Blue-eyed Darners in the Urban Bay Natural Area in Seattle. They were in the air along the edge of Lake Washington, and even more present weaving among the cattails in the lagoon on the other side of “the fill” (as the locals apparently call the reclaimed dump area). I came really close to getting a shot of one in the air…but eventually this specimen settled for a series of photos. It was well worn with tattered wings, but still beautiful with its turquoise eyes and pattern of abdomen spots. This dragonfly really does look like something crafted in a Southwestern Jewelry shop.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1) 2400mm equivalent field of view (1200mm optical zoom plus 2x digital tel-converter function). f6.5 @ 1/200th @ ISO 100. 2) 1200mm equivalent. f6.5 @ 1/320 @ ISO 125. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
The Bee and the Chicory
Another shot from the Center for Urban Horticulture and Union Bay Natural Area in Seattle. This was out on the trail in the Natural Area. I was walking along, talking to other birders I had met there, when I looked down to see this bee hovering over the Chicory. It never did land. This is the new Canon SX50HS at its best. 1800mm equivalent field of view…1200mm optical zoom plus 1.5x digital tel-converter function. Hand held.
Of course asside from the technical stuff, I just like the vibrant blue, and the bee caught in motion.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. f6.5 @ 1/500th @ ISO80. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Spider in the sun, weaving rainbows. Happy Sunday!
My workshop yesterday was at the Center for Urban Horticulture in Seattle, which is adjacent to the Union Bay Natural Area. The whole area used to be a city dump…but the city and the University of Washington Botanical Gardens reclaimed the land and turned it into wonderful little chunk of nature along the shores of Lake Washington. It is a great spot for bird watching, walking your dog, jogging, etc. Between the Horticulture Center and the lake is Yesler Swamp, which is also being developed. There are temporary trails leading down on the east and west to the lagoon off Lake Washington and plans to build a boardwalk over the wetter swamp and the lagoon to complete the loop.
This spider, which I have not had time to id, was one of several who had constructed very large webs along the east trail. The angle of the morning sun was just right so that the web diffracted the light and created a “rainbow” effect (minus the rain…I suppose it is more accurate to say the web diffracted the light into is spectrum 🙂 Whatever…the effect was quite striking.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. f6.5 @ 1/160th @ ISO800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
And for the Sunday Thought. Almost everyone knows that what we call white light is really made up all the colors in the spectrum…reds and blues and greens and violets. We see it most often in a rainbow; occasionally cast on a wall by prism hanging in a window; more rarely, early in the morning or late in the afternoon when the sun is low, across the face of street sign painted with luminous reflective paint full of glass beads; and very rarely indeed in something natural like this spider web hanging in the sun. Still, often enough so when we stop to think about it, we know white light is, miraculously, all the colors combined.
But we don’t often stop to think about it. We take white light for granted. We forget that red things are red because they reflect the red light within the white…and green things are green because they reflect the green. As a photographer, ie, one who plays with light all the time, I am a bit more aware, but not so much that I can’t be taken by surprise by a spider web in the sun.
I have said before that love is the light of eternity…of, if you will, the realm of the spirit. Many who encounter God come away with impression of the pure white light…again, remembering that that light is love. And yet, since what we experience in the physical realm of time and space is a physical manifestation of the eternal, the love/light of the spirit has to be made up of all the colors of the rainbow, or we would not see all the colors of eternity. There must be a red love/light and a green love/light within the white love/light of God’s presence. Each of us, each of our lives, must reflect back our particular color. Certainly that would explain a lot about the variety of love we see in human beings.
Rarely, there might be a life, or even a second of a life, that is so lived as to show all the colors of God’s love. It might be some instant as fragile as a spider web in the morning sun beside a trail in a swamp in Seattle…but it would be a moment to treasure, a life to treasure and to celebrate. Or that’s what I think.
Ed Munro Seahurst Park, Greater Seattle
I am Seattle for a few days, doing a Point and Shoot for Wildlife workshop for Seattle Audubon. I got to Seattle, after already a long day of travel, in the afternoon, and checked into a hotel near the SeaTac airport. If you have been, you know SeaTac is not exactly centrally located for Seattle proper, so I looked for somewhere more local to get out for a few hours. Ed Munro Seahurst Park is a sizeable chunk of green on the edge of Puget Sound, and only about 20 minutes from the hotel. I am sure there is much more to it than I saw in my limited visit, and I am also sure that on a clear day the view across the Sound to the islands with the Olympics behind must be spectacular. The view was hazed in yesterday, but I still enjoyed the afternoon sun, the rocky beach, the blue water, and the driftwood.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 24mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/800th @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.