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October 24 Washington D.C.A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to travel to Washington D.C. Below are some of the photos that I took on my trip - hope you enjoy!
The photos are the usual D.C. attractions: the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, Capitol, Vietnam War Memorial, Arlington Cemetary, and the mouse that I found in my hotel room! March 29 New Photos!I was playing around with some new photo tools today, here are the results:
On an unrelated note, I ran across this live webcam on an Eagle's nest in Vancouver, B.C. It's fascinating to watch! There are a pair of bald eagles taking turns sitting on two eggs. December 01 Happy (belated) Thanksgiving!Jenny and I drove down to Sacramento to spend Thanksgiving with my Sister Christi and her family. It's not that long of a drive, but we stretched it out with the idea of taking a lot of photos and making it a fun road trip along the way. We went the long way and took Hwy 101 all the way down the coast of Oregon and California. Overall, it was a real nice trip! I finally got around to editing some of the photos…
Day 1 Seattle to Cannon Beach Oregon via the Bremerton Ferry. We arrived at Cannon Beach just in time to take some photos of the sunset from the Ecola Beach lookout. There was a herd of Elk in the parking lot (I got some pictures, just didn't edit them yet - Jenny got more than I did).
Day 2 Cannon Beach to Gold Beach Oregon. This was probably the best day. We got up and caught the sunrise over the haystack rock at Cannon Beach, and spent the rest of the day along the coast. There were too many places to stop. We even ran into a spot where we could see Sea Lions from the cliffs. Despite the smell, we decided to brave the 'Sea Lion Cave' down the road, which was a total rip-off! Not a single Sea Lion in the cave! We ended the day hiking to the dunes, which was really cool, and feels so out of place in Oregon! We couldn't get sunset photos that evening because the fog rolled in over the dunes…
Day 3 Turns out the fog was here to stay. We continued down the coast into California, and passed a ton of scenic overlooks that were socked in by fog. We even took a hike to an overlook where you can watch for whales (they are migrating this time of year), but were foiled by the fog once again. We pressed on…
Day 4 We drove East from Eureka to Sacramento through the Sierras, which was a real pretty drive. We finally shook the fog. We didn't get many photos because we wanted to get to Sacramento. We spent the evening with Sisters' family.
Day 5 Thanksgiving! We spent the day cooking, eating, playing cards, talking to the family in Chicago on the phone, and watching movies.
Day 6 We spent the morning with Christi and the gang, and got some photos of them for their holiday card. Then it was back in the car with our sights set on Portland. The drive went fairly quickly as we listened to the Harry Potter audio book the whole way…
Day 7 Back to Seattle from Portland…vacations are nice, but it's good to be home! October 01 Painting!When I moved into my new place, I was very happy to see that everything had a nice fresh coat of paint on it. Fast forward a few months and I'm going batty from the fact that EVERY surface in my house is stark white. I go to my neighbors' places, and they have beautiful, rich colors, then come home to stark white. 5.5 floors of white. It was getting a little old, so I decided to break down and paint it!
Having worked a few summers in college as a painter on a commercial crew, I had decided long ago to never pick up a brush again. Then I thought about how much it would be to hire a professional crew...time to brush up on my painting skills!
I started off slow, with the garage. Just to get my feet wet. As of this writing, I've got the two lower floors done:
I really wanted some color, so with the exception of the garage (stark white, it was unpainted before), I went with dark colors. For the hallway: Buffalo Bill, with Wagon Train for the ceiling. Then I reversed it for the hallway - Wagon Train on the walls and Buffalo Bill on the ceiling. Deep red for the bathroom, and a deep bright blue for the bedroom. From here on out, the rooms get bigger and the ceilings get higher. But I'm working up to it one wall at a time. I'm not looking forward to doing the lofts and vaulted ceilings or skylights, but the end result will be all worth it when it's done...only 3.5 more floors to go! Also, the tile floor doesn't really match the paint, but those are going as soon as I can get it together enough to put in hard wood floors. P.S. I took these photos with my new 17-40L lens. My next lens was going to be the 100-400, but due to financial constraints (and a hot deal from Dell on the 17-40), I decided to go with the 17-40 first. It's my first "L" lens, and I like it so far. I was so proud of myself with these photos - I used my new lens, used a tripod, and even used a grey card to set the white balance...the only thing I messed up was forgetting that the ISO was set to high from the last time I used the camera..D'oh! One of these days I'll get it right the first time...
September 12 Olympic PeninsulaThe band had a gig this weekend on the Olympic Peninsula, at a resort on the Hood Canal. Funny story actually, since there was so much planning that went into this gig, coordinating rooms for everyone, arranging production, etc - all at the last minute (relatively speaking).
After all that, it pours down rain (the gig was to be outside, on an open stage)! The alternate indoors venue was 'unavailable', so we had to figure something out. We could have just taken our money, stayed for free at the nice resort, and then gone home, but people actually came all the way out to see us, and it was clear that the management wouldn't have been happy with that (even if we were living up to our contractual obligations). So, we did a little scrambling and managed to wing 90 minutes of entertainment with a smaller group throwing together a combination of jazz standards, and even some of our own material in a stripped down form.
All in all, the music went over really well, although nothing at all like our normal show. But I figured while I was in the 'neighborhood', I'd tool around the peninsula a bit to get some photos. So Jenny and I set out for the coast first, and bounced between Rialto beach and First/Second beach.
On the way back, we stopped at Hurricane Ridge. That turned out to be a bust, since the mountains were socked in by clouds, AND we missed a spectacular sunset that we would have caught from Sequim if we had not made the Hurricane Ridge detour. But it was still a good time.
I got a few good photos out of it, but not as many as I would have like. I was conserving photos since I was trying to make one CF card last the weekend (not sure why - in retrospect that was a bad decision). As a result, I shot less, and experimented less. I still need lots of experimentation to get decent results! August 29 Mount RainierI took a chance this weekend and went to Mount Rainier National Park. The forecase was for sun Saturday, with clouds moving in Saturday evening followed by rain all day Sunday. Saturday morning actually looked pretty grim in Seattle, with heavy cloud cover, but I had decided to go (it was one of the few weekends that I didn't have a gig all summer!), so I went anyway.
I made it to the park by about 10am, by which time the weather had cleared up. Saturday was beautiful, and in fact, the mountain was visible until about mid-day Sunday, at which point it started pulling in cloud cover. But the weather was still beautiful until Sunday night.
Anyway, here are some photos from the weekend (I haven't had a chance to work on any of them yet) August 26 Random Photos...I haven't posted any photos in awhile (a whole month!), so here are a few random photos
July 21 Kerry parkThere was a full moon last night in Seattle (probably other places too, huh?
 ). Anyways, a couple people from work were heading down to Kerry Park in Seattle to get some of those classic Seattle skyline photos, so I figured I'd try to get some too.
Long story short - don't bother asking about how my moon photos came out. I really need to invest in a decent tripod and cable release. With all of the camera shake I got with my tripod, I might as well have been shooting hand held. Oh well, some of the sunset shots turned out well!
May 31 Memorial DayWe all had a great time at the Memorial Day BBQ celebrating Jim's birthday. Thanks again to Topaz and Jim for all the hard work and the great food! Here are some photos of the gang, including a brilliantly restored version of Jim's old headshot from the 80's!
May 19 More (better) EaglesHaving 10-15 Eagles roosting down the street from me every day has given me lots of opportunities to practice getting photos of them. Even so, it's still difficult and I need more practice, better equipment, better weather, and more co-operation from the eagles! but I'm getting better results than my first few outings, without having to drive for hours and hours! P.S. I added some Heron photos as well (just in case you didn't think I could tell the difference!) Show PhotosHere are some photos from some recent Doctorfunk shows...look closely to see some 'special guests' sitting in
May 12 SanibelI got back from Sanibel, FL last week. Although the weather wasn't the greatest, I did take a lot of photos. I'm finally getting around to posting some of them here April 19 The Valley of FireWhile I was in Vegas, I took a tour over to the Valley of Fire, and got some good pictures April 04 EaglesSo I guess I didn't need to spend all that time driving back and forth from the Skagit River to get photos of Eagles. All I had to do was look out my window! Over the weekend I got some photos of a pair of (golden?) eagles on Lake Sammamish. A pair were roosting in a tree. I had a decent view from my deck, but a better view from Idylwood park, where they flew to. A third (juvenile) flew in to meet them and I managed to get a few decent photos. Some people I spoke with at the park has seen them there pretty regularly of late. Neat! SeattleCatching up...I've been busy. Here are a bunch of random shots that I've taken around Seattle recently - at Gasworks Park, Pike's Market, Snoqualmie Falls, The Arboretum, Marymoor Park, etc. Hmm...I had posted a bunch of comments to go along with the photos I uploaded, but for some reason, they were lost in the process, so I guess you'll just have to figure out what the photos are yourself - it's like a game :) |
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