Tag Archives: washington

Bloedel Reserve

I’m always on the lookout for the place I might move to when I decide to lay off the whole sordid business of working for a living. We took a trip to Bainbridge Island which, if you asked Nancy, was a chance to check out some of our new area or, if you asked me, was a house hunting trip. The place I was looking at was called Bloedel Reserve. They may tell you that it is an estate that is now open to visitors but clearly they are keeping it ready for me. A nice little house with some delightful gardens.

The house is not necessarily my style but I’m sure I could find a way to make it work. The grounds do look like they might need a reasonable amount of effort. I suppose I could buy a little mower to ride around on but that does sound a bit like hard work. I suppose I could get some help. I wonder whether Nancy would like a little John Deere?

Seattle Skyline Zoomify

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On our boat ride back from Bainbridge Island, we were getting back to Seattle in the early evening. The light was not at its best but it was certainly becoming nice. While the boat was moving, if you were quick it was possible to shoot a series for a pano so that is what I did. The resulting pano is rather large. Therefore, the above image is a small excerpt but to zoom in and pan around, you can go to the Zoomify version of the shot below.

Boeing 787-10 on Test

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I wrapped up some work in Seattle and was about to head back home when a quick check on FlightRadar24 showed me that the Boeing 787-10 test aircraft was en route back to Boeing Field. It would be rude to ignore that. The weather had been pretty crummy and there was plenty of heavy cloud in the area but it looked like it might brighten up a bit and, as the sun went down, there was a chance of it lighting up beneath the clouds. I sat in the car dealing with some emails and waiting for the arrival.

Sure enough, as the time approached, the sun did start to peep out from beneath the clouds. It was intermittent at first but it became more consistent as Boeing 01 Heavy called up on approach. Meanwhile, a nice black cloud was still lurking in the background. What a great combination that type of light makes. The plane glided down the approach, its trailing static cone hanging from the top of the fin and then it was down. A nice result.

Another Go at Stitching iPhone Raw Shots

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As I posted a while ago, I have been experimenting with stitching shots from my phone. Since I am shooting in raw on the phone, I have some latitude to play with the shots in post that wasn’t there before. This time, though, I thought about it a bit more and put the camera into manual mode to fix the exposure. This should make the stitching and blending easier than when it changed between shots (although, to give the Lightroom team credit, it did a pretty good job anyway). I allowed plenty of overlap and the merge seemed to go pretty well. Since it outputs a dng file, you still have the chance to edit more aggressively than would be possible with a jpeg. Meanwhile, you get a higher resolution shot than with the internal pano mode. This may be my go to method from now on.

Time for Another Big Change

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Things are about to get different for us. We moved to California in 2013 as a result of work changes for me. Some of the things we had planned worked out well but a few others did not go as expected. Nothing unusual in that. However, we started to consider some other options for what to do. I have now been given a new opportunity which involves a move to Seattle. Consequently, we are making another move. We are heading to the Pacific Northwest.

I have no idea what this is going to bring. Certainly there will be plenty of new things for us to explore. We have visited the area before but living there will be a while new thing. The area is full of aviation activities, many of which have been the subject of previous blog posts. Consequently, I expect a lot of things will be fun to check out. We will leave behind friends and hopefully make new ones. The blog will show off a lot of those things as they happen. Strap in for the ride!

Oh, a Lockheed 12!

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My visit to Port Townsend Aero Museum (which is covered in this post) was followed up by a quick walk around the ramp near the museum. There were plenty of cool types around but I was instantly drawn to a Lockheed 12 that was parked up. From a distance you could confuse this with a Beech 12 if you weren’t paying attention but, as soon as you look closer, the longer lines of the Lockheed show themselves.

Apparently this airframe is for sale. I am not familiar with the pricing of old aircraft but I believe that the Lockheed goes for an awful lot more than the similar Beech. I guess there are a lot more Beeches around. This one was tail on to the sun which was a touch inconvenient but, since they were willing to let me shoot to my heart’s content, I was hardly going to complain. A little HDR helps too.

Roche Harbor

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Roche Harbor used to be a lime production site. A couple of the old lime kilns are still in place although no longer operational. However, now the focus has been on transforming it in to a tourist and residential destination. There is a hotel, shops and restaurants. Plots of land are being developed into residences and there is a large marina. The place is picturesque enough but it is a bit isolated from the rest of the island. It had a bit of a feel of the sort of town in which everything is controlled by one company and the rules must be followed. Maybe I am being unfair but that is how it seemed to me. We walked around a bit to see what was on offer but we were soon on our way again.

Lime Kiln State Park

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Further up the coast from Grandma’s Cove was Lime Kiln State Park. The area used to be a hive of lime production – hence the name of the park – but now the focus was on the lovely shoreline and the great views. The inclusion of a lighthouse certainly did nothing to harm the view. There were also the remains of a fortification of some sort on a headland which we had seen from further away when traveling towards to the park up the coast road.

The lighthouse provided a base for a volunteer group that was tracking the wildlife in the area. They had some signs identifying which whales had been seen in the area and when. We did not time our visit there well to see the whales although we did catch some later in the day further up the coast. The volunteers had binoculars to lend out to visitors if they needed them but, with no whales to be seen, we didn’t require them this time.

Grandma’s Cove

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Take a walk from Americas Camp on San Juan Island and you are quickly down by the water. One of the trails leads to a lovely little bay called Grandma’s Cove. I don’t know who Grandma was or even whose grandma she was. Why the cove was hers is a mystery to me too. However, she obviously had pretty good taste because it is an idyllic spot. Almost no one was there when I visited. Unfortunately, a couple of guys were down on the beach and were interested in making art in the sand. This disrupted my vision of the shots a touch but, when you are somewhere so lovely, it is hard to be upset about anything for long.

Friday Harbor

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Despite spending quite a few days in Friday Harbor, I didn’t actually take many pictures of the town itself. However, when arriving and departing, we had a better view of the town laid out around the harbor. The waterfront is prime real estate and, as you come in on the ferry, you get to see some very nice places on the island in the middle of the harbor. The area surrounding the harbor is more accessible for development and so there are a lot of places that are considerably closer together that the really pricey places.

Our hotel was a little up the hill and so had a nice view across the harbor. The construction activity below us means a slight distraction from the picturesque ideal but it really was a fantastic spot to hang out for a drink in the evening or for breakfast first thing (or as close to first thing as we could manage while on vacation!).