Category Archives: photo

Misty Morning In Index

During my time off, we made a trip across the Cascades.  It’s not uncommon to find it misty/foggy as we drive from home towards the mountains in the morning.  As you get a little higher, you come out of the mist but the clouds will still be hanging on the sides of the mountains.  We stopped off in the little town of Index for a quick break.  The town sits right under some large cliff faces making it a popular place to climb.

On this morning, climbing would have been a bit of a cold and damp affair but, as the day wore on, it would have been lovely I imagine.  I liked the morning, though, with the clouds swirling around the hillsides.  It looks at first as if the area is still with the mist hanging over everything but, if you pay attention, it is clear just how much the clouds are swirling around with ever changing areas exposed or covered.  It is quite entrancing.

Mistake with a Polarizer

I have been using the polarizer a lot during the summer with my photos.  The high sun provides harsh lighting and a lot of contrast and I have been using the filter to cut down the light and to try and reduce glare from white aircraft fuselages.  It has mainly been used on my longer lens also helping to get shutter speed down to provide some motion blur in backgrounds.  However, I did put it on a wider lens when some planes were taxiing past me.

This proved to be a mistake.  It did take out some of the glare and make things a little more balanced from a contrast perspective but, when used on a wide angle lens, it did result in some unintended effects in the skies.  The polarizer effect is quite varied depending on your angle relative to the sun and this results in quite a dark sky in one part of the shot and a brighter sky in the other.  The result is an odd effect which distracts from the plane itself.  Consequently, I have avoided using this filter for these shots more recently.

Crazy Single Tree – I Think

As we walked through the grounds of Chateau Ste. Michelle after the Avants car event, we came across this tree.  As we looked at it we concluded that it was a single tree that was coming out of the ground in various places.  However, we are not arborists so could be completely wrong.  It just looks like it springs from a single source under ground and breaks the surface in various places.  If you know about trees and more specifically this tree, let me know.

Finally I Have Avanti Success

I posted about a trip to Paine Field one evening to photograph an Avanti which was unsuccessful because the plane diverted back to Sacramento.  A little while later, I got a notification that it was due in again.  The arrival time was about 6:40.  With sunset just after 7 at that time, it had the potential to be very nice.  Of course, any delay could make it a bust.  I figured it was worth a shot and Nancy was fine with waiting from me to get back before having dinner!

The evening light was looking really good.  I practiced panning with some of the local traffic while watching for the progress of the Avanti.  It was on its way but arrival time was slipping a little.  It should still be okay.  Meanwhile, I noticed the progress of the shadows of some of the trees where I was as they crept closer to the runway.  It was going to be tight.  We would make sunset without a problem and there was no low cloud to cause concern but it was a risk that the tree shadows would be on the plane.

Nothing I could do about any of this and, with the plane still airborne as it was due to pass me (assuming that they didn’t land near the threshold), the chances are things would be okay.  I kept my eyes peeled for the sight of the Avanti lining up on approach. Eventually it came in to view and zipped down the glide slope.  By now the light was low and the shadows were creeping on to the runway but it made the silver of the airframe positively glow.  I clicked away as it came by and then I was done.  Back home for dinner!

Hippo Excursion Out of the Water

As goes large African animals, one of my favorites is the hippopotamus.  I’m not sure exactly what it is about them that appeals to me so much but I find them fascinating.  They can often be a bit disappointing at a zoo since they will spend long periods of time doing very little.  However, we have had some good luck over the years.  The one at Brookfield Zoo in Chicago once gave us an interesting moment and San Diego Zoo had a baby hippo swimming around during a visit there.

There are two hippos in Woodland Park Zoo and, when we arrived, they were both almost totally submerged in their pond taking it easy.  This does not make for much photo action.  Fortunately, a little patience paid off and one of them surfaced and proceeded (slowly) to exit the pond.  It wandered around for a short while before returning to the water and taking up its previous position.

This disturbance caused the other hippo to wake up for a while.  It didn’t exit the water but it did get its head above the surface and then it yawned a few times.  Hippos have amazing mouths and a yawn makes them look so dramatic.  I was absolutely delighted.  A couple of yawns and then it was back to submerged and napping.  I know they can be incredibly dangerous but they are still one of my favorite creatures.

S7 Max Both at Renton and BFI

S7 is a Russian airline so not one that I normally get to see.  Tokyo is the only place I have seen their planes in operation.  They have a bunch of 737 Max jets on order.  I saw one of them in a Boeing test bay on the west side of Renton one evening when passing by.  The bright green colors are hard to miss.  Fortunately, it was not long after this that I was at Boeing Field in the evening when the jet came in from a test flight.  The light was pretty nice by that time of day but I don’t think it would have mattered with a color that vibrant!

Electric Surfboard Off Bellingham

After our hike around Whatcom Falls Park, we headed down to Boulevard Park between Fairhaven and Bellingham to have our lunch.  We sat by the water watching the activities out on the water.  While we sat eating our sandwiches, someone came zipping along the shore on an electric surfboard with a hydrofoil.  They were certainly pretty quick and headed off in to the distance.  It was a while before they came back the other way which leads me to believe these things must have a pretty decent battery capacity.  To any surfers reading this, have you given one of these things a go?

French Global 7500

Bombardier recently completed their 100th Global 7500.  It is an impressive machine with excellent capabilities.  If I was minded to buy a bizjet, it would definitely be the one I got but I just don’t feel like it at the moment.  I haven’t seen too many of them yet so catching one is a nice surprise.  This one was departing Seattle.  I’m not sure how far it was going but, given that it is registered in France, I assume they were actually making good use of its range unlike so many of the owners of such jets.  It seemed to have a nice fade in the paint scheme too.  Maybe I will put something like that on mine when I get it.

Avants at Chateau Ste. Michelle

I was chatting with one of my neighbors and he mentioned a car event coming up at Chateau Ste. Michelle, a local winery.  This event was arranged by Avants and was a selection of exotic and unusual cars on display in the grounds of the winery along with wine and food to enjoy.  Sounded interesting and Nancy was keen to try it out so we got ourselves tickets.  On the day, the weather started out looking pretty bad but, since the event started in the afternoon, we decided to see how things turned out.  As it was, the day became overcast but basically dry so it worked out fine.  I’m not sure whether it actually reduced the number of people there or not but it felt busy but not crowded.

Exotics@RTC will provide a bunch of unusual cars but this had some very special vehicles and was definitely worth going to.  I am going to have some specific posts on some of the vehicles but this is more of a general overview of what we saw.  The cars were spread out across the lawns so were not crowded together.  Also, while there were people around most of the time, the cars were often clear of visitors if you were trying to get a shot – even when it came to some of the most unusual vehicles.

There was wine from the winery to purchase as you walked around (assuming you hadn’t bought the more expensive tickets with packages of wine and food) and you could order food.  However, the food options were not that impressive and didn’t seem to fit with the nature of the event.  That would be my only complaint with the event as a whole.  Whether you wanted race cars, hyper cars, vintage sports cars or even more unusual vehicles from Europe, there was something to see.  Nancy is not a car person but she certainly enjoyed looking at the beautiful styling of some of the vehicles (and the quirky styling of others).

New Lightroom Feature I Don’t Have Yet

I have seen announcements from Adobe about a feature that is coming soon to Lightroom which seems particularly appealing to me.  When dealing with dull and overcast conditions, I shoot quite heavily overexposed.  This gives me a lot more shadow detail to work with and also still allows me to pull back detail in the sky.  On a dull day, a couple of stops of overexposure can work quite effectively.  The Lightroom/Camera Raw editing only has a limited amount you can do with the exposure and shadows sliders so it is not ideal for this.  However, the new version of Lightroom is going to use AI to analyze the image for a subject to be selected or a sky.  What I didn’t realize was that this was already available in Photoshop.  I decided to have a play with it there to see how it works and get a feel for the way it might work in Lightroom soon.

I opened the image in Photoshop as a Smart Object.  I then created a New Smart Object Via Copy to duplicate the object.  In Select, I picked Subject and it did a pretty good job of selecting the airframe.  Some edges were a little vague but overall pretty good.  I used that selection to make a mask on the upper layer.  Then, I was able to open each Smart Object in Camera Raw and edit them each to optimize the sky or the background.  Some tweaking was occasionally required to ensure that it didn’t look like a bad superimposed job but it worked quite well.  Lightroom will have this function as a filter so I should be able to do something similar in there but we shall see when it gets released.  If it works, it could be a great addition to the editing toolset.  I wish I had known about it in Photoshop before to be honest!

UPDATE: The Lightroom update is now out and I have played with it a bit. I think it is even better than the Photoshop implmentation so I shall put together a more detailed post on how it is working out for me.