"An Eerie Night"

95 Second exposure taken from Log Boom Park.

Marine Push!

Update: Scott Sistek from Komo 4 News has posted a weather blog about the push. It has my photo as well as a link to my flickr set. http://www.komonews.com/weather/blog/47030847.html

Update: the photo I took during the most intense part of the push is currently the front page photo on http://www.komonews.com/!

Tuesday: 88 degrees.
Wednesday: 89 degrees.
Thursday: 91 degrees.

This is JUNE for cryin' out loud! Well we FINALLY got some relief today around 9:00pm when a VERY strong marine push blew through.

My friend Don sent me a text at 8:50 this evening asking me if I was outside. He said that the sky was on fire and the winds had just come up quickly. I knew there was some very strong convection down in northern Oregon today so my first though was a very strong gust front. Turns out it was an extremely strong marine push coming from the ocean! I looked at the radar and sure enough there was a strong signal of very strong winds that indicated it was almost here. I quickly threw my camera stuff together and went over to Log Boom Park at the northern tip of Lake Washington. I got there just in time to see the very end of the gorgeous sunset!

9:01pm


I then turned my attention to the push that was almost there. It was fairly obvious where it was by looking at both the clouds and the surface of the water.

9:05pm


I ran down to the end of the pier and set up my camera just as the wind started to pick up. Here you can see the surface of the water is starting to get a little rough as the winds pick up ahead of the push.

9:10pm


Then it hit within about 30 seconds. The winds gusted up to over 50 knots and made it very hard to stand, let alone take photos! Below is a 1 second exposure I took during the most intense part. I am holding on the the tripod and camera as best as possible to keep it from shaking!

9:13


Then as the winds settled a bit (down to 20-30 knots) the enhanced bands of clouds rolled overhead

9:18pm


9:18pm


After about 5 more minutes the winds settled to 15-20kts where they stayed for awhile. This is the last shot in the series showing the enhanced band moving north.

9:23pm


I packed up and left. I have NEVER been on such a photographic AND meteorological high at the same time. It was a meteorologists/photographers dream!

Welcome To Seattle

I took this from a park that sits just to the north of Boeing Field. Mount Rainier has been spectacular the last couple of days! I'm slowly working on posting photos regularly again.

Startrails in Photoshop CS4!

Finally tried my first startrails image since getting my MacBook Pro. I used the photoshop action and stacked 109 30 second exposures together. It came out better than expected! I really like the light trails from the planes too as they take off from Sea-Tac Airport. The exposures were taken from Kerry Park on the south side of Queen Anne.



UPDATE: I am currently working on a 3 part night tutorial series! See my most recent blog posts to see it!

Photo of the Day

The sun sets behind Gerberding Hall on the UW campus. I had just walked out of our midterm review session and happened to have my camera with me.

Ducati Shoot

Sunday Melissa and I drove out to Gig Harbor so I could take some photographs for Cari. Cari was the bride at the most recent wedding I shot and she wanted to have a poster made for her husbad Ryan of his Ducati motorcycle since he is going to Cuba this spring with the Coast Guard. I made a couple mock-ups and we both agreed on this one:

Bokeh Shots

I've been playing a little with my new 17-55mm lens and decided to try to take some bokeh shots, something I've never really done before. Anyways, this one was my favorite!

Aperture Comparison

While I was a Wallace Falls State Park I took a bunch of shots metered exactly the same but at different apertures. This is just kind of a fun thing to look at.

The shots are all taken with the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 Mark II at ISO 100. There are 8 photographs take at f/1.8, f/2, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/13 and f/22 (in that order).

Click Here to see the slideshow

Canon dSLR Quick Guide

I have made a quick guide for Canon dSLR cameras. The terms can be generalized to suit any camera brand. It basically contains BRIEF explanations of camera settings and exposure controls. There is also a section on setting up a startrails image. If anyone has ideas for how to improve the guide please let me know! The full PDF file is meant to be printed, folded in half and then laminated (this is just a JPG version for the web).

Cool Link!

Don sent me this cool link, it's a news page but the stories are told through photos! Very cool!

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/