Seattle at night

The opportunity to photograph belly dancers brought me to Seattle the other day.  This was quite an interesting exercise, once I edit the images I'm thinking I will have a few keepers.

The opportunity to photograph the city on a clear night with a large moon rising was irresistible.I completely mis read the Yahoo map of seattle, or else I don't understand the Navy Altitude/Azimuth charts, or some of each.  I had not positioned myself properly to take advantage of the moonrise as I had hoped.  Oh well.  What I was able to do was photograph the city again from an area I've used before, the result is above.  I am quite impressed with this camera's abilities yet again.  I like this image very much.  It's different, better somehow from the other images from the same place, film or digital.

Technically I had the camera on a tripod of course, but I had the meter set to center weighted.  I reviewed the images with a loupe after shooting and could quickly see that they were overexposed, didn't think to try spot metering.  This shot was at a -3 EV, I think it's just about right.

A few interesting notes.  The dots in the sky are celestial objects, most are stars, the bright one in the middle of the sky is a planet.  Not sure which planet, Venus perhaps.  The streaks are airplanes taking off.  I am looking south and there are 2 active airports there, Boeing Field on the right side of the image and SeaTac towards the middle.  Aircraft flying north will usually turn just before reaching the city and I see there are 2 streaks from turning aircraft, the alternating green and red wing tip lights are visible.  Above and a bit to the right of the red roof is a glimpse of Mount Rainier.

DP1, lavender and red

Spent a few hours in Sequim WA where the lavender is in bloom.  Very lovely fields, various shades of purple flowers, well manicured green grass, plantings of vibrant red poppies and the occasional yellow sunflower.  I'm sure that running a lavender farm is a full time job, much like any other job, but at this time of year I wonder if one gets paid to work there or has to pay for the opportunity.

As I was "Chimping" the pictures I was taking I couldn't help wondering just how to deal with the red colors, which as expected look too pink to me.  The fix was much simpler than expected.  I use Apple's Aperture to manage my image files and the adjustment tools it offers are quite comprehensive.  One of the boxes is labeled "Color" and offers an eyedropper tool to adjust Hue, Saturation, Luminance and Range of the color selected.  I selected the pink and moved the Hue slider about 11 clicks toward the yellow side.  The results are very good and toggling quickly between the original and adjustment shows me no variation in any other color at all.

So easy even I can do it.  I am quite certain that CS3 offers similar capabilities.  I also expect that Elements, iPhoto, and a host of other tools also have this capability.  It's also possible that SPP has some abilities here as well but I don't know for sure.

DP1 lens choice

Earl Thomas

John Lee Hooker Jr.

Randy Oxford trombone

The Legendary Roy Gaines

Tony Ruiz, bass man for Dennis Jones Band

Admittedly I differ from many others in my choice of lenses.  I have found that a wide angle is almost always the correct choice and a telephoto a poor choice.  I'm not sure why this is.  The concept of "Getting more in" is probably part of it but a small part.  I am quite excited by changes in perspective.  For this reason I find the (28mm) lens to be a good choice.  

In reality it is a bit longer than I most often use(d) with my Nikon but quite acceptable.  The above photo's are all shot with a Nikon DSLR using the 12~24mm lens at 12mm.  With the chip size factor this equates to about 18mm, unusually wide for many,  just right for me.

When my Granddaughter Emma was born,  "Can you believe I'm six?" I purchased my first digital camera.  I also attached a Contax TVS point and shoot film camera to my belt, right next to my cell phone.  The TVS has a 35 ~ 60mm zoom.  35 to 60 should be called "Zoom?" it ain't much.  Reviewing the images shot at each end of the range though I found that I almost never was unhappy when choosing 35mm and quite often was when I chose 60mm.

What this tells me is that if Sigma offered an identical camera with a longer lens I would NOT be part of the rush.