The Pixel & Ink Photo Blog

View from my Window

2012-01-19T14:57:00.001-08:00

A Daily Photo Duo

2012-01-08T15:56:00.001-08:00

Party Cat

2012-01-05T23:29:00.001-08:00

Anna Franzen’s Coffee Pot

2012-01-04T23:20:00.001-08:00

Rudy’s Barbershop, Ballard

2011-09-19T20:54:00.001-07:00

I'm on black and white kick.

Sundays at Ocho

2011-09-18T19:35:00.001-07:00

Seafood Feast in the Woods

2011-09-06T09:40:00.001-07:00

Spent the weekend at Twin Harbors State Park near Westport, Washington, feasting on fresh seafood we bought off the dock at the marina. Saturday we bought an enormous piece of fresh albacore tuna, and it was only about $8 a pound.

Vinho Verde, the perfect car-camping wine?

Food-blogger Alix also documents the preparations.

Sunday we didn't make it to Float 8 before Seafood Connection ran out of tuna. Had to settle for King Salmon.

Not the fish we bought, but this is about as fresh as you can get unless you catch it yourself.

Sebastian had a great time protecting the campsite.

Declan’s First Birthday Party

2011-08-29T22:33:00.001-07:00

We had a great time celebrating Chip and Michelle’s son Declan’s first birthday.

Ride the Water Taxi to West Seattle

2011-07-11T19:33:00.001-07:00

Saturday Heidi and I biked from Ballard to the waterfront downtown and took the King Country Water Taxi across Puget Sound to West Seattle. Great ride. There are bike racks on the vessel, and the West Seattle dock is right on the bike/pedestrian trail to Alki beach. The boat leaves downtown every hour on the half-hour and on the hour from West Seattle—at least on weekends, check the schedule for weekday sailings. Tickets are $3.50 each way, but if you have an Orca Pass, you’re covered.

We had lunch and watched the Seafair Pirates land on Alki beach before we biked back. I got a grab shot of this pirate and his family on the voyage west. Lots and lots of kids and families were out at the beach for the pirates of course, and traffic was nuts. Bikes and and boats were the way to go.

Lunch was nothing special. We just grabbed a salad and sandwich at a coffee shop. Are there any great places to eat along the waterfront in West Seattle?

Pink, Green, Blue

2011-06-08T22:29:00.001-07:00

Dragon and Devotional Candles

2011-06-08T22:08:00.001-07:00

A look inside Ho Chi Minh City’s Chùa Quan Âm pagoda.

1975: Wrong Number Saigon?

2011-06-06T21:12:00.001-07:00

“Reunification Palace” in Ho Chi Minh city was the last seat of the South Vietnamese government when it fell in 1975 and has been preserved by the communist government as a museum.

No, it is not a museum of old telephones, but the most fascinating feature is the basement command and control center. Saying it's emptied of all but the furniture is true but doesn’t adequately quantify the volume of emptiness which remains. Wandering through, you start to imagine a scene in a movie where a phone rings and rings in an empty room and nobody answers. Except that all the cords are cut, of course. The exchange numbers on the dials no doubt no longer refer to any network. No one is answering, and no one is calling. I guess that's the point. It was very quiet and empty of other tourists when we walked through.

Guidebooks rumor of tunnels to other parts of the city.

Upstairs is elegant, modernist, very of the 1970s, and also rather eerie. I didn't get any exterior shots that did the building justice.

Hey Ladies!

2011-06-06T20:07:00.001-07:00

In case anyone found my last post crass (I apologize), here is an amphibian with whom you should sympathize—he may be a prince.

I'm working on more photographic and foodie blog-posts from last-month’s Vietnam vacation. I’ve a lot of photos to go through!

Happy Lady Bugs

2011-06-05T21:15:00.001-07:00

Hoan Kiem Lake Shoeshine

2011-05-26T15:18:00.001-07:00

Around Hoan Kiem Lake in Hanoi this is how it works. You agree on a price for cleaning your shoes first, then they "repair" the shoes with "glue" (white tube pictured, lower right, on red basket) and you, the annoyed tourist, have to haggle over the price of that with the later. Bidding for the glue work starts at 100x the agreed-to shoe-cleaning price.

Hanoi People, Mostly on Motor Bikes, in the Evening

2011-05-15T03:45:00.001-07:00

Mỹ Sơn

2011-05-12T07:33:00.000-07:00

We visited Mỹ Sơn today, ruins of temples and monuments built by the kings of Champa from the 4th through 14th centuries. They were a bit less ruined before 1969 when the USAF bombed the valley. Some loot from the temples also ended up in the Louvre before that, and is still there.

I drank two beers and took a nap while uploading these photos. It was very, very hot at Mỹ Sơn, and some down time watching the upload progress bar under AC was a welcome relief.

Pacific Sunrise

2011-05-11T17:19:00.000-07:00

I think this is the first time I've watched the sun rise over the Pacific ocean. The beach is packed with local people at sunrise. Old folks buried in sand (I assume this is a good way to keep cool), kids swimming, older guys kicking footballs, a few joggers, some walkers and talkers.

Night out in Hoi An

2011-05-11T17:04:00.000-07:00

We found a restaurant and bar we liked a lot last night named The Secret Garden. Live music!

A slow internet connection at our hotel is making it hard to post many photos, without spending too much time in front of the laptop. Nights, I fall asleep in front of the FTP client's progress bar and waking up the next day to error messages.

Hoi An Culture and People

2011-05-10T10:41:00.001-07:00

Explored Hoi An Tuesday, getting to know its culture and people just a little bit.

This girl was selling bracelets, and I bought a couple for Heidi since I asked her directions to a shoe shop we wanted to find. She was no help, but I bought something anyway. We ran into her again at dinner time.

It seems like every other store front is a tailor shop where they promise to make you whatever clothes you want overnight. Custom-made shoes too.

We rolled our own spring rolls at lunch.

The afternoon was really special; we took a photo tour of a village a short boat ride away from Hoi An with French, Hoi An-based photographer Etienne Bossot. Etienne gives a very good, short photography lesson that helps beginners discover how to use their SLR, then you are off to meet some locals.More about the photo tour and Etienne here.

We were able to photograph the rice harvest and children in the village.

The sunset tour ends back in Hoi An old town with a short lesson on night photography.

Hoi An at Night

2011-05-09T18:19:00.001-07:00

We checked out a restaurant called the Cargo Club last night, one of the most popular (at least with tourists) in Hoi An.

One always wants to sit by the fan in Vietnam. We sat on the veranda in the back, upstairs. The red dots in the background are red lanterns at a restaurant across the river from us.

I think it is typical in Vietnam for a restaurant's main dining room to be upstairs. Cargo has a billowy elegant slash casual thing going on in their dining room.

Cargo is supposed to have very excellent pastries; we just had dinner, but maybe we’ll check out the bakery today or tomorrow for coffee. We enjoyed (not blow away by) our meal of clay pot fish, pork with noodles and green beans stir fried with onions. The green beans were my favorite: sliced very thin and teamed with green onions and not-quite caramelized slices of white onion. Frankly I’ve had better clay pot fish in Seattle: a bit overcooked, I think. Maybe we were spoiled by some of the food we had in Ho Chi Minh City (but haven’t blogged about HCMC food yet).

Some scenes of Hoi An at night.

The old town is full of tailor shops, many full of what look like renditions of the latest fall fashions. This one is a bit more pedestrian, but full of silk as well as tourist T-shirts.

Pharmacie

Airports

2011-05-09T17:48:00.001-07:00

Lots of waiting in airports yesterday, even though we only had two short flights to get to Hoi An from Phu Quoc via Ho Chi Minh City.

Buying Phu Quoc Peppercorns

2011-05-08T05:14:00.001-07:00

Pepper is one of Phu Quoc Island's famous exports. We bought some black peppercorns and some seasalt with pepper at the night market this evening from this nice woman.

La Veranda

2011-05-08T01:33:00.001-07:00

Spent most of the day at our posh hotel, a lot of it lounging on the beach. Nice, but I kept thinking about the “smart” hotels in George Orwell’s Down and out in Paris and London.

Phu Quoc Island Video

2011-05-07T18:35:00.001-07:00

I'm really bad with a video camera. Some fish...

We did a fishing and snorkeling tour on a boat yesterday that ended with some beach time back at Sao Beach.

Lunch included fresh fish, sea urchin and snails.

The Happy New Year & Merry Christmas Bar as Sao Beach, Phu Quoc Island, Vietnam. Beers are only 20,000 Dong, less than 1 US Dollar.

The ice cream man.

Driving through the fishing village.

Looking Forward, Looking Back

2011-05-06T05:59:00.001-07:00

We hired a taxi for half the day today, searching for a jellyfish-free beach at the South end of the island, Bai Sao (Sao Beach). This involved a lot of honking and passing scooters on the narrow and, for long stretches, unpaved roads, and a few games of chicken with oncoming trucks.

The beach was great. Not many other bathers, clear, clean, calm, warm water and only a few jellyfish. No fish either, unfortunately, but we did find a beach-bum dog in the parking lot. Wild, but mild, dogs roam the island.

Some of Phu Quoc’s fishing fleet.

Below you can see more scooter traffic, freight scooters in this case. Also, you can see under construction a new multi-lane highway. For better or worse, growth is coming to Phu Quoc.

We also stopped at the Coconut Tree Prison Museum, a sad reminder of the last war here.

A child plays beside a woman working at one of the Island's typical, and numerous, road-side shops.

Phu Quoc Island

2011-05-05T17:11:00.001-07:00

A jellyfish on the beach at Phu Quoc Island, Vietnam.

Unfortunately for us the beach a our hotel is lousy with jellyfish, and swimming is not advised.

Left, clouds over the Mekong delta. Right, a jellyfish (blue) and it's evil twin the plastic-bag fish (orange). There are a lot of those at the beach too. Too bad because otherwise the water is very clear, very blue and very warm.

Don't litter!

Pagodas and the Palace

2011-05-04T04:44:00.001-07:00

Visted two Pagodas today, Chùa Bà Thiên Hậu and Chùa Quan Âm.

Also the Independence Palace.

Man Selling Goldfish from His Scooter

2011-05-03T04:30:00.001-07:00

You can't tell from the photo that this rack of goldfish in plastic bags is attached to a scooter. Trust me it is.

Near Le Thi Rieng Park, District 3, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Travel Day Airport Photos

2011-05-02T10:38:00.001-07:00

On the train at Sea Tac to the S gates.

Electronic gizmos at the Seoul airport, where the future is already here.

More Seoul shots, English signage everywhere.

Derelict 7-11, Spring Right Around the Corner

2011-04-25T16:31:00.000-07:00

Poppy

2011-04-19T08:26:00.001-07:00

One Big Lens

2011-03-30T22:35:00.001-07:00

The Fresnel lens from the Destruction Island lighthouse in Washington State, now housed at the Westport Maritime Museum, Westport WA.

Pacific Ocean, Westport WA

2011-03-29T23:23:00.001-07:00

Little Light, Big Hat, Big Aperture

2011-03-22T19:25:00.001-07:00

Fence me in. I like it when low light forces me to be creative, and... uh... work on my manual-focus skills. I really like how these shots of my friend Dave turned out. Up top is the final shot, below the previous three exposures. Sometimes a 50, a lightbulb, and 8.45 micron pixel pitch is all you need. As a student of photography, I’m surprised that my comfort level and accomplishments using the cameras manual modes increases with my consumption of tequila, whiskey and beer, but it's a good thing the memory card was full before I reached the point of diminishing returns.

Not Quite Yet

2011-03-20T17:12:00.001-07:00

Went to see the Spring cherry blossoms at the UW today. Today was probably a week early. No blossoms yet.

Crown Hill, 15th Ave NW

2011-03-05T17:05:00.001-08:00

15th Avenue NW, Crown Hill, the as yet un-gentrified north Ballard neighborhood, ours.

The last two are off 15th, East a block or so.

Estes Park, Colorado

2011-02-24T02:04:00.001-08:00

Hong Kong Revisited

2011-02-10T20:52:00.001-08:00

I've redeveloped some photos from my 2006 visit to Hong Kong, shot with a Nikon D200, with Lightroom 3.

I got in late from Beijing. It had started to downpour, but the streets were busy. As soon as I checked into my hotel and dropped off my bags I grabbed my camera and hit the streets. It was about midnight. I had this electric sensation that I'd just stepped into the set of Blade Runner or something—check out the TV inside the double-decker bus with the Seiko ad in the shot above!

It was mostly a scene of couples talking and huddled under umbrellas together, and groups of fiends gathered around food stalls.

What a great city. I keep trying to convince friends to go there again with me, but so far no takers.

Mirror Mirror

2011-01-30T17:41:00.001-08:00

Hangin’ out at Ocho, spyin’ on other people.

Bop Street

2011-01-30T17:22:00.001-08:00

Broken Glasses, a Gap, North-Side Shadows

2011-01-25T08:15:00.001-08:00

Three photos from a wonder through Belltown to the market Saturday.

What happened here on top of this defunct Seattle PI newspaper box?

Seattle Disappearing: this is the Alaska Way Viaduct, and its days are numbered. I love how they had to leave this notch out of the side of the Viaduct for this old, brick building.

One day back in the 1990s, I saw inside this building. A coworker knew someone who lived in the ground floor, in vast loft-like space. He had to stop by while we were on our way out for beers somewhere. No clue what's in there now.

Shadows on the north side of a building, thanks to windows across the street.

Travel

2011-01-24T22:05:00.001-08:00

20110124DEF_NEX-5_1378, originally uploaded by PixelAndInk.

Fellow travellers wait in a departure lounge at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

Pike Place People

2011-01-23T12:31:00.001-08:00

Flip Flops Deconstructed

2011-01-15T22:21:00.001-08:00

Just a little fun with the macro lens.

Heidi’s havaianas have been sitting outside all winter, dreaming of someplace with blue skies. And when I saw them outside today, so did I. It rained the rest of the day.

Dog Legs

2011-01-13T22:01:00.001-08:00

Beijing Subway, 2006

2011-01-05T00:49:00.001-08:00

I’ve gone back and redeveloped two more old photos from my 2006 trip to China using Lightroom 3.

2006-11-19, Beijing, China. Nikon D200 800 ISO 1/45 Sec. f/3.5, 35mm.

These two from the subway show a young city, tired at the end of the afternoon. I remember Beijing as an incredibly exciting spectacle because of the growth taking shape in concrete, steel and traffic at a massive scale (and at that time Beijing was still ramping up for the 2008 Olympics). I saw the people, but did I didn’t really take time to look at them. Looking again at these faces I can still feel the scale of the city, but also the world-weariness of a big city in a nation pressing the fast-forward button.

2006-11-19, Beijing ,China. Nikon D200 800 ISO 1/40 Sec. f/3.2, 35mm.

Shooting at ISO 800 was a stretch for my old D200—about as high as I ever wanted to crank it before the noise totally took over. Redeveloping the shots, the new lens distortion correction, de-mosaicing and noise reduction code in Lightroom 3 let me make more of these images than I could with the software in 2006. Plus I like to think I’ve learned a thing or two over the last few years. My first edits are still on Flickr.

Playing with Impossible Project PX 70 Color Shade PUSH! Film

2011-01-03T09:16:00.001-08:00

These are scans of Polaroid photos made with new instant film from the Impossible Project.

Alexander Calder’s, Eagle, 1971, Space Needle in the Background.

I’ve wanted to try this film ever since I first heard about it. After Polaroid end-of-lifed their own films, the Impossible Project bought an old Polaroid factory in the Netherlands and started formulating and manufacturing new instant films compatible with the classic instant cameras.

I bought a pack of PX 70 Color Shade PUSH! film. I think it's fair to say the films are experimental, and I think the Impossible Project even says as much on their website. The results I got were “interesting.” There is an image there, sort of. There is color there, sort of. I was never able to get results as good looking as the samples shown on the Impossible Project’s website, but to be fair I made a lot of stupid mistakes. Can I blame the camera too? I have a Polaroid Pronto! someone gave me a few years ago; it may not be the best photographic tool available for this film.

You have to focus the camera manually, and I usually fail to guess the distance correctly or hold the the camera still enough.

The film is very sensitive to light while it develops post-exposure, and impossible recommends shielding photos immediately after the camera ejects them until they have a few minutes to develop.

Out of a cereal box and velcro I built a enclosure that fastens to the camera. On my second exposure I realized the enclosure was not big enough to let the pictures fully eject, and I jammed the camera. I unjamed it in a darkened room, but it's possible I fogged the whole pack of film trying to deal with this problem.

The instructions for the PX 70 Color Shade PUSH! film I had said to turn the exposure knob on the camera to the the lightest setting to overexpose. But outside in bright, direct sunlight, I wonder this actually too much.

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Brugen, Typrewriter Eraser, Scale X, 1998-1999

Experimentation is part of the fun. I also have a pack of the monochrome Silver Shade film I plan to shoot outdoors once the weather warms up; Impossible says the film works best at room temperature, and today it’s freezing in Seattle. Impossible didn’t mention temperature in the Color Shade FAQ, but I wonder if this is another reason my outdoor shots turned out so light.

I also need to perfect my scanning techniques. These scans are plagued by Newton rings. The 3D nature of the analog photographs assert itself with a vengeance when you try to press them flat against the glass scanning bed.

Skiing Through a Frozen Forest

2011-01-01T16:39:00.001-08:00

We spent the last day of 2010 on (and driving to and from) the Miller River Nordic ski trail near Skykomish, off of Highway 2.

Frozen canopies, and blue sky above.

The trail is basically just a forest service road. You park at the end of the plowing then continue up the road until you’ve had enough then turn around. At one point the trail crosses the river.

There were a few sun breaks, but for the most part we skied in shadow, but since there was no wind we did not get cold.

Olympic Sculpture Park

2010-12-30T16:38:00.001-08:00

A few shots from the Olympic Sculpture Park.

Phone

2010-12-30T11:15:00.001-08:00

Outside the Tully’s on Market Street in Ballard stands (what must be) one of the last public phone booths in the city, the rest gone the way of Kodachrome.

The Dead Leaves

2010-12-02T21:51:00.001-08:00

Snow, wind, rain… but today we had some sun. Had fun with my favorite lens, and the trusty assistant. It was great light, with the sun low in the sky weaving in and out of a thin veil of clouds, and the south wall of my house like a giant fill card.

“Sharp is Overrated”

2010-11-30T19:27:00.001-08:00

Monday Snow at the Center of the Universe

2010-11-22T22:55:00.001-08:00

Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, with a dusting of snow today around lunchtime.

Woodsy

2010-11-08T23:06:00.001-08:00

Plane Tails

2010-10-19T19:53:00.001-07:00

Fremont: October Color

2010-10-12T19:38:00.001-07:00

Birch Bark

2010-10-11T19:23:00.001-07:00

Shilshole Avenue NW

2010-09-22T07:36:00.001-07:00

razor wire

2010-09-19T08:35:00.001-07:00

trophy

2010-09-15T16:59:00.001-07:00

Ballard’s Finest Outdoor Seating

2010-09-13T20:49:00.001-07:00

This first example of outdoor seating in Ballard is awesome…

The other two… well, they are what they are.

I’m going to keep documenting these little bits of Ballard until they are all blown away.

Wild Horse Wind Farm Revisited (Virtually)

2010-09-11T11:37:00.001-07:00

Today I went back to some of my favorite shots from a 2008 visit to Wild Horse Wind Farm and re-developed them using Lightroom 3’s new features: the new process version 2010, better noise reduction, lens corrections, plus some changes to the tonality and color treatment.

This shot, above, really benefitted from a manual, vertical transformation in the Lens Corrections panel. Here is a version without the correction.

Original versions from 2008 are still on Flickr.

Mountains and Sun

2010-09-06T12:50:00.001-07:00

We took a short road trip over Highway 2 to Washington State’s faux-Bavarian mountain villiage, Leavenworth.

i’m lovin’ it

2010-09-02T20:09:00.001-07:00

The McDonaldization of someone’s pickup truck.

fake color, real color, fake real color

2010-08-27T00:58:00.001-07:00

Tower

2010-08-25T21:59:00.001-07:00

or else!

2010-08-23T23:22:00.001-07:00

The light looked good, so I took my camera to dinner tonight.

Summer People at Pike Place

2010-08-14T17:18:00.001-07:00

We went down to Pike Place Market today with our cameras—just like tourists—to photograph the real tourists. I tried to channel one of my favorite photographers, Martin Parr. I failed of course, but I saw some interesting faces and got a few shots I like. I need to keep coming back to this place for more practice.

Heidi gets total credit for spotting this one. Good eye Heidi!

squares

2010-08-11T22:51:00.001-07:00

A few snapshots from a short walk around the neighborhood.

Ladies and Gentleman, the Bride and Groom

2010-08-08T10:36:00.001-07:00

This year marks my parents 50th wedding anniversary. We have only a few photographs from that day.

Today is a rainy summer Sunday in Seattle, a good time to get caught up on photo scanning.

It’s not clear to me why the photos are stamped “JUL • 61” as the wedding was in August of 1960. I assume this is the date the prints were made. The negative (all the negs are lost as far as I know) for the top, right photo was obviously cut and spliced back together in the darkroom.

The Bakery Scene

2010-08-06T09:38:00.001-07:00

There was good light at the bakery in the neighborhood yesterday morning. And a puppy. The light-capturer needs more practice however—puppies move fast and are hard to keep in focus and in frame. I was shooting at puppy-eye level with the camera held away from my eye.

Researchers recently found fragments of a domesticated dog skull and teeth 14,000 years old. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but the domestication and breeding of dogs is an astonishing, ancient, human achievement. The technologies we rely on today and are fascinated by today are profoundly immature by comparison. I like my iPhone, my car and trans-continental air travel, but none of these seem as sublime an achievement as dogs bred to do work like herding animals.

Free Woo

2010-08-01T14:15:00.001-07:00

Nearby and inside Ballard’s 2 Bit Saloon.

Scouting out the Hood

2010-07-28T23:44:00.001-07:00

On the walk home from Delancy tonight, I noticed someone in the neighborhood drives this great old International Scout.

Inside DelancyThe yard sale has nothing to do with the Scout—I just liked the sign.

BBQ Diptych

2010-07-24T00:14:00.001-07:00

30 brats and I don’t know how many burgers.

Big Panorama

2010-07-23T23:32:00.001-07:00

I stitched together a large panorama from Walla Walla this afternoon thanks to the Photomerge and content-aware fill features in Photoshop CS5, but it brought my lowly dual-core, 4GB MacBook Pro to a crawl. The image is composed from 11 frames from my D700. The full-size image is 26825x2731 pixels.

A few other sizes for the web:

Walla Walla’s Sweet

2010-07-21T15:36:00.001-07:00

We had a good and relaxing time in Walla Walla on our “minimoon” last weekend. Talk about a change of sceen: no more wedding planning and replace Seattle scenery with rolling desert hills, fields of grain, vinyards, and blue skies all day. We haven’t found much to do in Walla Walla except relax and go wine tasting, but I guess we haven’t looked very hard either. Early Sunday morning heading out for coffee the downtown looked like a ghost town. It picked up a bit in the afternoon: sidewalk cafes, street music, but still definitely a downshift from the big city. Nice.

Sunday we tasted wine from three wine makers. I’m a big fan of Gramercy Cellars Walla Walla Tempranillo. We made an appointment to visit, and met Assistant Winemaker Brandon Moss who let us taste the new 2008 bottling as well as their other wines. Brandon and his fiancée are really nice folks. We had a good chat, and the 2008 is tasting great. I had to buy 1/2 a case, and we filled the rest of the box with Gramercy’s Syrah and Cabernet Sauvingnon.

Gramercy doesn’t have a tasting room yet and shares facilities with Waters winery, so the Waters tasting room the the property was the next obvious stop. Waters was pouring (several wines including) a few single-vinyard Syrah wines, each expressing a different terrior. Heidi liked the Columbia Valley Syrah.

Next door was Va Piano Vinyards. We both really liked their Bruno’s Blend I Sauvignon Blanc, and look forward to enjoying a couple bottles on the deck this summer.

Walla Walla’s also got a few great restaurants. Saffron Mediterranean Kitchen is becoming one of my favorite in the state. The food here is as or more enjoyable than that at several Seattle and Portland restaurants in the same casual/fresh/local genre. Saffron is taking full advantage of fresh local produce and preparing much of their food in house. Flavors are robust and surprising. I had a leg of lamb that was cooked over mesquite and served with fresh baby parsley, fresh spinach, green garlic and roasted carrots. Turns out our waiter had actually helped harvest the Spinach. Heidi had hanger steak served with an awesome almond and caperberry salsa. Saffron’s also a great place to try local wine. Two years ago this is where I first tasted Gramercy’s tempranillo. With Saturday night’s dinner enjoyed a bottle of K Vintner’s “The Boy” with our meal. Saffron: totally worth the drive.

Left to right: a bottle of K Vintner’s wine at Saffron, leg of lamb at Saffron, a glass of Viognier at Brasserie Four.

Sunday we also had a very nice lunch on the sidewalk outside Brasserie Four, and enjoued a very elegant six-course tasting menu at Whitehouse-Crawford.

Daisies, Chain

2010-07-10T17:22:00.000-07:00

Chicken Bingo!

2010-07-05T12:27:00.001-07:00

We wagered money on chicken bingo at a BBQ Saturday. The rules are simple: bet one dollar per square in the chicken cage, add one chicken and feed, then wait for nature to take its course. If the chicken shit hits your square you win the whole pot.

Yes, all the fun of the county fair without leaving the city limits. I lost six bucks on the dirty birds.

Below: gratuitous summertime dog photo, and Matt with the megaphone as chicken bingo MC.

And on the grill—beer can chicken (draw your own conclusions).

Finally, this being Seattle, you never know when your party will be interrupted by a zombie attack!

East Portland

2010-06-17T00:25:00.000-07:00

Tonight I finally got around to looking at some photos I took back in April, on a trip to Portland. I love wandering around East Portland with a camera. Color, texture, decay.

And pretty much any path you take there leads to a brewery. It was great wether that weekend for April (better than much of June so far). We sat out on the back decks and sidewalks of breweries to drink local beer eat pretzels, for hours.

Before the trip was over we even wandered into the Space Room Lounge. I hadn't been there since the 20th century, and was happy to see it mostly preserved in all its black-lit glory.

Smog, Revisited

2010-06-09T21:16:00.000-07:00

I redeveloped two photos from 2006 in Lightroom 3. These two are from a trip to China. Both from Beijing, one shows an Olympic stadium under construction (no, not the Bird’s Nest one I’m pretty sure) for the (then coming) 2008 Summer games. I assume they spruced up or replaced the massive mascot statue before the games. Both show the horrible smog. With the World Cup starting this weekend and the oil-spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, both look timely to me again.

...If only environmental clean up was as easy as Lightroom’s new new noise reduction sliders are to use.

Greenwood Avenue

2010-05-15T21:05:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow (Sunday) morning I can wake up and find out what it feels like to wake up the day after the Sounders win a match. It’s been a while since that happened, but the Rave Green was victorious over the NY Red Bulls 1-0 tonight!

Anyway, we watched the match—then celebrated, of course, on Greenwood Avenue, and I snapped some photos in the hood.

If you look carefully you can find the words "honkey tonk kat" in the photos below.

Gold Colored Stuff

2010-05-10T23:59:00.000-07:00

Garden

2010-05-09T17:28:00.000-07:00

For Mother’s day, some flowers. The yard is blowing up this weekend. I did cut some flowers from the yard for my mom today—but not these. No dandellions for the boquet. As photos go, however, a few weeds don’t hurt.

Blue Sky

2010-05-08T17:20:00.000-07:00

Here's Lookin' at You

2010-04-23T19:07:00.001-07:00

Mmmmmmm

2010-04-21T19:34:00.001-07:00

Go by Train, Shoot by Phone

2010-04-20T08:51:00.001-07:00

I rode the Amtrak Cascades to Portland a couple weekends ago, with no camera but the iPhone. You gotta love how the new noise reduction code in the Lightroom 3 beta can clean up the original iPhone’s JPEGs.

Portland has a nice, renovated station.

Seattle’s station still needs a lot of work. It was so dark inside under the kipple of the1960s drop ceiling, I didn’t get any shots inside.

Lincoln Continental

2010-04-15T20:55:00.000-07:00

The Best Table in the House

2010-03-11T20:46:00.000-08:00

Photo Rights and Blogs

2010-03-11T08:10:00.000-08:00

Thanks to David Riecks for sharing this link.

Where does the assumption that a "credit and backlink" automatically gives you permission to use a photo come from?

A Bright Blinding Light!

2010-03-08T09:11:00.000-08:00

There’s a joke that Seattleites forget what the sun looks like and scream in horror when it appears—“Dear god, what is this burning, blinding orb in the sky?!”

In this spirit, I attempted this Saturday to blind a good friend. He wanted his portrait taken, and we didn’t get organized for a shoot until the middle of the afternoon. I mentally re-compiled what I’ve learned and half-forgotten from lighting demonstrations and from reading Strobist, and I set out to use the Sun as my key light in a basic cross-lighting setup. We drove around town looking for an interesting background and ended up in front of one of the west walls of an old hanger at Magnuson Park.

Seattle is far enough north that in winter and early spring, the sun is still relativly low in the southern sky even at midday. The light is hard, but the shadows are long. I posed my friend in front of the wall, with the sun falling on his right shoulder, camera left. Using his shadow as a guide, I put the light stand with the flash exactly oposite the sun, at about the height of his head. It was probably just over 7 feet away.

My biggest problem was getting him not to squint. Even with the sun at his side, it was pretty bright. To make matters worse, I added a third light by leaning my 32" 5-in-1 MultiDisk round silver reflector against the light stand. A blind photographer could position a relector correctly because when it’s throwing light back onto your model, they start complaining about being blinded and ask if it’s time to quit and go get beers.

Hot Dog

2010-02-26T12:38:00.000-08:00

Workin’ at home today. Usually this means Sebastian is driving me nuts: inside, outside, getting up on the couch, whining for attention. He settled down as soon as I setup the space heater in the office. Now it’s his new favorite spot.

Optimists and Pessimists

2010-02-22T08:14:00.000-08:00

These two shots show Seattle's split personality. As soon as we start having sunny days half the city strips down and goes sunbathing while the other half stays bundled up. It's been unseasonably sunny, warm and dry this winter, and both types were out in force at Greenlake Sunday. I think the official high at Sea Tac was 57 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday, but I'm going to claim it was at least 60 at the lake.

Read Cliff Mass's take on yesterday's weather for a more scientific perspective.

How to Order a Print from this Blog

2010-02-18T13:34:00.000-08:00

Someone just asked me how to get a print from one of the photos on the blog, so I made a short screen recording deomonstrating how to do it.

Fun and Games in White Center

2010-02-14T13:11:00.001-08:00

Down in White Center last night for a big birthday bash. It was all fun an games, starting at Full Tilt Ice Cream, and ending up at Magic Lanes. The circa 1980s score terminals at Magic Lanes are beautiful.

I bowled four strikes—not to bad since I only roll the rock about once a year.

Queen Anne Hill Stairs Adventure

2010-02-11T20:31:00.000-08:00

We bought the “map of the stairs" last weekend and hiked around Queene Anne hill with the dog.

90

2010-02-06T13:54:00.001-08:00

El Drive Thru

2010-01-30T10:19:00.000-08:00

Tacos: one of the best parts of travelling to California for work. I try to go to El Grullense every time I'm down in San Jose.

Three from the Air

2010-01-28T21:56:00.000-08:00

I flew down to San Jose yesterday morning. I hate getting up so early to travel, but the view of the cascade volcanos was beautiful. In the photo on the left you can see Rainier and St. Helens. On the right, the long, triangular, shadow running from the wing to the bottom left corner of the photo is the shadow of California's Mt. Shasta as the sun rises.

I was also able to snap a horizontal shot of Rainier, St. Helens and Mt. Hood, but it didn't turn out as well as the others. I'll have a better camera with me for the flight back home tomorrow night, but of course I don't expect this kind of view out the window.