Seattle

One of the places I've been trying to photograph is Seattle. I've been meaning to go over to Alkai beach for ever. It has been especially difficult since moving to Oregon, cause everytime we come up we are rather busy or the weather is crappy. So I set up a day in advance after Alta Lake with Maria and Sari to go to Alkai beach. Still we almost didn't go because Maria was driving the youth of her ward to the temple that night and the weather the day before was nasty. I was determined to go, as long as the weather was good. Even so Sari and I left late and ended up being in a hurry all the way there. I still got a lot of great shots, but I learned that a good steady tripod is essential. For the reason of a cheap wobbly tripod my photos did not turn out as sharp as I would have liked. A nice image stabilizing lens would have been great too. The pictures did turn out great for what I had. The colors are good too. These are the best of the bunch.

I like how the changing light changes the mood.

Then the lights pop out.

A book I read a while ago said to find something to put in the foreground that leads out to the distances. I think that a pier would have been a bit better but those are extremely busy, on second thought that would be kind of neat, hhmmm... I've got a new idea!I'd like to get different views of seattle and closer
This was when I first set up and Sari was taking in the view, it was a "must take it now or lose the opportunity" candid shot.
The most annoying thing though is I had just recently cleaned both lenses and I still ended up with lint on them. It's a curse I tell you! Thank goodness for photoshop.

Alta Lake

I was actually able to get for a couple of hours during vacation to get some scenic shots. I was trying out the time of day mostly. Appearantly most photographers shoot early in the morning before sunrise or late in the evening just after sunset. My first post was a morning shot obviously, but I was way too tired to do that at Alta Lake. So one evening after the kids were down and asleep (a miricle) I went to the lake to do my thing. Well to my disappointment there were people still there. About four or five kids were playing in the area of my shot and were not going to leave any time soon. Oddly enough the photo came out all right, maybe even better because of the human element. Blurred images of kids playing in the water late in the evening, kind of like ghosts.
This was an earlier shot, attempting to avoid people in the photo. At one point some guy walked in front while I was taking a picture, not this photo of course. Since it was a long exposure all that was visible was a leg walking across the sand and that only a faint image.
I also tried to get a moon rise, one problem. The moon was a speck, so tiny that I didn't like the results so I went for the glow over the hill that I had captured earlier.