Old Tracks by the River

So it's obvi been a while since my last post, and I was itching like crazy to get outside with my camera. I went to Al Borlin Park in Monroe, which I'm pretty sure is supposed to be named after Al Borland from Home Improvement - they just misspelled his name!

I wanted to find old train tracks to photograph, and this park had them. And woods and a river, my other two favorite things :) Enjoy!

 

I found it difficult to walk along train tracks.The wooden ties are not spaced evenly and some are crooked. Strides are too short if you step on each tie, but too long every other. And with their uneven spacing, your foot doesn't quite fit on the ground in-between most of the time. It's a process that forces you to slow down and take your time, which I had no problem with.

 

I found this crate just sitting here in this spot. Convenient photo opp, so I couldn't pass it up!

 

Closer to the river, I could walk under the old tracks -- avoiding the dripping slime, of course :)

 

I loved how everything was coated in this lime green gunk. So colorful against the dark tar-covered pilings.

 

Here is a small branch of the river where the water was a bit calmer

 

 Some dead ferns growing under the dead railroad

 

Lots of shiny dried tar along the pilings

 

 

 

Tall dead golden grass always makes for great pictures, especially against the dark backdrop of a shadowy railroad and rain clouds

 

 

I love little grass sprouts like these - I used to chew on green ones in our yard when I was younger and pretend to be a farmer :)

 

The sun was making appearances that day, and I also liked when it hid behind clouds

 

 

Just some maple leaves, hugging a log

 

I could see miniature hobbits living here 

 

I was walking along the park road trying to find where my car was, when I turned around and thought it was pretty. Turn around sometimes when you are out with your camera; you might be surprised by the perspective it gives you.

 

I stopped on a trail and thought my boots made good subjects :)

 

I finally found Sven! His recently washed sunroof also made for a convenient photo opp.

Hope you liked these pics, and remember to always keep your eyes open to new and unexpected angles, perspectives, and subjects for your photos. It makes them a lot more interesting!

Angel Rock Climbs

Before putting away the Christmas decorations (really late, I know), I wanted to capture some shots of my beautiful angel. I crafted her when I was a wee child and she holds a special place in my heart and our living room every Christmas. The other day she was bored. I told her to go outside, followed her, and documented the following adventure.

 

I said playing outside might make her happier. She looked at me like I was crazy. And it's not just because of her missing eye, which disappeared some time ago in an unfortunate accident, the nature of which I'm not entirely certain. 

 

 But she relented and turned to ponder the grass. It was not stimulating.

  

 "I'm so bored!" she whined after rolling around on the porch bench for a while.

"You know," I said, "I've heard rock climbing is a pretty good cure for boredom. And there's a pillar you can climb right over there."

 

 "...a cure for my boredom?" She looked uneasy. "I'm just not sure. I mean, I've never done rock climbing before, and people tell me my upper body strength isn't superior. But you say it's just over there? Maybe I'll take a look."

 

 "Holy guac. It's so tall. I don't think I can climb all the way up that."

 

 "Seriously, I'm barely taller than the arm of this bench..." I could see she was thinking; the gears in that solid wooden head were turning. It was an intriguing endeavor for the little angel.

 

 Then she jumped on the bench arm with sudden enthusiasm, the likes of which I'd rarely seen from her. And with determination comparable to that of a slug that dreams of flying, she shouted, "For the sake of my sanity, I have no other choice but to conquer this giant rock-beast!"

 

 And so began the climb. It was tough, and she often had to look up to see how far was left, using only her strong feet to grip the pillar as she leaned back and detached her doily arms.

 

 After much huffing and puffing, she finally reached the top!

 

 "I'm exhausted. My doily arms can't take that kind of stress!" she cried while resting on the bench in utter fatigue. "But at least I'm not bored anymore!"

And that's the end of my angel's adventure. Maybe she'll make an appearance again next year in an exciting sequel! Stay tuned.

Frosty Frolicking

Happy New Year! 2013 should be full of big, exciting happenings and I hope you have a wonderful year. Maybe they will even find bigfoot or I will get a picture of a unicorn in its natural habitat. One can hope.

Anyway, to celebrate the new year a few of us went up to my friend's cabin in the San Juan Islands. I woke up [fairly] early to an amazing display of foggy, frosty, eerie weather goodness. So I ran down, grabbed my camera, put on my penguin cut-off gloves, and romped around the yard to capture it all.

 I love frosty grass. It's so cool and makes its own fantastic contrasts.

 

 

 Then I found this amazing table that has seafoam green tiles in it, and there is a quaint little world of life growing in the cracks.

 

 If I was a miniature person living here, I would definitely hike and picnic on this little peninsula.

  

There are also several Madrona trees on the property which have awesome peely bark. I liked this shot looking up the tree.  

 A couple hours later, the fog cleared and everything started thawing so I got a good shot of the bay. Wishing I had a telephoto lens to capture the details of this scene, but it's still pretty. 

This is a great time of the year to get out in the early morning light when nature is still half asleep to get some shots of frozen water beads and cold trees. Since it was overcast, I had the white balance set to "cloudy" and the exposure generally +1/3 of a stop to make up for the darker lighting outside.

Go take some pictures of old man winter, and don't forget your gloves!

Tripods and Focus Points - Christmas Adventures

Tripods

Sitting around with my curious camera and all of the sparkly lights and decor everywhere, I shot some frames of a few of my favorite bits of Christmas magic at home. I shoot in manual mode so I can change all of the settings to my liking. Trying to shoot in low light is a problem for just about anyone, and without a tripod, it is even harder.

 

I've had this Santa for as long as I can remember. He is really squishy and obviously quite photogenic.

If you cannot increase the light in the room, try to get the lowest f-stop your lens allows, the slowest shutter speed before it gets blurry from hand shake (usually no lower than the lens' highest mm - in my case it's 55mm, so that would be about 1/60), and keep the ISO only as high as necessary - the higher the ISO, the more digital noise in your shots. A lower f-stop means the aperture or lens opening is as wide as it can be to let in as much light as possible. A slower shutter speed has a similar function, capturing all of the light between opening click and closing click.


Your main goal is to use the triangle of aperture (f-stop), shutter speed, and ISO to get your exposure to 0. Your exposure will be the little light meter scale on your screen or in the viewfinder that has a + on one side and a - on the other. Exposure is key.


Here are a couple of the pictures I took. I did not use a tripod, so my ISO was higher than would be ideal to compensate for the low light and shaky hands. I later found out that we have a tripod that fits my camera, but during my frustratingly blurry, underexposed attempts at capturing the tree and ornaments, I was seriously considering going down to Kenmore Camera to buy a tripod right then and there.

 

 

As you can see in this picture, my ISO was raised to a pretty ungodly number (4000) and as a result it is grainy. Invest in a good tripod, kids!

Focus Points

With family here for a short while around Christmas, I went on a little photo adventure with my sisters to the quaint Montlake neighborhoods near the University of Washington. We then went to Gasworks Park to shoot some views of the Seattle skyline and the old rusted pipes. Cameras in hand, we ran around and had a good time figuring out what we were doing (one sister has a new camera as well). 

There's a lot of trial and error, but practice really is the best way to learn. Also, I'm a big fan of macro and bokeh as you will see in most of my pictures.

 

 

 

I love reflection pictures and with the abundance of puddles in Seattle, it makes for great photo ops.

 

One thing I like to do to add some creativity to a photo is change the focus point. In this shot and the next one, I selected a point that I thought gave the most interesting framing of the foreground subject and the background. 

Another thing to remember is that your aperture (f-stop) controls your depth of field. With a low f-stop (wide aperture) you can get just the foreground subject in focus and the background blurred, and with a big f-stop (narrow aperture), everything through the whole depth of the picture will be in focus. Play around with your aperture and see what happens. Always keep balancing shutter speed and ISO to reciprocate changes in aperture in order to get an exposure of 0.

 

 

This is actually in my parents' front yard, but it goes with the water drop and focus theme :)

 

 

If you want to know what my camera settings were for any of the shots above, I'm happy to provide that info! Sometimes it can be helpful as a starting point for messing around with exposures, focus points, etc.


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