I will once again be a participating artist this month at the Edmonds Arts Festival. Come on out and look for me and my work (shown below) in the Juried Art Gallery!
JURIED ART GALLERY
FATHER'S DAY WEEKEND
FRI-SAT 10-8 | SUN 10-6
700 MAIN STREET | EDMONDS, WASHINGTON
Starry Night at Reflection Lake | Mount Rainier Star Trails | high gloss metal print | 20x30
Bull Elephant in Tsavo, Kenya | high gloss metal print | 12x18
While the Pacific Northwest is undeniably gorgeous, winters here are harsh for the photographer with a day job. Being so far north the sun sets as early as 4 pm and I haven't seen daylight on a weekday since October.
Thankfully, spring is around the corner and the sun has been staying out past 6 (gasp!). After such a long and wet winter cooped indoors, sometimes you have to skip out on work a little early on a beautiful day to go chasing after a good sunset.
Such a day occurred earlier this week in early March, and while my hope for a fiery sky was dashed by some low clouds blocking the sun at the horizon, I still like what was going on over the Seattle Skyline.
Some notes about this photo:
Location: Rizal Park, just below the bridge. The Jose Rizal Bridge is one of the most popular spots to get the Seattle skyline, but that bridge vibrates every time a large vehicle drives over it. Not great for longer exposures. I recommend walking south a bit to find the the Rizal Dog Park entrance. From there, walk downhill to the dog park and find the exit to the paved path below. The view from that area doesn't include the port and sports arenas, but the ground is much more stable if shooting at night.
Shooting/Post Processing tips and tricks: Sunset pictures with well-lit foregrounds are hard to nail-down in one exposure because the sky doesn't really come alive until a few minutes after the sun has already set. For this image, I took three exposures: one during the golden hour to get a well-lit city for some depth in the skyline, another exposed for the sky at its reddest moment just after sunset, and a final photo after dark to get the city lights. Each image was processed in Lightroom and blended together with a bit of creative masking and blending in Photoshop. Try using the "Lighten" blend mode for the darker photo with the city lights.
I seem to average about one illustration per every two years, but this idea was too fun to pass up.
Yesterday's wildcard matchup between Seattle and Minnesota was a crazy game that proved to be the third coldest in NFL history. It wasn't always pretty for the 'hawks, but they churned out an improbable win assisted by an always stifling defense, a hot offense in the fourth quarter, and miffed field goal by the Vikings in the final 30 seconds. Doug Baldwin's unbelievable one-handed catch was one of the two amazing offensive plays of the day:
Daaaaaaaaamn. I couldn't help but think of a certain sports icon when watching this play. A day later, it seems as though no one else got the connection, so I took a stab at doing a quick and dirty design:
Go Hawks! On to Carolina!
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