Seattle

I took a week long trip up to Seattle mid January, and it was fantastic. I didn't want to come home. I absolutely love it up there. Even in the middle of winter with rain and snow. So toooday, I am going to be sharing some of my favorite photographs from up there!

35 photos under the cut.

This was only my second time flying, I had no idea flying was so cool! GPS that tells me everything! Awesome.

Fresh off the plane and wandering around downtown in search of lunch and the bus to my hotel.

A rare photograph of yours truly. The night I got in happened to be one of the only nights it snows in Seattle. First time in the snow as it is happening. It was really awesome.

Photographing into the snow as it is falling can be tricky business for a point and shoot that is not weatherproofed, but I did it anyways. This is around midnight by the way.

Totally made a snowman, the right way! I had no idea there was a right way, I always thought they were just globs of snow. Boy was I wrong.

Again, the whole shooting into the snow thing. Loved these power lines too much not to.

The girlfriend found a dog in the park. Super cool dog.

I found this guy! He was outside of this school going up and down the stairs. How cool is that? Turns out he is a student teacher there ... I don't know if that would fly in so-cal. If skateboarders are considered to be the devil, what would they make of a unicyclist?

Not an amazing photo, but it is an amazing place. It is the exterior of the Photo Center of the North West. They have a couple of very strong galleries, studios, dark rooms, digital dark room and even offer a full certificate course. Really amazing place. If you are a photographer in Seattle, you NEED to pay this place a visit.

Whats this? Real people take the bus in Seattle? Its not just crack heads and homeless people? Ok, I exaggerate the quality of the buses in LA and OC, but still. Way nicer, amazing service, slightly over priced. For some reason my day pass expired at 6:30PM. What sense does this make?

Underneath Pike Place market at the gum wall. We were about to leave the wall and head back up to the market when a cop on a horse turned onto the street, I took a couple of shots of him passing me before I shot this silhouette of him going down the brick alley way. Thank god for manual settings on my G11!

Again, manual settings come in very handy when you are trying to capture a modestly complex exposure. I am sure the camera has some sort of pre-set setting for this type of shot, but really, I don't have time to try all of them, how about I just meter the shot myself? Yuuup.

Talk about a cool job, driving the monorail back and forth on its one and a half mile track has to be great for the first few months.

Here's a shot of the needle against the EMP's metal surface. I love the way the color on the metal shifts.

Sometimes oil in the streets can be attractive.

You can get pretty bored photographing just a building, or photographing just a light pole or the tree. I started to really play with the different compositional elements that were around me and trying to combine them into the same image in a pleasing way. I think that this is one of the images that it worked out pretty well with.

Triangles. How many can you count? I got to ten. I am sure I am wrong, I have always been terrible at that game.

Walking around the artists studios in Pioneer Square we wandered into her studio. She was kind enough to talk to us for a good 20+ minutes about the local arts community.

Taking the underground tour of Seattle you get to see all sorts of cool things underneath the sidewalks. I am sure it is a mixture of planted objects and actual objects, this one is just too good to have been found sitting there. Great little tour, you learn all sorts of interesting yet useless information about the city.

I love all the notes written on this shop window.

Seattle was full of great food, and this one was one of the best. Blue Moon burger's Blue cheese, Portabella mushroom, and Bacon burger. It was a great burger. The Peanut butter milkshake was really good too. Check them out in Fremont.

I think that Fremont was my favorite place. Check out this Lenin that was shipped here from Russia after the cold war!

The view underneath the Aurora Bridge.

Fremont, yet again.

Discovery Park

Gasworks Park.

My super awesome traveling companion checking out the view of downtown from Gasworks Park.

Inspired by Banksy.

The full moon at 40,000 feet is AMAZING. I wish this picture did it justice, but it really doesn't come anywhere remotely close. I don't think I have ever seen a photograph that did, if you haven't seen it, you really must. It can be tricky to get to.

Ahhh, Los Angeles, home sweet smelly home. Seriously. Coming back from a place with relatively clean air, stepping out of the airport doors into the LAX air, kinda sucked. 

In a nutshell, that was my trip. Pretty amazing trip. Can't wait to find an excuse to take another one.

If you bothered reading my captions you noticed I shot these with a point and shoot. Yep, no room in my bag for an SLR. Everything was shot with a canon g11. Really happy with how they came out. Its surprising how good a nice CCD sensor can really capture things. It is true, that the noise at higher ISO gets pretty ridiculous, but when you are coming from a full frame Digital camera, there is going to be some noticeable differences in the quality. That's the price you pay for being able to stick it in your pocket and forget about it half the time. It was great using a small camera for once. It totally frees you from the constraints of photographing for a project, or photographing for a client, you are just photographing for yourself and nothing else, free to take as many cliche photographs of the gorgeous sky line as you like, and I did. Oh yes I did ...  

Thanks for looking!