October 31st - Spooky

This week's theme is "Spooky" in celebration of Halloween. I think this photo might fit - Chester is dressed up this year as an accident victim. Only problem is - it's real, not make believe. Yesterday he saw a deer or something over the back fence and he tore across the back yard at full speed, but didn't quite clear our kayaks which were laying on the lawn. The bow end of the kayak skewered him in the side and he had to go in for some surgery and stitches. This cut is about 4 inches (10 cm) long! If you want to see a close up of his wound, click the link below. Warning: Due to the graphic nature of the following image, viewer discretion is advised. You've been warned. Here it is.
1/125th sec. f/8 iso 400

October 30th - Brittany

This is Brittany who will be graduating at the end of this school year. We got some senior portraits of her at the fairgrounds and then down by the port docks. This was shot at the picnic shelter at Fairweather Park under some beautiful available light.
1/13th sec. f/4.5 iso 200

October 29th - X-Ray Screen

I was so impressed with the adjustments Lance made to his laptop screen, I thought I'd try it myself. So I did some searches on the internet for how to bump up the transparency on mine, but I think maybe I made my adjustments a bit too extreme...
1/160th sec. f/16 iso 400

October 28th - Les

Shannon's dad is staying with us for a few weeks. He is disabled and doesn't move very quickly so he couldn't run from my camera and strobes. Instead he was a really good sport and let me do some portrait practice on him while he shared some yarns about the good ol' days.
1/200th sec. f/16 iso 400

I really like this one too, so I decided to post 2 shots instead of just one...

October 27th - Salmon Sculpture

This is a sculpture carved out of translucent alabaster. It was created by local artist and attorney Bill Weissinger. Photo is lit with a single bare strobe behind the subject.
1/250th sec. f/5.6 iso 200

October 26th - Keyboard Again

Here's that laptop keyboard again. I did a shot similar to this once before, but I thought I'd do it again with the reflection on the screen this time. And show the whole keyboard instead of just a few of the keys. I guess I just really like this backlit keyboard...
5 sec. f/3.5 iso 800

October 25th - Stillness

Our theme for this week is "stillness". (Thanks, Eric), so at the end of the day, I looked out the window at my quiet little street. Not a whole lot going on other than a gentle rain. It seems pretty still out there tonight.
10 sec. f/4.5 iso 800

October 24th - Clamping Action

I love these little clamps - so useful for so many things. I just picked up a few more the other day and after idly playing around with them I thought it would be fun to shoot this partial spiral.
1/250th sec. f/20 iso 200

October 23rd - Sun Rays

This is one time I really wish I could have set up my tripod and got a better photo. I was in Seattle, heading north on I-5, just about to enter the express lanes (where there's no place to pull over) and I looked to my left and saw the sun's rays shining down through the clouds. What an awesome sight! I had my camera on the seat next to me and luckily it was stop and go traffic, so when we stopped, I grabbed this shot out the window.
1/400th sec. f/10 ISO 200

October 22nd - Seattle Waterfront

More streetlights tonight. This time, three of them down at Seattle's waterfront. I went down there with the intention of shooting the Seattle skyline but didn't find a place with a good enough view and I got tired of driving around looking for one. So I settled for this instead. (the bay is on the other side of this building)
20 sec. f/22 iso 200

October 21st - More Leaves

I'm on the road again for a couple days. I got to my hotel pretty late and walked on a carpet of leaves to get to my room, thinking I'd get out in the morning and get a photo of them. But then I thought the leaf blowers might beat me to them so I took a few shots under the street lamp. This one has the lamp hiding behind the tree.
20 sec. f/11 iso 400

October 20th - Blue Pick

I didn't travel very far for tonight's photo. In fact, I just kinda swiveled around in my chair. But I did have to get up to put the strobe on a light stand and stuff.
1/250th sec. f/5.6 iso 200 One strobe overhead with grid.

October 19th - Catherine

I had the pleasure of working with Catherine today for her Senior Portraits and we had some good weather for it. This was shot down at the sail barn on Jackson's Beach.
1/80th sec. f/5.6 iso 200

October 18th -Seagull

Saw this guy and a few others like him (her?) while waiting for the ferry. Not your average run of the mill seagull. This one is more colorful than the white & grey herring gull. Anyone know what kind of bird (OK, thanks anonymous) "seagull" this is?
1/200th sec. f/7.1 iso 400

October 17th - Action Figure

I saw this in a store window downtown and I knew right away I had my photo for the day.
1/160th sec. f/4.5 iso 400

October 16th - Fast on the Fretboard

Both TJ and Courtney are getting better and better on the guitar. This is Courtney's hand as she shows me how fast she can play this new riff she learned.
1 sec. f/4 iso 100

October 15th - Silverware and Sky

I was waiting for my lunch at a restaurant in Mt. Vernon today and when I looked down at my silverware I saw the skylight above.
1/60th sec. f/6.3 iso 1600

October 14th - Ordinary Household Object

Funny how so many times this year I've wandered around the house looking for something I can photograph. I always want something that will look unique or interesting from a different angle or closeup or narrow depth of field or whatever. This one has been done already this year by one of my fellow 365ers but I thought I'd give it a shot tonight.
1.8 sec. f/4.5 iso 200

October 13th - Senior Portrait

Eric did some senior portraits last week and now it's my turn. I had the good fortune to work with Coral here and we had great some light. Nature's big ol' softbox was covering the sky and we got some great shots. This is one of my favorites.
1/50th sec. f/4.5 iso 400

October 12 - Staple Stack

I don't use many staples in my office. These are from the original box I bought when I opened my doors for business in December of 2002. I think I've only used 1 and a half rails.
1/10th sec. f/4.5 iso 400

October 11th - Hotel Lobby

Our theme this week is Travel so here's another hotel photo. We stayed at the Marcus Whitman in Walla Walla and this is the main lobby. Lots of cushy chairs and beautiful pillars holding up the ceiling. Sometimes you gotta go for the great deals like I did a couple weeks ago; other times you just gotta go for style.
1/8th sec. f/4 iso 400

October 10th - Synchronized Spinning

We drove East of Walla Walla and through the town of Dayton, and a little farther East where a friend said we could drive almost right up to the wind farms. And wow was she ever right - we were right there, just a stone's throw from these big generators and when we turned the car engine off we could hear the "Whoosh....whoosh....whoosh...." of the propellers as they spun in the wind. What a marvelous sound. All that power, and so clean. (this photo isn't the closest we got to them, but I chose it for today's post because the blades are all nearly synchronized)
1/500th sec. f/11 iso 400

October 9th - Brick & Mortar

Cruising around downtown Walla Walla and found myself admiring the brickwork on this bookstore.
1/180th sec. f/7.1 iso 400

October 8 - Wind Power

One of my favorite things about going to Walla Walla is seeing all the wind farms along the way. This is some clean energy here I tell ya... And these things are HUGE. We once saw a big truck on the freeway towing one of the blades like you see here. It was longer than a semi trailer. And no I don't mean the tower holding the turbine the blades are attached to... I mean One Blade. Look at the power lines dwarfed by these things....
1/200th sec. f/7.1 iso 400

October 7th - Fall Colors

I'm guessing we'll probably see lots of photos similar to this on the 365's. It's that time of year. This is our neighbor's tree, just over the backyard fence.
1/320th sec. f/9 iso 200

October 6th - Pizza and Chandeliers

Mmmmmmm! Isn't frozen pizza good! Well, when you can't have the real thing maybe - Anyhow, we have this pizza pan - it's kinda like a round aluminum cookie sheet, and it's got all these holes in it; s'pose to make the crust turn out better I guess. This is a photo of it held just above our table so you can see it's shadow and little spots where the light shines through the holes... Kinda interesting spots of light, they're coming from our chandelier over the table...
1/4th sec. f/5.6 iso 200

October 5th - A Bouquet of Smoke

I got playing around with some gelled strobes and a stick of incense tonight. The gels didn't work very well, so I took them off and just shot bare strobes. The smoke was a lot sharper without them. But then I thought it was lacking color so I made some layer masks in Photoshop and messed around with hue and saturation and came up with this. So it's got some levels adjustment to make the blacks stronger, and some unsharp mask. But no cloning or adding smoke from multiple images or anything.
1/250th sec. f/16 iso 400

October 4th - Old Timer

OK, so for all respondents from yesterday's post, we're at about 50/50 with how many guessed it. If you said "handle on the Mac" then you're right - This is a crisp ;-) photo of my old Power Mac G4, and it's handle is what I shot a close up of yesterday.
0.4 sec. f/4.5 iso 200

October 3rd - Something to Hold On To

Do you know what this is? Some of you will probably get it right away. Others, well it might take a while.
1-1/2 sec. f/4.5 iso 200

October 2nd - Bolt

Not a lot of inspiration tonight... it's been a long day. I thought I'd see how ISO 3200 looked so I shot this bolt on the workbench in very low light and with a very narrow depth of field.
1/25th sec. f/4.5 iso 3200

October 1st - Wine

We found a good bottle of wine the other night. It went great with Fondue. I thought a still-life would be a fun photo for today, so I got out the strobes and fired away on several angles and liked this one the best.
1/250th sec. f/22 iso 400