- Peace -

Our new kittens Misfit and Mayhem wish you warmth, comfort and love on this special day. (and I do too). Happy Holidays!

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Grille It

The grille of a White Freightliner semi truck that was delivering the goods at the co-op today.

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Fall Foliage on Asphalt

The title says it all. Well, most of it. There's some water beaded up on there too which is kinda cool. I saw this in a parking lot today and thought I'd see how it would look for today's photo. (or is it "this week's photo")?

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LaConner

Busy day running around the mainland takin' care of business. It poured down rain driving between Mt. Vernon and LaConner (wipers on full speed - don't do that too often). Then after my appointment in LaConner, the rain quit and the sky was looking beautiful with the pre-sunset light highlighting the clouds to the west. To get a better view of that, I headed over to the channel and that's where I found this wire sculpture on a gangplank. You can just make out the famous orange LaConner arch bridge through the left side of it. And if you look really closely along the shoreline you can see a Great Blue Heron.

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Sketchbook

Cameras have some pretty cool features these days. I'm looking to upgrade mine, and to try some different models out before I buy, I've found a great place for renting camera gear (see the banner ad at lower right in the sidebar). So I've had a pretty cool new one to play with for the last week. One of the things I've not played around with much until now is in-camera image editing. It can do a lot of different effects. These are 2 of my favorites. (and yeah, you really gotta click on the photos to see the effect).

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The Sauce Boss

I did another entry on ThisIsOurTown.com yesterday and had some trouble picking a favorite. This here was the runner up. To see the winner, take a look at ThisIsOurTown.com and see what you think. And if you wonder why this nice smile didn't win, but the other expression did - well, you need to know Ed.

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Senior Portrait

It's that time of year again - I got to spend some time at the gym getting some fun shots of Collin. This is one of my favorites.

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Ent

Have you ever been walking in the woods and suddenly got that eerie feeling that you were being watched? It can be kind of hard to dismiss, but just try to keep in mind there's nothing there - it's just your imagination running wild and you'll be fine. Easier said than done, I know, but really what else could it be?

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Marc on This is Our Town

It's another day at This is Our Town and today is Marc Franklin. Read more about him here. 

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The Neighborhood

I took a break from working this afternoon and noticed these wild looking clouds and the beautiful light of late afternoon and had to grab a photo...

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Painting of Shannon

Natural light from the window almost makes this photo of Shannon look like a painting, huh?

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Patio Furniture

Here's a view that caterpillar might have had the other day when he blew across the bricks.

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The Hunchback

Several years ago before the kids moved out, we did a big Halloween thing and we picked this guy up at the thrift store to be a part of it all. I ended up holding on to him to use as a photo test dummy to try different lighting styles on, before subjecting a human to them. So he's been around for a while, spending most of his time stuffed away in a cabinet, but he comes out now and then and this here is the result of his most recent outing. 

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Newlyweds

Shawnna Vert and John Thomas were married today out at Rainbow Lake and I had the honor of being their photographer for the big event. The weather was perfect and the setting was gorgeous. Made my job easy that way. Here's their first kiss as husband and wife.

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Already?

Holy cow man, I just barely got used to the warm weather of Summer and suddenly there's all these dead, dry leaves on the ground and the air is chilly in the morning. Is it Fall already? It's kind of nice to slow down a bit and say goodbye to the Summer crowds, but jeez, how did all these leaves hit the ground so fast?

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The Old Seaplane Dock

This little short "dock to nowhere" there in the center of the image, used to be many years ago the seaplane float if I remember right. Now it's just an old pier without a float, and it's boarded up so you can't walk out on it even. Too bad, it would be a nice place to shoot a photo like this. But I guess this location will do in a pinch.

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All Dressed Up...

...with someplace to go. I don't know where they're going, but the truck arrived this afternoon to haul them away. I should have asked the guy, but he seemed busy talking to the crane operator and truck driver and I didn't want to bother him. These elephants have been hanging out just down the road from my house for a couple months now, but it seems they are off to greener pastures. I'll miss them...

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D.I.Y. Photek Softlighter II Flash Bracket

I picked up a couple of Light Mods recently - the Photek Softlighter II in both 36" and 46" sizes. They are basically a bounce-umbrella with a diffuser panel to soften the light and give you more control over spill. The diffuser has a "sock" over a hole in the center that you put your flash through and then it's all good. The only problem is, with a standard umbrella bracket setup, your flash is going to be pointing  anywhere but at the center of this thing. I looked around but didn't find anything I could buy to fix this.
So, I went to the hardware store instead:

Shannon

I picked up a 2nd hand portrait backdrop a few weeks ago and some new lights, so Shannon and I gave them a test run. She dressed up in her blue party dress and we shot so many photos it was hard to choose just one but this was definitely one of the best. BTW - that's a dark blue blanket draped over a stool that she's sitting on, but it kinda looks like part of her dress and that she's standing and kind of crouched over huh?

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Blue Horned Caterpillar

We saw this guy go cruisin' across our patio looking like he wanted to get to that lawn quick before any birds flew over and saw him. Big fella - almost 3 inches long and 1/2 inch around. A quick search online and I'm thinking he's an Eyed Hawk-Moth caterpillar.

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Kayaking on Griffin Bay

Shannon and I took off from the Friday Harbor port docks and went to Turn Island for a snack and then decided to go to Jackson's Beach. That's Lopez Island on the left there (behind Shannon's hat) and Cattle Point on San Juan Island to the right. This was some glass-calm water, which if you read this blog much, you'll know is my favorite. What a great time. Aren't vacations wonderful? Aren't vacations in the San Juans even better?

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Joanie's Deck

We went out to my boss's place in the valley to return a Bar-B-Que and give her a recipe and ended up going out to her garden where she dug up fresh carrots, purple potatoes, huge beets and some garlic and onions. Then she took us over to her flower garden where she clipped some beautiful dahlias

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Fisherman Bay

Here's a view of the dock in Fisherman Bay on Lopez at The Islander where we went for dinner last night. This is were we parked the skiff before walking up the dock for a great meal.

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Cheating Death

Shannon and I took the skiff and razzed over to Lopez Island for dinner at The Islander in Fisherman Bay tonight. This was shot on the way over, looking west at San Juan Island (our home) and the late afternoon sun in our wake. On the way home after sunset we had a gorgeous flat-calm channel reflecting the evening sky. As my dad would say after we got home, "we cheated death once again!".
Good times....

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Algae Pond

I know, I know - I'm massively behind on this "daily" photo thing. OMG what a month it's been. Summer's here and things get a lot busier in this little seaside village. It's about time to rename my blog "An Occasional Photo" again.
But anyways, enough about that. This is a little stagnant pond off one of the driveways on the residential portion of my route. I saw that fallen tree laying there all wet in the green muck and thought it would make a cool photo so here it is after some P/S work.

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The Haircut

So I got my hair cut on Sunday, and maybe a bit shorter then I expected (well OK, a LOT shorter than I expected), and so of course everyone at work was razzing me about it. And I played along, (it really was quite shocking the first time I looked at it too). At one point someone said "I'll bet you won't go back and get your hair cut there again..." and I said, "Well I don't really have a choice" and she said "Why?" and I said

".......it was my wife."

So but here's how it went down - Everything was fine and Shannon said "OK, you're done. Go see how it looks", so I went and looked in the mirror and it looked great but maybe a bit long on the top.
Have you ever seen one of those artist's paintbrushes that kind of fans out.... well nevermind. Anyway, I thought it was a bit long on top so I asked her to take a little more off. That was where I went wrong. You see, I forgot that Shannon does not have a "Medium" setting...

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Caramel Apple Stand

The San Juan County Fair is upon us. This evening I was called upon to join a group of people to judge the Photography exhibit. Wow that's difficult to do. So many very good photos to consider. Anyway, we finally finished around 9:00 or so and I went out to see how the carnival people were doing getting things set up for tomorrow and maybe shoot a few photos for myself. So I got some of rides being assembled, and of people doing last minute adjustments to their fair booths, but this one is my favorite.

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West Side Sun

We went out to Whale Watch Park today with our friends from Switzerland, and WE SAW WHALES! So we felt very good that the whales were there for our friends. Seems like most of the time when we go out there, we've just missed them by 1/2 hour, or we find out later they came by a 1/2 hour after we left. So today was good. This photo was shot after they were gone and we had just finished our picnic lunch. Very warm afternoon with the sun beating down. Good times.

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Before the Sunset

The sky yesterday about 1-1/2 hours before that awesome sunset. I wish I would have been able to go somewhere with a good view to shoot that, but I guess this will have to do - This is looking toward the West down our street while there were rumblings of thunder in the skies.

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Angry Sky

First of all, yeah I know - I need to change the name of this blog back to "An Occasional Photo" or something like that rather than "Photography Every Day".... I've been missing a lot of days lately. It's all my other blog's fault, honest! But anyways, here's one for today - This is the sky right before it opened up and dumped on us for about 15 minutes. (well maybe 30 minutes before...) It's from several exposures all combined into one HDR and I enhanced it a bit with Photoshop and Lightroom. Shot it from my front yard on my lunch break.

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Mmmmmmm mmmmm good!

OMG this was the best burger I've had in a while. I went down to a work buddy's boat at the port docks the other night and he BBQ'd up some totally jammin' burgers. My hat's off to the burger chef. Add a little golden hour sunlight and what a pretty picture.

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Scott Olinger

The best bowling instructor in Friday Harbor. Scott Olinger, proprietor and operator of Paradise Lanes. Another portrait in the This is Our Town series.

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Blues Man

Mr. Soul. Mr. Blues. My buddy Steve-O under blue lights playin' the blues. Happy birthday Steve!

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Cabinet Man

Here's another shot for my "Our Town" project. This is Mike Lazzari of Watershed Cabinets. Read more about him here.

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Twofer

This is my other favorite photo from our outing to west side yesterday. I like the color on this one better (and Shannon's awesome expression on the one I chose yesterday). So many different variables in doing portrait work huh? Sometimes it's hard to choose the best one, so I chose two this time.

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Shannon

Shannon and I went out to the west side tonight to catch the sunset, have a picnic and play around with the camera and some strobes.

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Tail Lights

Something caught my eye about all these cars lined up in the parking lot. Was it the tail lights? Was it the color? Was it the perspective? I'm not sure but it's my photo for today....

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Jenn Payne

Here's another photo I did for This Is Our Town a few weeks ago. This one ultimately didn't get chosen as the one to put on the site, but I like it so I'm posting it here instead. This is Jennifer Payne in her new store Modern & Fabulous (Modern fashions at fabulous prices) here in Friday Harbor.

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P-51D Mustang

We had a Fly-In air show today in Friday Harbor and I was like a kid in a candy store. I shot a whole lot of photos, but this Mustang takes the cake.

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Guest Photo Day

Every once in a while it's fun to have a guest photographer on the blog, and today it's my good friend Ian Byington of San Juan Update fame. It was a busy busy day for me with work and then a Rumor Mill gig, so I didn't get any photos shot. And besides, I'm pretty vain and it's fun to put up pictures of myself from time to time. This is my band The Tease rockin it up - Steve Cutting on bass (with the baseball cap) Thomas Sandstrom on lead guitar (standing on a chair); me on rhythm guitar (with the shorts and a headband) Tim Lance on lead vocals, and lead cord coiler upper (right behind me), and Conrad on drums (but he's out of the frame to the left).

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Loea

Ah yesterday was a good day. Jenn and her mom let me bring my camera gear into their studio and shoot some portraits of them, and let me tell you - they are so laid back and so cool. Just really great to work with. Even when I spent nearly 30 minutes troubleshooting a technical glitch with my laptop/camera software link, they just kept themselves busy with work they needed to catch up on, and then when I got things working, we had some fun getting some "working" photos of them. Good times. Read more about Jenn and Loea at ThisIsOurTown.com.

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It's Coming Together!

My new project is finally coming together, so I'm pretty stoked. This is Jaime Ellsworth, a local artist and you can read more about her at... well, how about at my new project site: ThisIsOurTown.com!

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Driftwood

Pieces of driftwood rotting on the beach, and some Photoshop filters thrown in just for fun...

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Oxymoron

"Have you any Large Small today? Hmmmm OK, well do you have any Huge Tiny? Alright nevermind, I guess I'll just have the Jumbo Shrimp then."

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The Set Up

I shot quite a few photos today and couldn't narrow it down to just one, so here are 599 of them, one right after another. Unless you have decent sounding computer speakers, you might want to plug in some headphones. This is my band setting up for an outdoor gig yesterday at the Port of Friday Harbor. Oh and another thing - Either click the YouTube link or the Full Screen button  on the bottom of the image above so you can see it larger than that puny little preview window.

Lightning

Wow two nights in a row we've had a massive lightning storm. That is unheard of around here. Even one night is rare. It blew our power out so I'm posting this from my iPhone. But I shot it with my Nikon. >>Edit - Saturday morning and I'm re-posting a larger version of the photo.<<

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Greek Salad

Mmmmm mmmmm good! Shannon made a greek salad today and it rocks! Tomatoes, yellow peppers, red peppers, sweet onions, cucumbers, feta cheese and an olive oil/garlic dressing. Wow!

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The Gadgeteer

My big brother (he's really not all that huge or anything, but he's bigger than me so...), anyway, this is Eric rigging up a camera mount for some on-location video shooting for the movie production we're working on. Just a few more bits to film sometime in the next month or so and we'll be able to share the movie with you. For now, it's just behind the scenes and "the making of" stuff....

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Jonesing

I've been Jonesing to get out on the water this summer; what with such a busy band and work schedule, it's been pretty difficult finding time, but it finally happened, and we couldn't have asked for better weather. Well - I spose we could have, but we didn't... This is late afternoon sun on a cloud, reflecting off the water at the North cove on Jones Island.

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