28 Jan 14. The second trip up to Fir Island provided us with a day of mostly sunshine after the morning fog dissipated around 1100. As the fog was making its final stand, the mountains began to really show off their stuff, and Mt Baker in particular put on a wonderful show all day long. At one point, as the sun was making its final assault on the fog, we experienced a couple dramatic shows of sunlight falling on the farmlands as lines of light, much as if the ground had been laid out like a gridiron with the sunlight pretending the be the chalk lines, albeit a bit wide. As lovely as it was in color, I liked the composition even better in B&W, so that's what I'm sharing today. About 15 minutes after this shot was taken the fog was fully dispatched and we were on our own to come up with whatever creativity we could muster. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f / 9.
29 Jan 14. We made a short trip over to Pt Townsend Sunday afternoon, one of Jan's favorite places to visit, especially for shopping. It is an old location, having first been visited by George Vancouver in 1792 and officially becoming a settlement in 1851. The city has endeavored to maintain a mid 1800s seaport "look" and some of the old architecture dating back to the days of sail can more than make the trip worthwhile. But I'm not a very good photographer of things architectural, so while the old building are wonderful to view, they don't serve as much of a photographic target for me. However, on this past trip I "discovered" the local marina and shipyard. Now it has always been there, and we drive past it twice each time we visit, but on this particular trip we drove into the property and I asked if it would be O.K. to take photographs of the boats and was told yes. That was all I needed to know and it made the visit for me most profitable photographically. I shot a lot of reflections of the boats, but the best part was one Great Blue Heron who obligingly posed for me for several minutes. Actually he/she didn't really pose as much as he/she allowed me to quietly photograph the process of searching for supper. I got quite a few shots and all of them turned out nice. One of them in particular, which I'm sharing today, allowed for the feet of the heron to be seen under water. I've adjusted the image just a little in the shadow under the bird to make the underwater view a bit more visible, but other than that, this image is pretty much how it was captured. The water was quite still as it is the marina behind a large break water. Thus the motion you do see, the ripples around the bird, is caused by the bird walking. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/160 sec @ f / 5.6.
30 Jan 14. Based on the number of responses I got to Wednesday's image I'm going to have a hard time consistently meeting that bar, if ever again. For today's Theatrical Thursday submission I've picked a piece of driftwood that sits on our local beach, and I'm guessing it will be there for some time to come. As it was in the original capture it was interesting enough, but the conversion to a water color format, perhaps even better described as a paint-by-number format, resulted in a much more interesting image to me. When I was taking the picture I imagined the old log as an apartment house for many small critters. I didn't see anything living there save for some small insects, but somehow it struck me as being available for much more. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/80 sec @ f / 8.
