31 Jul 19 Our first evening on the return leg having departed Berkeley was to provide us with several nice sights as we traveled north finally ending up in Botega Bay for the night. All of you Hitchcock fans will recognize that location. A couple hours before calling the driving quits for the evening we were driving through rolling hills of farming country with little bits of fog thrown in every now and then. At one point as we were oscillating up and down along the roadway with farms on both sides, we came to a spot where the mowing had left the field in stripes of two shades of green, bright and dark. Lying parallel to the stripes were bales of hay that appeared to have just been bailed that afternoon. The combination of greens, fog, hay bales, and the sunset were simply irresistible so I pulled off when I could and walked back to get the shot(s). Jan - surprisingly - decided that this creative version did the best job of evoking the setting so I'm going with it. We were fortunate to have such a lovely evening to end an otherwise disappointing day. It was to get better before night set in. I've straighten the original and then converted it using Topaz Impression 2. A Turner Nikon D500; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f /11.
July 4th HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA - Wishing you all a wonderful 4th of July We are entertained by two major fireworks displays and many simple shows every year as I suppose many of you are also. One is in Bremerton, a local town that is home to the Bremerton Naval Shipyard, a major employer and support base for many of our major naval craft. The town puts on a spectacular show the Saturday before the 4th, or the 3rd if the holiday falls on a Saturday, called the Bridge Blast which gets bigger and better each year, but it is much too crowded for me and I stay away. The other show is put on by the town of Poulsbo, a small formerly Scandinavian community which I do attend even though it is equally crowded because I get to use the facilities of a congregational member whose barber shop directly overlooks Dogfish Bay - now renamed Liberty Bay by those who found the name offensive - where the display is produced. Last night the show was a bit unique. About two hours before the official fireworks show began, there were a couple gun shots about three buildings down from where I was set up. I didn't hear them which was odd as they were described as substantially louder than any fireworks and I was clearing hearing the fireworks. Panic set in and folks were screaming and running away from the location, stories were growing, and the cell phone and facebook idiots were having a field day. Here is what happened: a) a man shot himself - twice; b) a man confronted police with a screwdriver so they shot him; c) a man with a screwdriver was running around poking people so they shot him; d) a man was armed and the police repeatedly told him not to draw his weapon and then they shot him; e) a lone gunman was on the loose shooting folks; or f) any of 4,186 other versions on facebook and you can take you pick. The event resulted in 19 emergency vehicles - apparently every law enforcement vehicle in the county - arriving on the scene who did absolutely NOTHING to alleviate crowd panic, no realistic crowd control, and nothing to stop or control the rumor mill. They did however manage to TOTALLY screw up the traffic situation which continued so for another 4 hours! Must have been a slow night and they wanted to party some!!! Somehow it didn't make the newspaper. So that was our first show. It also delayed the start of the second (real fireworks) show which was then cut short with about half of the total show being consumed in the final 2 minutes. But the show was really nice and I had some fun shooting it. The attached image is one Jan selected from the almost 150 shots I took. Not all but most turned out, and I learned a few new things on how to do a better job next time. All-in-all not a bad night. Tonight I'll be visiting with a friend who lives nearby on a spit that offers views of fireworks in two directions. I will be attempting a couple different approaches depending on what takes place so maybe something will come of it to share also. Let's hope. Other than a tiny bit of cropping this is straight from the camera. An Evening of Surprises Nikon D500; 18 - 200; Manual; ISO 200; bulb @ f /11 with multiple bursts recorded on a single frame.
05 Jul 19 The planned shoot for the 4th didn't come off as I got too tired, had a terrified dog, and a bride not feeling all that well. So while I started out to do the shoot, I gave it up when I found myself rapidly fading waiting for dark. The 4th was more like a war zone around our abode and even the critters were noticing it in different ways. One of the resident song birds - can't definitively identify it - apparently decided it had had enough of the particulate matter falling from the sky onto it and decided it was time for a bath. The point at which the water begins flowing out of the rocks in the waterfall and falling into the pond has a small section of rock where the water is less than an inch deep and many of the birds like to bathe on that spot. As I was filming this one doing the bath routine I caught it in the act of shaking the water off including some of the water droplets being expelled. Zoom in to 75 - 100% and have a close look at the bird in action. Its tail was whipping about as it was gyrating back and forth. It's more of a fun shot than anything else but does give a good idea of how they get the water off their bodies. Back to trip photos on Monday. This is a cropped version of what the camera recorded as the material removed was both unneeded and highly distracting. In the Shower Nikon D500; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 320; 1/125 sec @ f / 9.
