Well dear viewers, it will be a little while before I get more images up. You see I recently moved up to the Seattle area from Central Oregon. The move went well, but it took 3 days for us to get moved up and (mostly) settled in. During the trip, we spent our first night at my parents house near Portland. That night I brought in my camera equipment into their house because I didn't want to leave it in the moving van overnight. Well, in the rush to get going the next morning I left my equipment at their house. No big deal right? I'll just get it in the next few weeks if I happen to go down there, or they come up to visit. Well, a guy I work with up here had to go back to Portland to pick up some equipment and I asked him if he would pick up my camera bag. Being the nice guy that he is he agreed to it and went ahead and picked up my stuff. Well, while he was in Portland he stopped to eat at Gustav's restaurant. Apparently somebody broke into his truck and stole not only all of his things but all of my camera equipment as well. So here I am now, trying to make a list of all the stuff I had in the bag so I can turn that list into insurance. I feel like I just got punched in the gut and although I'm sure that insurance will take care of this, I feel absolutely awful. Here's the rundown of what the thief (or thieves) got.
1 Canon Eos 20D camera with 18-55mm lens (complete kit): $1500.00
1 Canon EF 28-70mm f2.8 L lens: $850.00
1 Quantary 70-300mm Zoom: $169.95
1 Quantary 28-200mm Zoom: $250.00
1 Sekonic L-358 Exposure Meter: $260.00
1 Canon Speedlite 420 EX Flash: $229.95
1 Canon 550 EX II Flash: $160.00
1 Canon TC-80n3 Programmable Remote Controller: $140.00
1 Sto-Fen Omni Bounce Diffuser: $10.00
1 Tamrac 5248 Adventure 8 Photo Back Pack: $70.00
1 Scandisk Ultra II 2.0 GB Compact Flash card: $20.00
1 Scandisk Ultra II 1.0 GB Compact Flash card: I paid $105.00 for this in '05. Probably worth $10 now.
1 Best Buy 4 year warranty on camera (still in effect): $150.00
1 BP-CN511 Battery (an extra one in additon to the one that came with the kit): $35.99
1 62mm UV filter: $15.99
1 70mm Hoya 77mm filter: $52.00
1 55mm uv filter: $15.00
1 70mm Hoya Circular Polarizer: $70.00
1 55mm Circular Polarizer: $50.00
1 Lexar 512mb 16x CompactFlash Card: $25.00
Grand Total? $4178.43. I'm actually surprised at that number, but I have been adding a little bit every year to my camera bag, gradually trying to increase my kit. Now its all gone. Hopefully insurance will cover my loss completely, but we'll see. I'll keep you posted. More news to come.
To the person or persons that stole my equipment: What goes around comes around. A day will come when you lose something that means a lot to you. Karma is going to bite you in the ass.
I caught this image today as I was waiting to board the Ferry from Kingston to Edmonds. I saw this Boeing 777 dispersing fuel over Puget Sound. Knowing this was an unusual situation, I grabbed my camera and snapped off some shots. The reason the airplane had to dump its fuel was because it was preparing to make an emergency landing at Seatac due to one of its engines shutting down. To make the landing safer, the aircraft dumped its fuel to decrease the fire danger and reduce its own weight. Here is a link to the full story. Here is the Seattle P.I. story.
Walking along the Snohomish River I found a piece of driftwood with these stones piled inside it. I liked the differing textures and and the way it looked, so I captured it. My only wish is that I had used a tighter aperture as the image falls out of focus rather quickly in the foreground and background.
Heres an old shot from my files that dates way back to 2005. This was taken during the Tigard Festival of Balloons. One big mistake I made was that I took all my photos using only the .jpg setting in my camera. A HUGE mistake. I should have used RAW or RAW + JPG when taking my images that day. The reason for that is because RAW contains much, much more information about an image you capture, its as close to the digital equivalent of a negative as you can get. Fortunately, technology has caught up with my mistakes of the past and allowed me to create this image. Using specially created software that produces HDR images, I was able to align 3 different images that were exposure bracketed, then I was able to blend them together.
Heres a shot of an abandoned boat I came across while walking around Spencer Island. Its a pretty interesting scene, but I really messed up by not using a wide open aperture to separate the boat from its background. The original is at the top and you can see how its difficult to differentiate parts of the boat and its mast from the busy background. I should have tried something more similar to what you see in the bottom image which, through the magic of Photo Editing, has the background a bit more blurred out. At least I can consider this a lesson learned in the application of depth of field to an image.
Taken at Kerry Park in Seattle. Taken with a Canon EOS 50D mounted on a tripod with a Canon 70-200mm F4 L. Exposure was 30 seconds, aperature was set to f32. Iso 100.
Sorry I haven't been posting much. Heres a shot that I took during todays unexpected snow storm.
My son has this little lucite cube that has two different liquid mixtures in it. One liquid is heavier than the other and is colored as well. The colored liquid falls down these little ramps inside the cube and also spins a wheel encased within it as well. I finally realized that a close up macro shot would be pretty cool with this toy and here is the result! Enjoy.
