Colleen Easley lives in Olympia, WA with her husband Dale and 2 cats. Photography has been her hobby for 40 years. Currently she is working on a 365 project which requires that she take at least one photo every day and publish it to her blog. You may follow her on Twitter and/or Facebook by clicking the links below. To see all the photos of her 2010 project, click the link below under LINKS.
During a recent visit to my cousin who lives in Victoria, British Columbia I had the opportunity to visit Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Victoria. The church is open to the public as long as they are not having a service and they do allow photography.
I set up my tripod and used my wide angle lens to take a series of photos without the use flash. I set the aperture at f/16 and took three photos of each scene at -2, 0, and +2 exposure values. When I got home I used Photomatix to blend each set of three images into one HDR (High Dynamic Range) photo.
Here are the results. These were taken on a very sunny day and the light streaming in from one side of the church definitely affected the outcome even with the HDR processing. My guess would be that a cloudy day might produce better results.
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Today I went with my husband, Dale and grandson, Zach on an outing with the Olympia Camera Club to the Kubota Gardens in Seattle, Wa. Eleven of us carpooled from Lacey and spent the whole morning exploring the 23 acre Japanese garden that is situated right in the city near Martin Luther King Way. It was a little early in the season, so not everything was blooming yet, but there were plenty of plants that had bloomed and of course, lots of evergreens. We had a great time and got some great shots.
The sky was a bit overcast, but there was also plenty of sunshine and it was quite warm. Since our last outing with the club was in pouring rain, we were grateful for the nice weather. After a picnic lunch we headed to the SeaTac Botanical Garden. Again, it was a little early for most plants, but there were enough flowers in bloom to keep us shooting another hour or so.
Here is a sampling of the look and feel of the Kubota Garden. In my next post I will post some of the close-up flower shots I got at both gardens.
Taking a photo everyday has sometimes been a challenge but since January 1 I’ve managed 80 days without missing a shot. The harder part of the challenge is finding time to write on this blog about each photo. Recently I found a web site where I can post my daily shots and write a short description, so from this point on, you can find my daily photos at www.365project.org/easycall.
I’ll continue to post to this blog from time to time when I have special photos and or stories to share. I hope you’ll continue to follow my posts at 365project.org – you can actually subscribe to my RSS feed there and I’ll try to Tweet them and send them to Facebook as well.
Today we saw the last musher cross under the burled arch in Nome to bring the 38th Iditarod Sled Dog Race to a close. Celeste Davis finished last and won the Red Lantern Award. This award carries over from the old days when mushers carried mail and supplies along the Iditarod trail from roadhouse to roadhouse. Any time a roadhouse manager knew a musher was headed in their direction, it was customary to leave a lantern burning in the window to help guide the musher in on dark, stormy nights. Today a lantern burns at the finish line in Nome throughout the race, and is not extinguished until the last musher arrives. This year we saw the fastest Red Lantern time on record. Usually we don’t have our last mushers in until Monday and sometimes even Tuesday, so having the race over by Saturday night was amazing.
During the day today I set up my tripod on the 2nd floor to attempt a photo of a stuffed musk ox that is encased in Plexiglas. I knew it would be a hard photo to make due to the terrible reflections from the glass. I ended up using a remote flash which I placed on the top of the case shooting down on the musk ox’s head. I used my wide angle lens and put it right up to the Plexiglas. It isn’t perfect; I still got reflextions, but of all the shots I got, this one is the best.
The Iditarod is really winding down now. Only a few mushers remain on the trail which makes for very little work for the race stats room. I had the chance to get out this afternoon for a sort walk around the south side of Lake Hood with my friend, Ann Dimond. We stopped just outside the hotel to watch as more dropped dogs were being unloaded from the dog truck after being flown in from the trail and then we continued on up the lake.
We stopped to watch a couple hard at work trying to dig their ski plane out of the ice. It seemed pretty obvious that they hadn’t used the plane very much recently and the skis were frozen solid into the ice. I’m not sure if they were wanting to go somewhere or if they just wanted to get the plane freed so they could move it off the lake before the lake ice breaks up.
As we got to our turn-around point I noticed this great view of our hotel. The Chugach Mountains are in the background and the foreground is the ice and snow covered Lake Hood.
Although it was a short walk, it was very invigorating. It felt so good to be out in the sunshine with temperatures over freezing. I think spring is definitely on the near horizon for Anchorage.
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Colleen Easley lives in Olympia, WA with her husband Dale and 2 cats. Photography has been her hobby for 40 years. Currently she is working on a 365 project which requires that she take at least one photo every day and publish it to her blog. You may follow her on Twitter and/or Facebook by clicking the links below. To see all the photos of her 2010 project, click the link below under LINKS.
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