Street / Seattle

Although my first big-city living experience was Boston, Seattle is nearest to family and where I now call home. The natural beauty of the area is so diverse, and the city itself is unique among its counterparts and beckons to be photographed. It may not be the biggest metropolis, have the most amazing this-or-that, but I think Seattle ranks right up there with the best of them.

If you’re wondering, my other favorite cities include Vancouver (BC), Tokyo and Kyoto in Japan, and the aforementioned Boston.

Seafair Torchlight Run

I’m missing out on the Seafair Torchlight Parade (apparently with Apolo Anton Ohno serving as the Grand Marshall!), but I did catch the Torchlight Run as it passed along the Alaskan Way Viaduct. Here are a few shots from that event, complete with Pacific Northwest icon, Mt. Rainier, in the background.

For those wondering about Seafair, it’s a citywide collection of events and festivals that also includes hydroplane races, a marathon AND a triathlon, a visit from the Blue Angels, and also some silliness with both pirates and clowns. If that’s not something for everyone, I don’t know what is!

Fred Couples and the US Senior Open

Learning to golf growing up, Fred Couples was the player I watched the most. Seattle’s native son, he electrified us all by winning the 1992 Masters, and I remember clipping articles about him to take to summer golf lessons where I tried (and failed) to emulate his velvety-smooth swing.

This week I had the opportunity to get to Sahalee Country Club in Sammamish, WA, not to golf, but to watch the world’s greatest golfers aged 50 and over compete in the U.S. Senior Open. No cameras are allowed on the tournament days of Thursday through Sunday, but during practice rounds they are, so of course I had to go snap some photos of my favorite player.

Freddie just joined the senior tour this year after turning 50, and like a lot of “new” seniors with the advantage of relative youthfulness, won three early-season tournaments. He’s the betting favorite this week on home soil, and an even-par first round has him tied for ninth with another fan favorite, Tom Watson.

[UPDATE: Couples and Watson posted their second consecutive even-par rounds to sit three shots back of the leader Bernhard Langer, who won the Senior British Open just last week in Scotland. Shaping up to be an exciting weekend...]

[UPDATE II: A smoking round of 5-under, low round of the tourney, has Couples tied with Langer at the top of the leaderboard, five strokes ahead of anyone else. The champ should come from this pairing tomorrow!]

[UPDATE III: Alas! A triple-bogey on the second hole made for a mostly unsuspenseful final round, and the two-shot deficit coming to the 18th hole was too much for Fred Couples to overcome. Congrats to Bernhard Langer for the immense feat of winning two majors in the span of two weeks (and in two such disparate time zones!). My boy Freddie will have many more chances down the road.]

Fourth of July Fireworks

Seattle puts on a pretty good July Fourth fireworks show over Lake Union. Nailing down a choice location for viewing the show comes down to a few options: 1) Trundle on down midday to Gasworks Park or similar locales, claim a grassy spot, and wait 10 hours with copious amounts of beer and picnic items; 2) Happen to have a Capitol Hill or Queen Anne apartment or condo with a viewing deck pointed in the right direction; or 3) Find friends with #2 and at the appropriate hour, fight all the other people for a precious parking spot in those glutted neighborhoods. I suppose there is 4) Watch on local television, but that’s no fun.

For me this year, I bypassed my own slightly-too-distant roof deck for #3, a party on Capitol Hill, which came with a contest for the most creative and patriotic mixed drink, and a vibration-prone deck for viewing the fireworks and taking some photos. Here’s what I got.

LONG SHOT: The Daytime Shots

After the busy weekend and my scurrying to meet the deadline to submit shots to PCNW for consideration for the LONG SHOT exhibition on June 4, I can finally post the remainder of my shots. I’m glad people are still interested in seeing what else I’ve got. Hopefully not because they were underwhelmed by what’s been posted so far….

As mentioned before, a little bit of fatigue had set in after we’d made it through the nighttime hours. Our team of five dwindled to just two of us who decided to stick it out (I had sponsors COUNTING on me!). Creativity lagged, and other than a few brief spurts of activity, I was content to sit for stretches and let the world come to me. At one point, that included a homeless Vietnam veteran who nearly epitomized the “aggressive panhandling” controversy that wracked Seattle a few weeks ago. But we shook him off (without really documenting him fully, unfortunate in retrospect), and the day dragged on.

The homestretch included an afterparty in Ballard where I snapped a pic of a “lucha libre fotografo” before extracting myself a shade before 6pm and heading home. Too tired to make it to any of the other events I’d tentatively scheduled for that evening, my day was over.

P.S. I should perhaps say something about the group shots…. Before our team broke for the day, we wanted to do some group shots, and there were a couple walls we had in mind to shoot in front of. We all lined up our cameras, set the timers, and then on “GO!” we ran to the wall for our pose! The idea was to see what we all would get shooting at close to the same moment from different angles. The one where I’m looking to the left was my playful admonition to our fifth photographer for not getting into the frame on time, which turned out pretty funny in my camera later.

LONG SHOT: The Nighttime Shots

I’ve heard from a number of people that it perhaps didn’t make a lot of sense to start the 24-hour photo-thon at 6pm Friday, shoot through the night, and then have all of Saturday stretched out before us like a desert of sleep-deprivation. I did try to take a small nap Friday afternoon, and at least we weren’t rained on, but I will admit that my creativity during the daylight hours on Saturday probably suffered some. On the other hand, since I was hyper-awake and energized for the event when it did start, I think I was forced to come up with some solutions to night shooting while my mind could still handle it, so I’m thankful for that!

So these are the nighttime shots. Areas of Seattle we hit included Georgetown, Capitol Hill, and Queen Anne, the latter of which included the Seattle Center shots I posted earlier. Let me just say that I can’t remember using my tripod so much in my whole life! However, it is a necessity for long exposures, no matter what sort of beefcake lens you’ve got, unless you’re aiming for some other look. The other trick was (duh!) using flash, but typically I was running around and popping it manually while my camera sat with its shutter open on the tripod. Some people call this “light painting”, using your flash to bring more light to areas of a scene you want to highlight. I wasn’t nearly so methodical, but it’s a technique I’ll try to use with more confidence in the future.

P.S. The photos with the colored wall are taken at Counterbalance Park at the corner of Queen Anne Ave. and Roy St. I don’t really show it, but it’s two long stretches of wall lit with colored lights that can shift hues. Lots of fun for posing people against it and getting weird effects.