Northwest Art and Air Festival

We checked out the hot air balloon launches on Friday and Saturday. Last year, we could only make it for the Friday lift off and they didn't launch due to wind conditions. This year, Saturday's wind was pretty mild and the balloons had some great hang time over the field. I was able to take some shots as they lifted off in a tight grouping since the wind wasn't whisking them away.

Haystack Rock

I took several shots of Haystack Rock, made somewhat famous in 1985's "The Goonies" and other movies. The sky was mostly clear at sunset, which wasn't lending much "drama" to the scene. But, I did get some nice angles of the rocks with some reflections in the water, or in this shot, the swath of smaller rocks and pools. I'll have some other shots of the rocks up on Flickr as well.

Coast Guard Practice

On the scenic train ride back to Rockaway Beach from Giribaldi, we saw the Coast Guard operating in the bay. It appeared that they were practicing helicopter ocean rescues. I kept shooting as the train went on Northward. I was using my telephoto lens from the shaky train. I had to keep the shutter speed pretty high to avoid blurring from camera shake, hence the nearly frozen rotor blades. Here is my favorite shot. It's from a ways out and I did get some much closer shots that I'll share on Flickr. I like this one with the rocks in the foreground on the left.

Steam Train

We just got back from a few days in Rockaway Beach, Oregon. I took a ton of photos, of course. I've started editing them and I'll try to post a few a week. Here's the first!

We started our vacation with a scenic steam train ride from Rockaway Beach down the coast to Garibaldi and back. The trip was 30 minutes both ways with a 30 minute stop in Garibaldi. Before we departed, I took some shots of the engine as it let off some steam while people boarded. There was still some fog rolling in off the ocean and it was about 1pm, so the sun was more or less directly overhead. Generally, that's not the best time for taking pictures, but this, and some of the others from the ride turned out well.

4th of July Fireworks

I haven't posted in a while. I've been pretty busy with projects and life in general. I'd like to find time to post more and get out and shoot more as well. I have some professional projects lined up as well as a couple of personal trips that should give me some opportunities for nice photos to share. For now, I did take some pictures of the fireworks display in Albany, Oregon on the 4th. I found a nice place on the bridge where I could setup my tripod and capture the fireworks as well as the reflection in the river and one of the platforms that extends out over the river where people like to view the show from. Here is one of my favorite shots. It was taken with a very long exposure to capture several different individual volleys. I took several shots with pretty much the same composition but I really like the way the various fireworks came out in this shot without crowding each other too much, which happened on some of my attempts. I like the way the platform came out too with the light from the street lamp and people remained still enough that it's not too blurry.