Friday, August 30, 2013

Whidbey Island

This purpose of this particular blog entry is twofold: 

1. to prove that I do occasionally get out of the state of Tennessee, and
2. to engage in a little self indulgence as I display some vacation photos.  And there may be a lesson or two about photography along the way.

First of all, photography took a definite back seat to visiting family and friends.  But when I am alone, my camera IS my friend, and I did get to do a bit of sightseeing at our rented vacation home on the Puget Sound beach.

 
I wanted the clouds to show up well, so I pointed my camera towards them to get the exposure.  The foreground was too dark, so I lightened it using a mask in Photo Director.
 
Morning and evening are better times to take photos than mid-day.

As a frequent visitor to the Gulf Coast, I know a jellyfish when I see one!
 
 
Above Roxie is posing for the camera!  Below are my token bird photos from the trip, including a couple of flying eagle photos!  I learned how to gauge when the eagles would come on the beach.  The seagulls would all warn each other with squawking, and would fly away.  Then the eagle would come soaring and land on the beach.  Learning this was helpful back in West Seattle, where we stayed at a friend's apartment when she was out of town.  It was on a cliff overlooking the sound near Lincoln Park (we had to negotiate about four flights of stairs down from the street to get to the apartment).  I heard that same squawking there, and I rushed to the kitchen window and saw one eagle soaring with a bunch of seagulls around.  I later told the friend about this experience, and she said she never had seen an eagle from the apartment.  Well, she obviously wasn't trained to the squawking noise.



Now, if you have made it this far into my vacation photos, you get to see another one of those minor tourist attractions that I love so much.  The photos below are all taken at Greenbank Farm.  There were some horses and riders there practicing for the upcoming Loganberry Festival.  The horse routine, which I saw several times, was done to the music "It's raining men."  Yes I did get a video of part of this but I may have accidentally erased it.  If I find it I will definitely upload it and post it here.  In the meantime here is the photo.  I was trying to get the connection between the song and the Renaissance costumes............By the way a loganberry is a cross between a blackberry and a raspberry.  Be sure to get a loganberry pie if you go to Greenbank Farm.  My mouth is literally watering just writing about it.

I love to take photos in rising fog!  Plenty of this at Greenbank Farm.