Washington State - Lavender Farm, Wagon #1

Really like the way this wagon was nestled in there among the lavender.  The caution sign stood out, however, being originally pure white, so I applied a 50% transparent clone stamp to diminish the distraction.

So many times I'll remember a similar shot taken earlier, sometimes years before.  Such was the case here and during post-capture I took the trouble to find the pic below from October of 2007 while at my brother's visiting:

This guy was captured using the trusty 3MP Fuji Finepix 3800, my first digital camera.  What a magical sensor it had...

Washington State - Lavender Farm, Lavender Rows

San Juan Island isn't that big, so one day we decided to drive around the circumference.  About halfway around we diverted after seeing a sign for this lavender farm.  Great, let's go see all the pretty flowers...

Turns out it was a little more than just a place to see flowers.  A little tourist-trappey but nice, they had a place that sold lavender ice cream, which wasn't bad.  Didn't quite get it since I didn't know what lavender tastes like, but suppose it had a lavender taste to it.  They also, naturally, had a gift shop with everything lavender (soap, etc.).  Everyone there was nice.

Broader picture of same frame below:

Washington State - AirB&B on San Juan Island - Silhouetted Trees with Water Bookmark

At times I'll see something and immediately recognize the potential for a bookmark.  Why it continues I don't know, because it seems no one reads hard-copy any more.  But they're fun to create and at times make for some interesting visuals, as in this case (in my opinion).

This is the last post from the cabin area...next we'll go to a LAVENDER FARM.

Washington State - AirB&B on San Juan Island - Roadside Deer

This being a semi-wilderness area, these guys were all over the place, and mostly unafraid of people or traffic.  We spied him when on a walk one day while the kids were doing their own thing in Friday Harbor.  We also noticed a trailhead at a gap in the fence, but once inside discovered it was private so we high-tailed it out of there...

Washington State - AirB&B on San Juan Island - Backlit Flower

...something that was next to the pathway from the cabin to the rocky shore.  Didn't have my camera when I first saw it, but hurried back armed with the Bigger Cahoona to catch this backlit gem.  Because of the way the subjects were composed, was able to make a 5x7 notecard as well as a bookmark with room at the top for lettering:

Washington State - AirB&B on San Juan Island - Dandelion with Fly

Would have been better without the stick on the left, but couldn't resist capturing this guy, even though it's a fly.  (If you like flies, check out this post.  If you don't like flies, check out this one.)  He was pretty stationary, so had no trouble taking time to zoom in and compose a shot.  Then I thought Why not, so here's a bookmark:

Washington State - AirB&B on San Juan Island - Inter-tidal Seaweed as Camouflage

Another seaweed-type plant affixed to the shoreline rocks were these guys.  We had to watch our step, however, because often there was more than what met the eye:

Washington State - AirB&B on San Juan Island - Inter-tidal Zone

...and while we're in daylight, this outcropping was a subject of interest in that most of it disappears when the tide comes in.  There is up to an 8-foot difference in water level...what we have here is obviously at low tide; one can see only the very top of the rock on the right at high tide.  The seaweed-looking stuff on the rocks to the left is obviously adapted to this inter-tidal zone, and features bladders of air that help them extend up into the water to maximize surface area exposed to nutrients, etc. that are in the water:

 

Washington State - AirB&B on San Juan Island - Warm Light Against Branches

We were incredibly blessed with nice, clear weather our entire time in Washington, and beating the heat was better than slogging through cold rain would have been.  This allowed for some good pics during the "golden hour" at and just after sunrise...

Washington State - AirB&B on San Juan Island - Final Sunrise Pic (branch pattern silhouette)

 I really took a liking to this guy, going back to it in daylight afterwards:

Washington State - AirB&B on San Juan Island - Sunrise #2

At the end of the path I got a clear overwater view of this spectacular sunrise.  Naturally I began snapping away, and ended up with a few keepers, including these.  The shot below reminded me - a little - of this photo taken on the shores of Lake Superior almost a year ago:

There were so many sunrise pics captured over a period of three mornings in Two Harbors, where our cabin was in Minnesota, that I only had the time (er, patience perhaps?) to process and post from the first morning.  After seeing the shot above, decided to go back and glean a few from the third morning because of the similarities, and chose to retroactively post this one:

Washington State - AirB&B on San Juan Island - Sunrise #1

 

By the time we drove to our rented cabin it was dark, but the AirB&B hosts were awesome and made it easy to check in and get settled.  As is usually the case when on vacation, the next morning I was up before everyone else and ventured out for some sunrise pics.  This one caught my eye as I made my way down a pathway that leads to the water.  Seeing this was confirmation that we made the right choice on a place to stay for this portion of the trip.

Another awesome aspect of this trip was that we were there as a complete family.  Both our son and daughter - now grown, out of the house and on their own - flew into Seattle with their significant others to meet us for this vacation.  Can't express how much of a blessing it is to still travel together and go on vacation as a family!

_______________

Speaking of family-type stuff, today's my birthday!  Never cared too much about celebrating it, though...one of the things I liked about Chenjean during our courtship is that in her culture they don't much pay attention to birthdays until reaching age 60.  Suited me just fine.  However, when the kids got old enough to be cognizant of birthdays and the need to celebrate, we began to celebrate our birthdays for the kids' sake.  And through the years, as they grew older, I actually began to enjoy being singled out for celebration, as both kids think it through and work hard to make it special for the both of us (Chenjean's birthday is very close to mine, on Sept 5th).

So HAPPY BIRTHDAY to me!!  Thanks, kids, for what you do for us.

Washington State - Ferry Ride to San Juan Islands - Sunset / Ron Howard's Book

I'd hauled the Bigger Cahoona out for the first time on the ferry ride from Anacortes to San Juan Island, but had not yet felt the desire to take any pictures.  That is, until a good one got away!  We were approaching a table in the sitting area when I noticed a beautiful, multicolored sunset behind a small peninsula with trees silhouetted down to the water.  The reds, oranges, blues and purples provided a brilliant reflection on the waters of Thatcher Pass.  I thought My, how pretty.  But then, after sitting down I thought Holy crap! I have a camera here and could have captured it!  It was a little aggravating, but woke me up to be on the lookout and ready to actually use the Bigger Cahoona.

So I stayed tuned and saw this opportunity a little further down the way.  It was a tad darker by then...a perfect time to capture one of my go-to favorite subjects, a silhouette.  Thus we have something here that ended up being my first real keeper of the trip.  Still thinking bookmarks, so made one of same:

Finished a book yesterday on the Kindle, The Boys by Ron and Clint Howard.  Highly recommended, and not just because it's a fascinating read by the guy that played Opie on Andy Griffith, but also because it's an excellent exposition on his development into solid leadership.  One of the best books I've read in many moons...

Washington State - Ferry Ride to San Juan Islands - Seaside Houses

Well, it's been since March since I've posted - simply ran dry on travel and, to an extent, creativity.  The Writers Block of the photography world, so to speak.  So here we are...

Getting back into it reminded me of something about creativity.  As in any of the gifts we are given, such as they may be, sustaining creativity requires exercise.  And when one doesn't exercise, what happens?  Yes, ATROPHY.  One doesn't realize until the later stages that when you're not growing you're going the other way, and you have to start from wherever that may be to regain what was diminished or lost.  Sometimes this means reviewing and relearning skills that once seemed easy, but that were acquired perhaps over a substantial period of time.  This is where I found myself when we traveled recently to Washington State.  My wife expressed an interest in going to the San Juan Islands and there was a wedding to attend in Seattle, so we found our opportunity.  I dusted off the Bigger Cahoona and we re-entered our exercise routine on trips with the family.

I was actually a little nervous.  Do I still have the eye to quickly compose a shot?  Will I have command and control of the buttons and dials on the camera enough to take technically good photographs?  And, more fundamentally, will I even see the beauty and interest around us enough to even want to capture and share with the world?  All of these questions hummed in the back of my mind as we departed on our journey.

As it turns out, it did take a while to re-stir the creative juices and get myself in a place where lifting the camera to snap pictures became a reflex rather than a chore.  I had atrophied some.  Once that was awakened, I found that I'd lost my bearings on exposure compensation, so resorted to a 5-shot bracket instead of the usual 3.  This helped.  Happily, after a few days I found myself seeing pictures to be taken just about every time I turned my head.  I was in the saddle again.

Which brings us to the next step.  I'd forgotten how much fun it is to work with the pics in Photoshop after returning home, and thoroughly enjoyed the post-capture work necessary to turn an average into perhaps a better-than-average picture.  And now enough of them are done to begin posting (and writing) again.

The pic above was taken from the ferry ride to San Juan Island from Anacortes, WA.  It was dusk and the light was fading fast, but I did manage to get a couple of keepers, including this one.