'Tis The Season

The air is crisp turning my nose a bright red. The night is coming quicker and the days are becoming shorter. The mood in the city is cheerful, but wary. Lights decorate apartment windows and glimpses of decorated Christmas trees peak out from vertical blinds. This is my first holiday season back in Seattle and I'm enjoying every second of it.

I visited Seattle last year for Christmas and New Years but I was still connected to LA so everything here felt like an anomaly. I spent 25 years living in Seattle, but 5 years in LA took all those experiences out of my memory banks and replaced them with palm trees and 75 degree holiday seasons. I'm appreciating the newness of the holiday's here and I'm reveling in all that the season is bringing to my life.

cords

I've been wanting to check out the light display at the Bellevue Botanical Gardens and Friday night Panda accompanied me to the holiday light extravaganza. It's exceptionally hard to capture really artistic light photos without them looking too cliche, and because of this we ended up playing around more than actually shooting. I enjoyed it though, it was nice to see him having fun with photography; draping his $2000 camera around his hands like he was holding a $100 point and shoot. 

zoom burst too

It was cold and all ideas I had about shots went out the window. Instead I spent quite sometime with the zoom burst, on almost all light displays we went by, but in the end I do like this one the best. I had made a mention jokingly a few days ago that I want a Nikon and so this weekend was an exploration on the differences between Canon and Nikon. I was able to shoot quite a bit with the D300, and after learning a few more things about the parameters of my camera we decided to head off to Best Buy and really check out the differences.

close to the edge

After quite a few lessons in photography this weekend we headed over to the Port of Seattle and the park next to it. With a different perspective now about what I really want to shoot opposed to just pointing at something pretty and hoping it comes out, I found myself taking hardly any pictures at all. I think this might become a theme the more I learn, and it's not a bad thing. Quality over quantity, plus it might make me pay more attention.

Something about me I've noticed is that I end up knowing a little bit about a broad number of subjects, but I'm not an expert on anything. I can have a conversation with just about anyone about anything, but it's surface. Get too deep and sometimes I flounder. The older I get the more I'm able to hone in on the subjects that really interest me and as a result I become more quiet with people unless discussing a subject that really interests me. I like it because it helps me to bring quality people into my life, people who will make a difference and impact on me instead of bring me down.

so yeah...photography fun.

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