Portland's Christmas Ship Parade

The Christmas Ship Parade is a long-standing holiday tradition in Portland, with two fleets of ships that ply the Willamette and Columbia rivers. Recently I took a walk down to the Willamette to catch the fleet as they passed under the Steel Bridge.







These ships were tricky to shoot properly. The zoom lens I own is not really appropriate for low-light conditions, with a maximum aperture of f/3.5 and at these moderate zoom levels it was usually around f/4.8. Add into that the ships were moving at a decent clip and it took a lot of patience and some luck to get reasonably clear shots.







I hope you've enjoyed these, thanks for taking the time to view them. As usual you can see more images from this shoot, and others, on my flickr page, http://flickr.com/pdxsean.

Early December Catch-Up

It's been a pretty good week for photography for me. I've gotten out a few times, made an effort to find some new industrial macro shots, and the clouds have cooperated for waterfront sunset shots. I hope you enjoy these best-of shots from the last week or so.












I hope you've enjoyed, and as usual there are more photos from these shoots available on my flickr page, http://flickr.com/pdxsean. This should be a good month for me and the camera, not only is winter one of my favorite times to shoot, I tend to look to bump up the annual shot count as the year comes to a close. Thanks for looking!

Riverfront Sunset, Downtown Rain, and Park Macros

It's been pretty cold here in Portland the last couple of weeks, and I've been pretty lazy about getting out and taking photos. We had a tease with some snowy weather in our forecast, but sadly it never materialized. As it is, I've managed to get out a couple of times to take some pictures when the conditions demanded it.





When I find myself stuck inside too long because the weather doesn't inspire me to get out, I'll occasionally take matters into my own hands and head out with my spray bottle and macro lens and take some creative shots. This was the case yesterday when I took a walk up to Washington Park and took some photos as I walked the peaceful grounds.





With any luck, I'll get out and take some great shots this month. December is usually wet, and with the added lights of the holiday season I should find plenty of opportunities. I've got my fingers crossed, anyway. I hope you've enjoyed looking, and as usual you can see more from these shoots on my flickr page, http://flickr.com/pdxsean.

More Long Exposures of Portland's Skyline at Dusk

We've had some great cloudy sunsets during the last week, and I've gone out to catch a couple of them with my camera.  The first time out, the clouds sort of cleared up as I was shooting, so the results weren't quite as dramatic as I would have liked.  The image above is the only one from that shoot that made the final cut, you can see that there are only a couple of clouds still in the sky.



The next day I went out and did the macro photography that I featured in my previous post, and the clouds were a lot heavier as the sun crept below the horizon.  I was able to catch some really great long exposures.  My goal was to take a lot of 90-120 second shots, and for the most part I was successful.  However a couple of the test shots I did at 20 or 30 seconds ended up looking great, so I've posted the best of those as well.






I hope you've enjoyed!  I've been pretty motivated to go out and shoot lately (it's this great fall weather) so you can expect plenty of more photos to come.  I have a whole set from last night, and more than likely I'll get out to do another couple of shoots this week.  Good times.

Water - From the Beach to Downtown

After a reasonably slow month of October, I've had a pretty productive last week or photography. The first images are, actually, from October, and had sat forgotten on my hard drive until earlier this week when I remembered to post them on Flickr. I had taken a drive up to Washington's Long Beach peninsula with hopes of shooting Oysterville and their lovely state parks, but ended up at my second-fallback locations of Ilwaco and Cape Disappointment.









In the last week, we've had some good rain here in Portland, accompanied by little or no wind, which has meant some great night photography for me. I've taken a few walks around downtown with my camera and have been pretty fortunate to catch some nice images. Even better, the temperatures have been generally in the upper fifties in the evening, so it was much more comfortable than one would expect for spending hours walking around in the rain.









I'm keeping my fingers crossed for this winter, photo-wise. I hope that there will be plenty more great rainy nights, and with any luck I'll be able to shoot some fog and snow. Stranger things have happened... but either way, I'll try to stay happy with what I get.

I hope you've enjoyed, and thanks for taking the time to look at my work. You can, as always, see more of these images on my flickr account, and follow my infrequent tweets over on twitter @pdxsean.

Portland's 2010 Fashion Night Out

Twitter has served me well over the last year or so, drawing my attention to some interesting local events that I'd never have heard of otherwise. Last night's Fashion Night Out is a great example of this. I'm neither interested in fashion nor consumption in general, so I'd never have heard of this event were I not following a Portland current events account.










It was a fun afternoon. Every thirty minutes the models would do their walk down the runway and basically stop and pose at one specific point. As the night went on, it became easier and easier to plan my shots and get the timing down right. The lighting was a little tough, it was overcast and even with no filters I had trouble getting a fast enough shutter speed to get crisp shots. I probably should have hiked up my ISO to compensate. Unfortunately I didn't notice the softness of many images until I came home and saw them on my PC.










All said, it was a fun way to spend a few hours and some great practice I wouldn't get otherwise. I'll definitely keep my eyes open for future runway/fashion opportunities, if nothing else it's very rewarding to take pictures of attractive people.

As always, these photos and more can be seen on my Flickr page, http://flickr.com/pdxsean. Thanks for looking!

Portland Symphony Waterfront Concert Fireworks 2010

The Oregon Symphony has an annual event wrapping up the summer down at the waterfront.  Last year, I got some great pictures of ballerinas and a decent shot of a cannon blast, but had to skip the fireworks.  This year, I decided to go with the light show. 






I've never seen the east bank of the Willamette so empty for fireworks.  A few of the Flickr Nightowl group were there, as I had expected.  Other than that, nobody else seemed to care.  I arrived more than an hour early to get my spot, but could have shown up at the start and still had the same space.





I haven't had much luck with the fireworks this year.  I wasn't so thrilled with my 4th of July shots, and the Rose Festival show was rained out.  I've also made a few attempts at taking pictures of the fireworks at nearby PGE Park with no success... so I was pretty excited to have a good opportunity for a winning shoot to wrap up the summer.  Although I didn't have as many shots to choose from as I might have liked, I was still really happy with the shots that came out. 





Getting the timing down is the hardest part, as you have to guess when the shells will explode, adjust the shutter opening based on brightness (I'm on BULB setting using my remote) and try to close the shutter before the next barrage explodes.  I'm still trying to get the correct brightness level of the city, I'm not sure if that's possible considering the brightness of the fireworks.

All together it was a good night.  It was warmer than on Independence Day, it was not crowded at all, and the technical challenge of firework shooting provided some rewarding results.  Hope you've enjoyed!

Overdue Summer 2010 Update

I haven't been taking a lot of pictures this summer, but I have gotten out a few times with the camera. I haven't been posting anything here (not sure why, I do update another site regularly) but you haven't missed out on much. If you'd like to see more, you can click any of these images and get to my flickr page, where you can see several additional images from each shoot.



The Rose Festival came and went, during a surprisingly rainy June. The festival traditionally opens with fireworks, but the night was so windy and rainy, I wasn't able to get any interesting shots. I did get down to the bridges (with my umbrella) and took some pictures of the fleet.



When I was a teenager, Pacific City was my favorite beach on the Oregon Coast. I haven't been there for many years, so I decided it was time to spend an afternoon there with the camera. The beach is a lot more popular than it was 20 years ago, but it's still a nice place to stop in, and the pictures around the back of the cape are worth the drive.



After having the Rose Festival fireworks rained out, I was particularly eager for the show on July 4. I took plenty of pictures and really enjoyed the fireworks, but I think I could have chosen a better vantage point. I just hope I can remember to consider that next year.



Portland's Hawthorne Bridge turns 100 this year, and in celebration half of the bridge was decorated with a light-art display. There were numerous technical and logistical glitches with the display, although after a few days the display looked pretty nice if you happened to see the bridge after 10:00 at night.



Finally, last weekend we had the annual Twilight Criterium over in the Pearl District. This bike race brings in plenty of racing talent and is a pretty fun event to watch. The atmosphere is festive but the crowds are reasonable... it's easy to circumnavigate the track and you can cross to the inside easily if you wait for the trailing motorcycle to pass.