Photo for the day - Vegas flashback

I love living in the Northwest. I drove from Portland to Seattle yesterday, and in the 3 hours that it took to get here, I saw every weather pattern the Northwest gets. We started in Sandy, Oregon (my stomping grounds), where we had about 4 inches of snow. That was a great surprise, because it's been raining nonstop since we got back from Vegas. We drove our dog to the Kennel in Boring, Oregon, where we drove through about 16 inches of water that was crossing the highway. The rest of the way, we got hail, freezing rain, rain, snow -little wet flakes AND the huge flakes that make driving difficult- overcast, and completely sunny.
I woke up waaaaayyyy too early this morning in my Seattle hotel room and wanted something to do. I realized that I didn't really do any processing on the images from my Las Vegas holiday. I edited them down to my favorites and ran them through Lightroom and posted them to my Flickr account right here
I carried my Lensbaby 3 with me on all the trips, but was too lazy to put it on the camera. One night, as we were wandering around, I was inspired by all the christmas lights to put the Lensbaby on and do some shooting with it. I love that lens - I need to get the Composer version one of these days.
....Anyway, as we wandered through every casino on the strip, I took some time to smell the flowers with my camera. Here's one of the results
Enjoy.

Holy Smoke!

I was flipping through my calendar today and realized that I haven't posted to this blog in over a month. It's been a good month - very busy - so I'm not that sad that I've been slow to post. I am trying to get better about doing a weekly blog with some interesting topics.
Last week, there were some events downtown that I was able to take some publicity shots for. I put all of them on my external drive, so I will have to get them and will post a couple of images... The Pioneer Courthouse Square had their "Urban Meadow" themed display in the park, which was what I photographed. It was a lovely layout of wildflowers and other plants (including tomatoes YUM!). The whole thing was laid out in paths and rows with a tunnel of sticks down the middle. I busted out my lensbaby 3g for some shots from the 11th floor of one of the close-by buildings. I've never used the Lensbaby for distant shots. I was thrilled by the results.

Coming soon - Pictures from the Pioneer Courthouse Square Urban Meadow.

I got a new Lensbaby 3

So, I got a Lensbaby and finally had a little time to play with it. First, I wanted something fun to shoot, so I thought "My motorbike could be fun." Then I realized that I hadn't run the engine for a little while, so I should run the motor for a while. Then I realized that I hadn't been riding in a while, and I was outside without a jacket and wasn't shivering. I took a few shots of the bike, then packed my camera and headed out for a ride, stopping when I saw interesting stuff. 60 miles and 5 stops later, I got home and checked my stuff out. I got a few shots that were fun (included).
The little road trip satisfied my motorcycle craving, but didn't satisfy my Lensbaby need. My wife was taking a little catnap on the couch (it was about 6), so I decided to torture her a bit by setting up on the floor right in front of her and got focused, put in the aperture disk, then started painting her with an flashlight. Here is one of the resulting images. She will probably forgive me for posting candid photos of her sleeping, right? <----concerned husband, heheh.