Can't Look Away

During our Seattle vacation Kathy and I visited the Experience Music Project museum which was great. Being a music museum, the last thing I expected to see there were exhibits on Star Wars costumes and Horror Films. Both were amazing though and had fantastic displays and artifacts. This sign was fairly near the entrance to the "Can't Look Away: The Lure of Horror Film" exhibit. I blended in some imagery from my favorite artifact, the Alien from the Aliens movie.

Tulip Festival Bokeh

While in Seattle, Kathy and I drove out to La Connor to check out the Tulip Festival. It really was amazing to see the colorful fields of flowers spreading out in the distance. This image was taken with my new Sony a6000 mirrorless camera and the Sony 70-200 f4 G lens. I am amazed at the quality of the images this camera/lens combination can produce. Super bokeh shooting wide open.

Looks Good From Any Angle

Decided to take in another view of this beautiful Chevy Fleetline.

Chicano Park Fleetline

The Chicano Park car show held in Barrio Logan, adjacent to downtown San Diego is an event that Kathy and I look forward to attending each year. The San Diego area was crowded in part because the Padres and the Dodgers were playing all weekend. We took the Amtrak Surfliner train into town and rode the San Diego Trolley train from downtown to Barrio Logan and avoided all of the traffic congestion.

The neighborhood of Barrio Logan is a historically Latino area of San Diego County and the park itself has a very interesting history. Located below the 5 freeway and the approaches to the Coronado Bay Bridge, it is home to many murals painted on the concrete highway supports.

I saw this beautiful 1948(?) Chevrolet Fleetline at the show. There seemed to be fewer cars in attendance this year. Kathy and I assumed it was because of the threat of rain. This car had some cool mini-murals on the front and back bumper areas. Not sure if the wood on the sides are original to the car or not.

Rag Top Fleetmaster

Kathy and I arrived at the Southgate car show well before sunrise. Lots of cars were streaming into the parking lot adjacent to the golf course where the show was to be held. Other than the car owners there were very few people around. We kind of had our own pre-car show, car show. It was looking like it would rain any minute but it never did. I spotted this convertible 1947 Chevy Fleetmaster sitting there with its headlights on and decided to take a few images. Great looking car.

Chihuly Northwest Room

Let's keep going with the Chihuly stuff. This amazing room features Dale Chihuly's collections of indian blankets, baskets and photographs. The glass art displayed here was influenced by these collections. I really like how you get a peek into the sealife room with it's spectacular 20 foot high sealife tower. This image was taken with my 10-18mm lens and is a panorama which explains the fairly severe distortion seen in  the image. At the risk of repeating myself, I am still amazed at the quality and power of my new Sony a6000 mirrorless camera. I have no intention of abandoning my full frame sony cameras but having so much capability in a tiny camera is still mind blowing to me. I like it so much I purchased another one for Kathy and invested in 5 high quality lenses for the e-mount system. 10mm, f4.0, 3200 ISO

Colors Overhead

This was an amazing room in the Chihuly Garden and Glass exhibit in Seattle. Hidden among what must be over a hundred  pieces of beautifully blown glass are a few clear glass cherubs. The lighting level throughout the exhibit halls was quite low but Kathy and I were very successful in creating images using our Sony camera's "handheld twilight" function which is essentially dark frame subtraction on steroids. This makes it possible to produce one extremely low noise file from 6 photos automatically taken at very high ISO settings, which are then very quickly aligned and merged. This extremely powerful function was very desirable in this setting since we didn't want to use a flash when photographing the glass as that would probably ruin the ambiance and result in lots of reflections and unwanted specular highlights.

Chihuly Glasshouse in Seattle

This is the beautiful glasshouse at the Chihuly Gardens and Glass in Seattle Center, WA. Kathy and I were on vacation and decided to visit. So glad we did. I was stunned by the beauty of the exhibits. I can't wait to visit again.

Duty Now for the Future

Devo 2.0 holds down a thunderous bottom line while Nigel and Eugene respectively see to the vocal and guitar responsibilities. Disneyland park, tomorrowland terrace stage.

MLK

Celebrate courage and change.