The conditions were such that I simply had to take some photographs. February Seattle was being treated to unseasonably spectacular weather, it was the weekend and I just adopted a new member into the Explosion family… a Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. After enjoying a literal boat-load of sushi on Friday night, I got a phone call from UPS around 9:30 PM saying that my new hunk of glass was at their Seattle hub. Sharat and I bombed down to Georgetown in the Explorer and picked it up just before Josh, the UPS customer service rep, called it quits at 10 PM. Since I knew Saturday was going to be as clear as Friday, I made up my mind to be at a particular spot in West Seattle as the sun came up. Sharat quickly translated my proclomation into reality by iPhoning an almanac: surise at about 7 AM. The best light of a sunrise occurs in the hour before the sun becomes visible. This meant getting to my spot around 6 AM, which called for a 5:30 AM wake-up time. On a Saturday. I know.

I noticed a lookout point on Admiral Way when I drove over to West Seattle earlier in the week to meet a couple of friends. The photographer bell went off in my head and I began thinking about how I could shoot it. Immediately I settled on shooting a sunrise because the silhouetted buildings with their lights might look great against the mountains and morning sky. With the convergence of the weather, the weekend and new gear—Saturday was going to be my moment of truth.

When the alarm went off, I rolled out of the rack, loaded the rig and took off down the viaduct. After monkeying around with camera dials and tripods for a good hour, the sun was up and the magenta sky was gone. I jumped back in the truck and cruised over to Ballard. By the time I arrived, the sun was just starting to cast its first rays on the other mountain range that borders Seattle, The Olympics. The shot at the beginning of this post is of a tree at Golden Gardens with Shilshole Bay and the Olympic Range in the background.

My hour in West Seattle was relatively private. A cabbie pulled off to watch the sunrise for a minute, and two older women power walked by; but they were too busy chatting to look over the rail. In contrast, pre 8 AM Golden Gardens buzzed with all breeds of early birds: dog walkers, exercisers and book readers. As I exchanged friendly hellos with these folks, each one of them gave me a kind of nod that said, “isn’t this morning fucking great?” I shared the sentiment, and responded with a corresponding nod that said, “hell yeah it’s fucking wonderful—I love this city.”

I was not sure where I was heading, I just knew I needed to cross the Puget Sound and head west. After catching a boat to Bremerton, I headed north on 3, caught the 104 to the 101 and eventually cruised along the Strait of Juan de Fuca on the 112. Five hours later the Explorer pulled into a campsite in Ozette, WA. For the next few days this secluded plot would serve as our base camp as Caitlin, Sharat, Emily and I explored the very western edge of the United States. Above is Emily jump standing on the coast of the Pacific at the Dungeness Spit.

After a luxurious night sleeping on cushy inflatable mattress in a rented four person REI Hobitat, I woke up before my fellow campers and noticed a spider spinning a web in our camp. I hauled the Manfrotto, set up an external flash and took a few shots of the little guy.

Later in the afternoon a deer wandered near our F-Noc game (AKA Friz Knock AKA Polish). As there are hardly any people in Ozette, this creature didn’t seem too scared of our troupe.

I did a little photo sesh with Sharat and Caitlin on top of a huge rock on the Pacific Coast. Emily kindly volunteered to be my VAL and held a SB-600 flash outfitted with a LumiQuest Softbox II. I triggered the flash remotely using Nikon’s CLS. Sure, I took some pictures of them looking serious (you can see them on Flickr); but I like this one the best.

The rock we climbed dropped off about 160′ into the ocean. A plethora of flora grew along the edge of the cliff. I crawled around on my belly with a wireless SB-600 and took a handful of shots as the sun set. There is no doubt that I looked very bizarre to the hill billy kids fooling around several feet away.

The Pacific Northwest coast is characterized by big sea stack rocks. Explosion 5K readers will remember a similar geologic feature that I encountered in Oregon.

I’m not sure how this whole Zen rock stacking thing got started, but I see it a lot now that I live on the West Coast. I found this particular stack while we wandered up the spit, a long sliver of sand that extends out into the ocean, in the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge.

Sharat the flower child on the spit.

On our way back to Seattle, we timed the Edmonds-Kingston ferry so that we caught the sun set over the Olympics. This shot is looking southeast at a passing ferry with Mount Rainier and Seattle catching the last red rays of the day.

Check out these pictures and more on Flickr, or watch the slideshow below (be sure to go full screen).

The George Washington Memorial Bridge is not in this picture. My camera, a Nikon D300, is hanging over the edge of the aforementioned structure, better known as the Aurora Bridge. I bolted the camera to a tripod, tilted it against the rail, and extended the center post so that the camera hovered some 160 feet above the ground. With a remote shutter release clenched tightly in my fist, I fired off frame after frame. The result is the latest addition to my “Scene from 99” series. In this entry, I captured the George Washington Memorial Bridge from the air (above), land and sea (below).

“Scene from 99” is an ongoing series exclusive to the Andy Aupperlee Explosion 5000 that features images and commentary about Seattle’s iconic Highway 99.

Air.

The view is of Fremont and the Fremont Bridge. Ballard and the Olympic Mountains are in the background near the horizon. I took this picture from the sidewalk on the west side of the George Washington Memorial Bridge. Six lanes of traffic buzzed by behind me while I monkeyed with camera settings and tripod adjustments.

To capture “Fremont Lights,” I rigged up my Nikon D300 with the Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens. After removing the UV filter, I screwed on the 77mm Cokin P system adapter. I stacked two neutral density gradient filters (the Cokin 120 ND Grad and Lee 0.9 ND Grad) into the holder. With the lens zoomed into 16mm to prevent vignetting, I lined up the transition points of the filters with the horizon. The goal was to capture streaking traffic by using extra long exposures and not blow out the sky. With two ND grad filters darkening the sky, I was able to balance the image so both the city lights and sunset exposed properly in the same frame. We see this kind of dynamic range with our eyes, but cameras are very limited. Once I had the filters setup, I dialed in ISO 200 and chose f/8 in manual mode. I tried a number of different shutter speeds, and the 10 second exposure featured here worked best.

Using the same filter setup, I made this photo of a street sign near me on the bridge. The ND grad filters allowed me to expose for the bright moon and relatively dark sign in the same frame.

Unfortunately, the George Washington Memorial Bridge is often the venue of choice for suicidal Seattleites. Jumpers frequently shutdown traffic and give business owners under the bridge a reason to look up. The Lake Washington Ship Canal is relatively narrow, and most of the area beneath the bridge is land. Sadly, not everyone can judge exactly where the water is. Suicides are frequent enough that Seattle has installed phones and posted help-line phone numbers along the sidewalks. While it is a good faith effort to help those at the brink, some still decide to take the plunge. A multi-million dollar, 8-foot fence is Seattle’s latest proposal for keeping anyone from going over the edge. In 1996, The Seattle PI wrote an interesting article about those who have survived the jump. You can read it here.

Land.

Several nights before I made the “air” images, I walked underneath the massive cantilever and truss bridge. Opened in 1932, the 2,945 foot long structure is an engineering marvel. Looking at it from the ground offers an impressive perspective.

For this shot, I again used the Nikon D300 and Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens. I dialed in ISO 200 and f/8, and then selected ‘bulb’ for the shutter speed. I manually timed the exposure by pressing and releasing the shutter on a remote trigger. This particular shot uses a shutter opening of 39 seconds. Taken just steps from the Burke-Gillman trail, the shot looks east across Lake Union towards the Eastlake neighborhood. The towering bridge overhead eventually terminates to the south on Queen Anne hill.

Sea.

On Monday I shot the bridge from the land. On Wednesday I shot it from the air (sort of), and on Thursday I shot it from the sea.

I just happened to be enjoying cocktails and conversation on a 130 foot yacht, slowly cruising Lake Union, when Seattle staged a glorious sunset. My D300 and 35mm f/1.8 were around my neck when Lyn, a colleague from my company, suggested I get a few shots of the vista. This image is looking west, with Queen Anne to the south (left) and Fremont to the north (right). Unlike any of the photos from Monday or Tuesday, this shot nearly encompasses the entire span of the bridge.

For more information on the George Washington Memorial Bridge, visit Wikipedia and HistoryLink.org. A complete listing off all the gear I used for these photos can be found on my gear page. Check out my “Scene from 99” tag for other Aurora related photos and commentary, or watch a Flickr slideshow below.

I snapped this photo on an exceptionally warm day for early March. Temperatures in Washington DC climbed into the high 70s and hints of the coming summer humidity permeated the balmy swamp that is our Nation’s capital. Scott Zaleski, who was visiting from Chicago, and I had been wandering around the FDR memorial. I eventually ended up on the bank of the Tidal Basin. The setting sun cast a warm light on the Washington and Jefferson memorials. When I looked west towards the Potomac, I noticed that passersby were pleasantly silhouetted against the golden sky. I creeped out, zoomed my lens to 200mm and grabbed a few shots of people as they walked (or biked) by the sunset.

This is a picture of a statue of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Scott pointed out how the end of his finger was worn down and shiny from visitors touching it. I screwed on my Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 and got about as close as I’ll ever likely get to a “sitting” President.

Being at the FDR memorial seemed rather ominous considering the current economic situation facing our nation. The walls of the memorial are etched with famous quotations and evidence of the institutions he founded. While the argument can be made that World War II was ultimately the stimulus that ended the Great Depression, one wonders how successful our current leadership will ultimately be. Even better though, I was touring a monument to one of our most socialist presidents with a captain of the free market system, Mr. Scott “grain trader” Zaleski. His musings on parallels between FDR and fellow-Chicagoan Barack Obama were certainly thoughtful, if not mildly entertaining.

Scott was also verbally composing a list of “people you can’t trust” based on certain stereotypes. Chief on this list is “guys with two first names, like Adam Charles.” He was also working on a theory about people who wear New Balances and ties. Look for more on this soon.

The moon prominently hung in the sky all afternoon. This picture is a tribute to one of my dad’s best shots in recent years.

Should I just forget historical/nature/landscape/party pix/creeper photography and start a Dog Blog? Do you think a dawg blawg could act as a stimulus plan for The Andy Aupperlee Explosion 5000? If this website doesn’t make any money, is it contributing to our shitty economy?

Anyway, this little yapper was spazzing out near the canal in Georgetown. He had a little friend with him that was dressed equally as ridiculous.

Check out these photos and a few more in a slideshow. Your boss probably won’t walk by for a few minutes… so why not go fullscreen?

Several weeks into a new assignment at Boeing Capital Corporation I found myself on a plane bound for California. The mission involved flying into Ontario and conducting an audit of Boeing inventory at Pacific Aviation Group in Victorville, CA. Fortunately I was flying with my co-worker, Dave, who is a member of Alaska Airlines’ MVP Gold Club—take home value of that: he was able to upgrade me to first class. Nice. After years of watching airport workers carelessly toss bags around, I decided to carry-on my relatively new Nikon D300. I brought along the big rig because I planned to visit my brother in nearby Barstow, CA. Legendary Route 66 bisects his town and I figured there would be some good picture taking. At take off it was sunny and pleasant, but I did not expect the gorgeous sunset we were about to witness. Sitting in first class also provided me with ample room to dig through my camera bag and lean over the window to shoot.

This vista is appropriately framed by the wing (with advanced blended winglet) of a Boeing 737 NG and a GE CFM56 jet engine. The D300 was cranked with picture control settings of Vivid and +3 saturation.