Welcome to My Longest Day.

This started out as an idea to spend a day wandering around just taking photographs. As summer approached I though why not do it on the solstice--the longest day of the year. The summer solstice (in the Northern Hemisphere) was Just 21st at around 3:45am Pacific Daylight Time. I decided to spend the whole day from sunrise (5:11am) to sunset (9:11pm) wandering around Seattle going to some places I've been before and some new places and take pictures. I tried to take "real" photographs and not just a bunch of snapshots recording the day. My goal wasn't to take summer or solstice related photos necessarily, but just spend the day going to places I like or haven't been to before and just take pictures.

Some of them came out pretty good I think, but tell me what you think.

Just click on a picture to see a bigger version in a new window.

Montlake

Like most early summer days in Seattle the forecast was "morning clouds and afternoon sun." You get pretty used to that forecast; you also get used to the fact that the "afternoon sun" is optional. True to form this morning was pretty cloudy so there wasn't any real sunrise. My plan was to take some morning shots at the lakefront on the UW campus, but instead I found some nice blue walls with some nice texture under the Montlake bridge.

Here's one of the bridge itself. Meh. It was a good shot to try a new (to me) sharpening technique.

The Bell Street Lion

That's what I call it anyway. I think it's a great subject and I've gone a couple of times to photograph it. Unfortunately they fill the small courtyard it's in with other stuff so it's sometimes hard to get nice compositions

I wanted to use my Lensbaby lens for some of the projects photos. This one of the lion came out pretty well. (There will be more later that I like better.)

Room With a View

I don't usually take this kind of photo, but it grabbed me on my way from the lion to the waterfalls.

Waterfalls

There are at least two waterfall parks in Seattle. One is Waterfall Garden Park. Apparently it's in the spot that's the birthplace of United Parcel Service. You learn something new every day. It's supposed to emulate a natural waterfall.

The second park is a sculpture-type in Freeway Park. Here are a couple shots. This place has so much potential. I need to go back and see if it's lit at night.

Garden of Remembrance

Downtown is a quiet park with a memorial for Washington veterans.

Solstice Parade

The Fremont neighborhood has a parade every year the weekend before the Solstice. It's mostly known for the naked bicycle riders at the start.

I don't know why this banana is so angry.

Some of the performances and floats were more political than others.

Columbia Center Observation Deck

I wanted to go to the observation deck of the Smith Tower (a relatively famous and historic building downtown.) Of course the observation deck was closed for elevator renovation. I settled for the Columbia Center--it's the tallest building in Seattle. I like the one with all the boats the best. It's amazing how they were all sort of in the right place at the right time.

Here's the Smith Tower and the Yesler parking garage (to the right of the tower). Pointy! I'll get up to the top of the tower sooner or later.

Pike Place Market

It's kind of a hassle to photograph here. I guess I think that mostly because I don't have the camera or lenses to work easily here. Here's some tourist's snaps.

One more--"Fat Crab"

Volunteer Park Conservatory

The plant kind. I've never been here before--lots of different flowers, kinda hot. Like I promised these are more Lensbaby shots. I guess people love or hate that lens. It's pretty fun to play with. I need to go back when I have more time and play with using different apertures. (Changing the aperture on the Lensbaby is sort of a pain and involves a tool I forgot to bring with me.)

One more conservatory flower. I think I like this one the best. I need to play with it a bit to get rid of that blue fringe.

Seattle Center

I went here to try to recreate a photo I took a couple of years ago. This one (of the Needle) is close, but not exactly the same. It's not bad I guess. The other is part of the Experience Music Project. The building is kind of a big multi-colored blob if you've never seen it. There's a lot of great forms and such to photograph.

Sunset

So this is the end. Sunset at 9:11pm. Not bad for a Seattle sunset. They're often pretty dull. This one is from a "secret" beach on Shilshole Bay. There were eight or so other people there, so I guess it's not that much of a secret. The ducks were a little bonus.

It was a really long day--about 10 bus rides on 6 different routes and 12 locations, not counting the parade. Almost 400 photos altogether. It was pretty instructive. I've been wanting to do an "immersive" project like this for a while, and the solstice was the best day to do it, I think. I only wish the weather had cooperated a little better in the morning. I found some great places to go back and photograph later, so it was worth it for that if nothing else.

Please leave some comments or email me if you want. I'm interested to see what people think about the project (and the photos too, of course.) Especially let me know if you've done something like this yourself. I would like to include other people in the project next year.

rob@robjordanphotography.com

Epilogue

In case anyone is interested here are some technical details. I took all the photos with a Canon 10D. Some of the shots I took with a Lensbaby lens (the original one.) Here's their website if you're interested. The rest of the shots I used my trusty Tamron 24-135 lens. It's getting a little old, but it's still a great lens for the money.

All but the sunset photo I took as jpeg files. I used RAW for the sunset. I wanted to be able to edit the photos faster, so that's the reason for not using RAW for all the pictures (which is what I usually do.) I didn't do a huge amount of post-processing. Mostly some contrast and color saturation adjustments. I did that with a curves adjustment in LAB mode. That's by far the fastest and easiest way to do that. Some of the files I tried some different sharpening techniques (the bridge and some of the Columbia center shots for example.) Oh yeah, I used my small hiking tripod to take the waterfall pictures. I used a polarizing filter on those, but not any of the others.