Over two months ago, I was headed off to Alki Beach to take photos of the setting sun reflecting off the mirrored glass of Seattle’s skyline. I didn’t get very far: a teenage driver in an SUV (with three of his teenage friends) made a left turn directly in front of me, totaling my Vespa.
I decided to head back yesterday afternoon, despite some superstition-inspired nervousness. Much to my relief, no dumb kids tried to kill me this time.
It wasn’t quite as exciting as I’d hoped: While the sun had burned off the fog in Seattle, it hadn’t made much of a dent in the fog to the west, softening the light smacking into the skyline. The most interesting picture I took was this one of two kayaks dwarfed by the skyscrapers.
I was also quite pleased with myself at recognizing the mistakes of two other photographers. The two had set up their tripods and were camped out maybe 15 feet from each other. Maybe they were waiting for the sun to completely set to photograph a midnight blue sky, but I think they were hoping to get a little bit of sunset color over the skyline. Unfortunately, color from a sunset tends to be concentrated close to the sun. I left 15 minutes before the sunset, which only touched the sky directly behind them.
Anyway, the second mistake was not fully exploring angles for the shot. They were both too far north to catch any reflections off the mirrored glass, leaving them only shadowed buildings. They only had to walk another 50 or 60 feet to the south to catch the sun’s glow on three skyscrapers with reflections stretching over the entire bay. Still not all that exciting, but I think this shot of a kayaker following a seagull is about as good as one could get this afternoon.
There was some nice sunset color during the ride home, but I had managed to forget the shoe that attaches my camera to the tripod. Otherwise, I would’ve pulled over to get a shot or two.
After running home to get that shoe, I decided to head up to Kerry Park in Queen Anne, which has an almost unobstructed view of the downtown skyline to the south-southeast. My little Seattle Photo Guide Map [created by local photographers! Available from viewit.com and tomhaseltine.com] claims this viewpoint "is often used by film and TV crews." By this time, however, a few wispy, low clouds had rolled in over the skyline, reflecting back the yellow light and washing out the midnight blue of the sky. I’ll have to go back again to get a better shot.
Ultimately, I decided that the shot below, of another photographer silhouetted against the midnight blue sky with the skyline as a backdrop was the most interesting shot I could take (I had to do quite a bit of post-processing to get rid of the yellow). I noticed, again, that the four or five other photographers there were rooted in one position, snapping off another shot every few minutes.
It’s not like anyone is reading my blog for photographic advice, but if someone DOES come here for some help, just remember, for stationary objects, walk around and experiment. Use all of your lenses (and at a variety of focal lengths). Try to find a frame, like a branch or
sculpture or streetlight. Find something else to include in your picture, like a couple kissing, or, in this case, another photographer. If you stand in one place using the same lens, not only will you only get the one photo (with different light, I’ll grant you), but you may also miss other, more interesting shots.
