City ablaze

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One of the fun things about night shots is that you can get some interesting “free” effects from the different color temperatures used in street and building lighting. This is a shot of downtown Seattle, taken from the Space Needle late at night — shortly before they chased us all off the observation deck.

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Here, the white balance is set to make the building lights look right — resulting in orange streets. I particularly like how the monorail line is silhouetted from beneath.

Originally posted to the old blog on May 5, 2009; on Flickr over here.

What’s the buzz?

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Another shot from the Butterfly Pavilion in Westminster, Colorado — this time of some honeybees in an indoor display case:

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You’ve probably seen them, those honeybee cases in botanical gardens and such. The honeybees get to build their hive indoors, with a tube leading outside to an area with flowers. Meanwhile visitors get to see them hard at work.

I discovered something on this visit — regardless of the temperature indoors, the honeybees seem to be far less active when it’s cold outside. Even though I had my ring flash, I think the bees’ slow motions helped me get a nice, sharp image here. Unfortunately, you can also see a little bit of a smudge on the glass over on the left side of this shot.

Originally posted to the old blog on January 5, 2009; on Flickr over here.

Sarsha

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Taken at a sled dog camp in Dyea (near Skagway), Alaska. When we passed through, Sarsha was about a year old, and was on a leash as the official tourist “greeter” for the camp.

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Considering they’re basically mutts, it’s impressive just how intelligent and dignified sled dogs (a.k.a., “Alaskan Huskies”) are. I also discovered that try as I might, I could never get any of the sled dogs we met to make eye contact. Just as well, I suppose — it makes for good portrait poses! Originally posted to the old blog on June 17, 2008; on Flickr over here.