Sleeping in Seattle

I spent the a week in Seattle, Washington, the Emerald City. This trip was not only my first trip to Seattle, but also my first Amtrak travel experience. The Amtrak Coast Starlight is a Superliner train that runs from Los Angles, CA to Seattle, WA. If you plan your trip properly, you can reserve first class accommodations for the same as coach airfare, but you can’t be in a hurry. The trip from San Jose, CA to Seattle, WA took 24 hours, (Friday night 8:39 pm to Saturday night 8:30 pm)

Seattle is a thriving modern city with an immense amount of history in many areas. It was a city known for hot Jazz Clubs in the 50’s. Both Jimmy Hendricks and Kurt Cobain are both from there.

Seattle has the oldest active farmers market (105 years) in the nation. Both Starbucks (notice the original seal) and Nordstom original stores started in Seattle. The ships on popular show on the Discovery Channel called The Deadliest Catch are all based in Seattle and there is a memorial at the dock for all those lost at sea. The Hiram M. Chittenden Locks (Ballard Locks) which allows vessels to pass from the freshwater lakes to Puget Sound handles more ships, boats and barges than the Panama Canal on an annual basis. We were fortunate enough to see it in action. This same canal is the route traveled by thousands of salmon to their birth place to procreate.

The city really had its boom and exploding population growth during the Klondike gold rush to Alaska. People came to Seattle thinking that Alaska was just a few more days travel. As a result, lots of people died on the way across Canada to Alaska, but the economy of Seattle grew 300%.

Although Seattle has a rainy reputation, it's an interesting city for a relaxing vacation.

Almaden Art and Wine Festival

The Fine Art of Roosevelt Bynum Photography was available at the Taste of Saratoga, Saratoga, CA and the Almaden Art and Wine Festival in the Almaden Valley of San Jose, CA. I'm pleased to report that I received the Third Place award for "Excellence Achived in Photography".

Saturday September 20, 2008 was a beautiful day for the 1st Taste of Saratoga and several clients were excited to take home pieces of my work.

Sunday September 21, 2008 was the Almaden Art and Wine Festival and another gorgeous day in San Jose. The festival was the largest in recent years with about 125 vendors with various forms of art, jewelry, clothing and various accessories. The event was well attended, very organized, the people were wonderful, and all my neighboring vendors helpful and supportive.

The most popular piece amongst the guests that visited my booth this weekend was Poipu Beach which was displayed in my booth as a 4' x 3' vinyl print.

Overall, it was a very rewarding weekend the the Art Festivals.

http://www.rbynumphotography.com/

Moon Over My House

Moon Over My House is a composition created with my Mamiya 645 Pro using Kodak 100VS film. It was a full moon night and the sky was clear. I used a 55mm lens to do the base shot. without advancing the film, I replaced the 55MM with a 300mm lens to shoot the moon. The base shot was a 2 minute exposure at f/8, while the moon shot was 1/125 second at f/8.

The full moon is actually 1/12 the light of the sun which makes it rather bright in the night sky. If you compose a shot of the moon alone such that the result captures the detail of the moon surface, everything else will be dark. Whenever you see a high quality composition like this with the moon with surface detail, it will be double exposure.

Moon Over My House is on display in the UArt Open Exhibition at University Art in San Jose. It was one of two photographs in 50 pieces accepted from 300 submissions.

Experience the Fine Art of Roosevelt Bynum Photography this Saturday, 9/20/2008 at The Taste of Saratoga and Sunday at the 32nd Almaden Valley Art & Wine Festival