Seattle Skylines

coscorrosa

This is my first dgrin post that includes photos, hopefully I won't screw it up.

I took most of these last week (the company where I work has a building at the top of the hill and the bottom, and I shot from outdoor balconies at both locations, as well as from some common view points accessible to everyone).

Even though these are all Seattle shots, none of them contain the Space Needle (though I have plenty that do!), which is located on the north side of town, these photos are all from the south side.

My favorites are included below, the full gallery can be found here:

http://photos.coscorrosa.com/gallery/1935886

Feedback welcome, thanks!

swintonphoto

Wow, wonderful wonderful wonderful shots. Really lovely.

Elaine

Beautiful! Really terrific! Welcome to DGrin, thanks for sharing and I look forward to seeing more.

schmoo

Ron, these are lovely!!

You're very fortunate to have such nice views where you work. I love the gentle colors in the sky and the activity of the city as night falls. Urban night scenes like this always exude a twinge of excitement, I think.

In your gallery, I really dig this one. Beautiful capture of light in an unexpected place!

Great first post. Show us more!

zweiblumen

Ron, let me start of by saying, "Wow!!"
I am in love with the first shot. That is a wall hanger for sure.

The 4th shot is the only one I don't like. The bench is perfectly placed. The trees on the right are great for framing, and the mountains/moon on the left give it good balance (IMNSHO). But so much of the cityscape is obscured by the bushes/trees that it's very distracting. I keep trying to look through them. I know there's nothing you can do about a park full of trees, but next time ask someone to move those about 10 feet down for you

Keep 'em coming, these are great shots!

JenGrace

I'm going to concur with all those other 'wows'! I checked out your gallery and you have some really fantastic night exposures.

coscorrosa

Thanks for the comments!
Thanks to all for the positive comments!

Re: the bushes in the foreground on the fourth shot - I agree! The other thing that's annoying about that shot is the helicopter (the white streak of light on the right) that I didn't notice until I got home, bah! I'll bring my shears next time, and pay more attention to the objects in the sky.

philiphutson

coscorrosa wrote:

This is my first dgrin post that includes photos, hopefully I won't screw it up.

I took most of these last week (the company where I work has a building at the top of the hill and the bottom, and I shot from outdoor balconies at both locations, as well as from some common view points accessible to everyone).

Even though these are all Seattle shots, none of them contain the Space Needle (though I have plenty that do!), which is located on the north side of town, these photos are all from the south side.

My favorites are included below, the full gallery can be found here:

http://photos.coscorrosa.com/gallery/1935886

Feedback welcome, thanks!

Great stuff. I really like the first shot. The freeway (I'm guessing its a freeway) is a nice flow.
-Philip

JGD

Wow,
Makes Seattle almost look nice

It takes a gift to do that!

evoryware

The first shot is really lovely!

djspinner2k

3rd shot is awesome. I like the reflection in the water and the fact that you can make out the mountains in the background. awesome.:D

Cuong

Fantastic night shots. Now we know where you hang out after sunset.

Cuong

aktse

A wonderful series...

And the first photo is the winner in my book.

Jack'll do

Outstanding images! They are all absolutely stunning.
thumb

summerz

Wow these are awesome, keep up the good work.

DJ-S1

Wow Ron, great stuff and welcome! Looking forward to seeing more - but stop copying, will ya? This is serious. :thwak







(Actually this is a running joke around here, no offense intended! Just couldn't help poking fun of Wxwax again. Any excuse to keep that thread alive! )

coscorrosa

Thanks again for the positive comments, while I'm here, here's some more cliche photos of Seattle (that's right, it's Needle Time folks!):





The tree on the bottom right of the above photo is a bit annoying, if I moved further to the right, which would isolate the needle from the Columbia Center building behind it, then the tree would obscure the base of the needle. It's probably better to have the tree at the base of the needle than have the needle bleed into the buildilng behind it, live and learn. That's Mt. Rainier in the background.

Both of these were taken at Kerry Park, which always has a half-dozen or so photographers around sunset, and sometimes more (less at sunrise, even though this time of year the sunrise shots are better IMO).

I do shoot other things besides Seattle cityscapes, but figured I should stay on topic

SloYerRoll

Wow that first space needle shot w/ the fireworks is pretty good considering the entire show sucked. It looks like I was roughly in the same place as you. I saw a ton of shooters there. But I was just partying w/ friends that night.

You'd get 2 minutes of fireworks, then a 30 second pause.. over and over.. Then they shot off fireworks after the grand finally was over. I bet it was even more frustrating for you since you were trying to grab shots.

I'm sure the geniuses that did that won't win that contract again though.:D

Sorry for the rant. I was expecting cool stuff and got junk.

Like I said though. You did a great job capturing the moment!

Cheers,
-Jon

ChrisJ

Beautiful... made me and my wife homesick. You should sell them at the Market.

martinezphoto

I like what I see.
Love all this shots, good job

Izzy Garavito

These are great, I love them all

greenpea

Ron, incredible shots!

With the cold weather we've been having lately in Seattle, its been hard to get motivated to get out of bed early enough to get the great sunrise shots, but your pitures have totally motivated me! You've also motivated me to find some spots to set up my tripod other than Kerry Park!

greenpea

Ron, I was checking out some of the amazing pictures on your site trying to figure out where you got some of the shots and what with what focal lengths. When I saw the info listed for the focal length on this picture (like this one):

330000 (429000 in 35mm)!?

Is that a smug-bug or is there some super duper amazing sharp 1000' lens out there?

ulrikft

Great shots! The first one is just.. amazing!

Welcome!

dmmattix

greenpea wrote:

Ron, I was checking out some of the amazing pictures on your site trying to figure out where you got some of the shots and what with what focal lengths. When I saw the info listed for the focal length on this picture (like this one):

330000 (429000 in 35mm)!?

Is that a smug-bug or is there some super duper amazing sharp 1000' lens out there?

Since the photo name has "tonemapped" in it I would suspect that it is an HDR composition and I think that EXIF information gets all messed up when Photomatrix or CS3 blends pictures together. Just a guess.

kitvan

What they said!!! Wow. Beautiful stuff! :D
I like #1 and #3 best...hard to choose.

I love Seattle, my family is from there. Where in Seattle do you live?

coscorrosa

greenpea wrote:

Ron, I was checking out some of the amazing pictures on your site trying to figure out where you got some of the shots and what with what focal lengths. When I saw the info listed for the focal length on this picture (like this one):

330000 (429000 in 35mm)!?

Is that a smug-bug or is there some super duper amazing sharp 1000' lens out there?

Yeah, I use that as my walkaround lens, I was actually shooting from on top of Mt. Rainier (a little cold, but I had a warming filter, so my lens was fine)

In all seriousness, dmmattix's hypothesis was correct, these were merged together with Photomatix (3 bracketed exposures, -1.7/0/+1.7 stops), imported into Photoshop (for some sharpening and minor post-processing), and then exported to JPG. Those JPG's do have the correct metadata so it's a bug in SmugMug, although normal JPGs that I generate without Photomatix in the loop are handled correctly by SmugMug.

That specific photo was at 330mm taken with my 100-400mm zoom.

coscorrosa

kitvan wrote:

What they said!!! Wow. Beautiful stuff! :D
I like #1 and #3 best...hard to choose.

I love Seattle, my family is from there. Where in Seattle do you live?

#1 and #3 are my favorites too, can't really decide which of them I like better.

I'm from the part of Seattle known as Bellevue (For everyone else's benefit: Bellevue is a suburb about 10 miles east of Seattle across Lake Washington). I've lived all around King County though, and currently work in Seattle.

coscorrosa

greenpea wrote:

Ron, incredible shots!

With the cold weather we've been having lately in Seattle, its been hard to get motivated to get out of bed early enough to get the great sunrise shots, but your pitures have totally motivated me! You've also motivated me to find some spots to set up my tripod other than Kerry Park!

Thanks! I love Kerry Park anyway, it's a good "default" location. The 12th Ave. Bridge / Dr. Jose Rizal Park where most of these shots were taken is also good (and right by my work). The other standard Seattle skyline shots are from West Seattle looking across Elliott Bay (I don't get out there too often). There's a few other places in the city with decent skylines that I haven't shot at yet (most notably Gasworks park in Lake Union, I might brave the 4th of July there next year).

leaforte

Very nice work. I like the ominous foothill fog you captured in number two, so typical of the Olympics. Number three is also amazing. The Olympics, Quest Field, and that cool moon reflection on the water that brings it all together.

coscorrosa

SloYerRoll wrote:

Wow that first space needle shot w/ the fireworks is pretty good considering the entire show sucked. It looks like I was roughly in the same place as you. I saw a ton of shooters there. But I was just partying w/ friends that night.

You'd get 2 minutes of fireworks, then a 30 second pause.. over and over.. Then they shot off fireworks after the grand finally was over. I bet it was even more frustrating for you since you were trying to grab shots.

I'm sure the geniuses that did that won't win that contract again though.:D

Sorry for the rant. I was expecting cool stuff and got junk.

Like I said though. You did a great job capturing the moment!

Cheers,
-Jon

The show was indeed underwhelming (the experience comes off better in the photo than in person - usually I find it's the other way around!). I just had my camera on Manual and usually had the exposures from 3-5 seconds, I just clicked away continually until the show was over, it's too hard to predict and time the fireworks. The only skill involved was staying out there for two hours while it was freezing and I was inadquately dressed