rlketcham.com

The new site is done and up and running. This is the designer I work for and I love it when I can talk her into doing a redesign of her own site. The idea always starts out with “lets make it simple”, well simple isn’t. One thing I love about what I get to do is make it look simple even when it isn’t that easy to do.

A pretty straight forward, easy to update site that has a lot of little tricks to it.

Jan is a premier designer that makes sure everything is new and different for each client. You don’t get something that is sorta different from the last one, you get a unique approach to everything she does.

Check her out at jhoydesign.com and her sculpture site at sculpture.jhoydesign.com

Stopped on the beach this morning to watch the otters play and the sun came up. Took this with the Canon G9, I really wanted the otters to come in close enough to get a few of them. I can sit and watch otters for hours they are graceful and seem to enjoy everything they do.

Strobist: Winter Treat: Frozen Hummingbirds.

This is another example of capturing birds in flight with incredible detail. Great read and beautiful photos.

UPDATE on my feeders

I added another feeder with different seeds in it and now own the two lonliest bird feeders on the Olympic Penninsula. The level hasn’t changed in two weeks on the original feeder.

I am planning on going up on the roof today and looking for the warning sign in bird language that says Cats live in this house.

Sometimes things don’t go as planned.

I spent the last few weeks waiting for a weekend with good weather so I could go shoot some ideas I had with Di. I am not much on landscape photography but she really likes it so I try to figure in a shoot now and then.  Well, today was the perfect setup for a photo I really want. The shot is the sun coming up over Mt Rainier with the lowlands covered in fog. Today is the day light is going to be right, timing is right and fog is just right. Get up before dawn and we rush out of the house and head down to the spot about 45 minute drive. The gate to the highest point with a view is locked, and it is a 4 mile real steep hike. Oh yeah and it is cold outside. OK, so we go to plan B, which is, go and get breakfast and wait till the Forest Service office opens. Now we find out that the gate opens in May. May!! my memory doesn’t last that long. So that shot goes into the notebook of things I want to do sometime this year.

However one nice thing about visiting the FS office is they will direct you to all kinds of cool places to see. We managed to find a huge waterfall right off of one of the main roads that was unmarked so it doesn’t get many viewers. Spent all morning waiting for the light to get just right and about the time it did the fog rolled in and you couldn’t see 20 ft. So back to the notebook for later. Although when I got home I managed to line up a couple of people to model at the waterfall this spring. Being as it is only 150 yds off the road I think I’ll drag the lights along next time.

All in all it was a good day even if we didn’t get many shots at least we got plans for later. Which brings me to the notebook, I have always kept a list of notes on photos I want to take, or ideas that need a little more work. I love street and ‘see it shoot it’ photography, but I seem to work a little better if I have some idea of what I am trying to capture or say before I go after it. Years worth of ideas on a few pages and they keep me looking for that right moment to make them happen.