Moving around within in Seattle is fairly easy. You can simply take the bus/metro to Westlake Station and visit the Pike Place Market. At the Pike Place Market, you can taste the fresh seafood (with a price) or simply enjoy the liveliness of the stores there. From there, visit the first Starbuck Coffee shop (the queue is very long) or go down to the Alaskan Way. Along the Alaskan Way are the piers with a different kind of energy. The ship to Canada depart from one of the piers.

Alternatively, from Westlake Center (beside Westlake Station), take a train to the Space Needle. Enjoy the show, watching the water dances with the music at the International Fountain.

You can also take a stroll eastward to the International District Station, observing the beautiful buildings, e.g. Seattle Public Library – Central Library. The Chinatown town is just beside the International District Station. On the other side of the International District Station, there are the Century Link Field, home of the Seattle Seahawks American Football Team, and Safeco Field, home of the Seattle Mariners Baseball Team.

Possible short 1 to 2 hours tours are the Duck Tour (starting at Westlake Center) and the Underground Tour (at Pioneer Square). The Duck Tour will take you to some sights of Seattle, including Lake Union, Space Needle, etc. Whereas, the Underground Tour, as its name mentioned, took us back in time to see the old Seattle, where the ground floor used to be.

These are some of the photos taken in Seattle.

Lightning occurs very fast. Before we can react to snap, the lightning is over. To me, taking photo of lightning bolt was like a gamble. We have to snap before the lightning strike.

I had attempted to take photos of the lightning before on a stormy night, but without any success. I remembered very clearly, that evening, I saw a lot of lightning flash. But I could not tell the actual direction where the lightning was occurring.

I could only point my camera in a general direction which I believe was the lightning storm. It was a fruitless attempt.

Few evening ago, it was another thunder storm. This time, I could see the lightning bolt with my naked eyes. I quickly set up my tripod and camera with my quick release control.

I was not sure what setting to use. I used Tv mode to check the aperture to use. From there, I switched to full manual mode, using the setting previously found with a -2 Ev. I also set the camera to continuously shooting. I used the quick release to lock the shooting. That means that I would continuously shooting photos.

It was quite fortunate that the lightning was quite often that evening. This allowed me to change my setting along the way. I found the exposure of 4 sec, aperture of f/9.0 and ISO 400 gave me the best effect. Or maybe, it was because I was not so lucky when I was trying other settings.

Anyway, out of over 130 photos, I managed to get some nice photos. I am wondering, how people take photos of lightning in the days of using film.

These are the better ones of the lightning photos.

The 2010 Summer Youth Olympics is currently taking place in Singapore from 14th to 26th August 2010. We only have this window to take the photos of the 2010 Summer Youth Olympics Cauldron Lit Up.

Zoom in shot of 2010 Summer Youth Olympics Cauldron

2010 Summer Youth Olympics Cauldron

I wanted to bring out the darkness of Gundam Wing Mobile Suit. So I have to work mostly in darkness and used LED touches as my main sources of light.

Sometime back, I did some operations to insert a LED in each of my Gundam Deathscythe Scale Models, to light up the green eyes. I think the green eyes bring out the mysteries and darkness of this Gundam scale model series.

It was a fun experience taking photos of Gundam Deathscythe and Gundam Deathscythe Hell.

Enjoy the photos taking session, too.

As far as possible, I will get my camera, but on my macro lens, and take photos of these creatures visitors….

Some are very co-operative to be my model, but most are not…. now I am putting these photos up…

Nowadays, most people own a digital point and shoot camera? Can these camera capable of taking good, beautiful fireworks photos? Especially those with trailing lights?

I had shot many fireworks with Point and Shoot Cameras before I bought my DSLR Canon EOS 400D. Let see how the effect come out. (please on the picture for larger version.)

My very first digital camera was Olympus C200 Zoom. I did not know much about camera then. This camera did not offer me much control. My best setting was automatic night shoot.

Taken using Olympus C200 Zoom Camera in 2004

Years later, I thought I need a better camera, one with higher megapixels. So I bought the Canon Powershot A95. This camera provided me with full control over the setting. But I did not make full use of these setting.

Taken using Canon Powershot A95, P Mode.

Soon, I learnt some techniques to shoot fireworks. Fortunately, there was the fireworks festival for me to try out these techniques. I was surprised by the effects, especially the trailing lights.

Taken using Canon Powershot A95, Manual Mode

After I got my EOS 400D, I hardly use any Point and Shoot Camera for some time. But I still get a Point and Shoot Camera as a carry around camera. Recently, I decided to try out this point and shoot camera’s capability to shoot fireworks.

Taken using Canon Powershot A470 using SCN-Fireworks Mode

This camera does not provide much manual control. It has special scenes function. The fireworks functions works well. The reason why the fireworks was so small was because I was too far away. And I was operating another camera, (see my earlier post.)

In conclusion, Point and Shoot Cameras are capable of shooting fireworks with trailing light. The important items are, we need a tripod (or some good support) and the right setting. The setback is that, the zoom is not as fast as with DSLR Zoom lens.

Shot quite a number of Fireworks photos.

There are a lot of resources on the web on how to take fireworks photo. And example would be this http://pinurl.com/ixg