lessons and aimless wanderings

Monday we woke up with no agenda other than popping in and seeing some of Rhett's long time friends from Seattle, who were staying in a fab suite at the Marriott on the waterfront.  Amazing view, right?  Wow.

Rhett's friends are professional photographers and I mentioned that I had brought my camera and was thinking about selling it and getting a simpler point and shoot cause my Pentax sucked.  Wrong Right thing to say.   Alan sat down with my camera and explained shutter speed and shooting with Av, Tv, adjusting the ISO, white balance, and on and on.  He stopped when he said I really wouldn't be able to digest more, and then we went on a walk. What began as a pop in visit, became a five hour excursion with vital lessons in photography and my camera along the way.

See that bridge on the left of the photo above?  That's the Hawthorne bridge.  We walked out of the hotel, across the bridge, out onto docks on the river, and popped into OMSI (the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry- it's the white building on the river on the right side of the photo).  Along the way, I manually adjusted my camera settings, tried to picture motion, consciously framed my subjects, and shot 150+ photos.

I did a quick photo dump and here are a few from our day.. 

All photos, for the first time ever, are unedited.  

and yes, I'm silly happy about it.  

(this one is from the phone :) 

We were walking back to the hotel, crossed the bridge, and noticed a gathering.  We wandered up to the crowd and our eyes followed the hands pointed to the sky as we watched fighter jets buzz the waterfront.  Our eyes went back to the crowd, and I noticed the crowds hands' were no longer pointed to the sky and were now covering their ears.  I said "jeez, the jets weren't THAT loud".. and then BOOM times 1000.  "Holy &!#@ !!!!"  The National Guard fired round after round from their guns and mygad, it was a moment.

  

Good company.

Learning new things.

Aimless Wanderings.

Some Awe and Shock... 

The Perfect Day.

-m-