My niece Chloe is interested in photography so this weekend she came to stay with us so that we could do a photo walk and talk about all things photography related. I am sure you could imagine I didn’t have much to say *hahahahaha*. By the end of the weekend she was shooting in manual mode and understood the basics of the exposure triangle, plus we had a crash course in Lightroom and she now understands the power behind that program.
I was trying to think of a good place to take her that would help her learn the mechanics behind the camera and Snoqualmie Falls came to mind – nothing like a waterfall to learn how shutter speed works! So off we went, with the intent of walking through the small town of Snoqualmie as well. Boy were we in for a surprise … it was Railroad Days! We scored rock star parking and she took her Canon 20D with my 24-70 lens and I took my 5DMark II with my 70-200 lens and we walked and talked and shot and shot. And probably a half dozen people stopped me to ask about that lens, it was definitely a conversation starter, as you can see below!
Here are the shots I got of Snoqualmie Falls & then a photo of Chloe. Having a HUGE zoom lens didn’t really help my composition much, it was tough to try to get then entire thing in the frame – but that was what this walk was about for me … I needed to learn my new lens.
Here is Chloe, her cute nervous smile and then she composed and took a photo of the restored trains in Snoqualmie.
This is Ray – he is one of the many who stopped to talk to me about the monster lens on my camera. Ray works as a volunteer at the Northwest Railway and had all sorts of interesting stories about the train cars that were being used this weekend. In the town of Snoqualmie there is a huge building where these old cars come for restoration and storage – apparently there is a car dating back into the late 1800s (their oldest) and the oldest one on the tracks today was from the 1920s. I think we will take the boys there next weekend to take a look. And Ray was a character – after speaking with him for a good ten minutes, I finally asked if I could take his photo.
There was a crazy tree right by the trains that had these poof ball looking flowers. Loved the texture of them.
There were art murals on the sides of some of the buildings, so I had to catch Chloe taking her photo of it.
We saw what looked like a tractor of some sort that was on the rail line and the sheer industrial look of it caught my eye – it was so out of place in this little town nestled into the mountains.
And this give you more of an idea what the backdrop was like for where we were – the mountains were surrounding us.
After lunch we stumbled onto a chainsaw demonstration. I caught this succession of photos as this guy cut through a log in seconds. Then another person stopped me about my lens and we learned from him that this guy is on a US Team and is rated number one in the nation in speed for sawing through a log. And I cannot for the life of me remember his name!
Another cool art mural on the side of a building, was such a cool name/logo/concept for a eatery. It made me think of hobbits with their traveling sticks.
And my self portrait – I was there too!