Hot Heat and a Fountain Denied (and Regained).

Seattle is pretty hot right now. It's only in the upper eighties so the really hot parts of the country can still scoff and laugh at how the delicate flowers of the Pacific Northwest wilt at the first sign of a real summer. And while that's primarily true, its also true that almost no place in the Pacific Northwest has air conditioning. So while the person in Phoenix or Atlanta can sit in the 90+ heat (with added humidity for Atlanta) and mainly be cool in the air conditioned comfort. That just isn't an option for the Seattleite. There are some air conditioned buildings, I stumbled across one that I'm writing in now. But when I go home there will be no AC. And the half-million dollar house down the road will also have no AC. But tonight it should get down into the 50s so don't pack away that jacket just yet.

I really wanted to get out of the house and do something but sometimes its hard. The boys are in Oklahoma with their Mom and I don't have any scheduled activities. I've been doing school work and puttering around the house (I should have some photos from an Aperture assignment to put up on Facebook soon). I've been watching some old movies (sometimes multiple times); Five Easy Pieces, The Conversation, and The Long Goodbye. Its interesting to see what movies in the seventies looked like and the camera movements and lighting used. I also went and saw the new Captain America movie. Part of what was interesting to me was to see what was filmed versus what was added in post animation. It seems to be a stark contrast from some of the deep action that happened in older films like Oliver. Modern films like Children of Men seem to still use the concept of multiple layers of background action to capture on the film much of what you see on the screen (not that the same director didn't make Gravity where much of what you saw on the screen was composited and animated).

So I packed up some camera stuff and my laptop and hit a bus from North Seattle to downtown. I was going to take some pictures of the International Fountain at Seattle Center to experiment with shutter speed and its effect on moving objects (water from the fountain for today). I took some pictures and video out the window of the bus to see what it looks like but I don't expect any of that to be any good.

When I got to Seattle Center I found a Polish Festival. Walking around that I found a tall fence with a green screen blocking the view about eight feet up. Walking around this to get to the fountain I found the “Chive Fest” that was going on at Seattle Center also. After walking almost all of the way across the Seattle Center area I saw a sign saying the fountain was not available unless you paid to enter Chive Fest. Since the tickets were almost $80 per person I opted not to do this. Off in the distance there was a smaller fountain unrestricted by the Fest. It was also packed as many families had the same idea as me only they wanted to give the kids an opportunity to play in the fountain and cool off. They still had a fountain, albeit smaller, but the kids didn't seem to mind.

I got lots of photos of the water in various states of motion.

(300mm; F5.6; Shutter 1/4000 Sec; ISO 1600 or 3200)

(28mm; F16; Shutter 1/8 Sec; ISO 100)

Then went and got some tea from Starbucks and relaxed at the Polish Festival. A man came around and gave me a sample of some sausage (with a pickle slice). I could probably eat about a pound of that without any problem at all (it was good).

So tomorrow I'll meet up with with the 48 hour film challenge team and talk about what we're going to be doing with that. The contest goes from August 1-3 with filming on August 2. We'll see what we can do.