Waiting for Heidi

A few weeks back I met my good friend Heidi downtown for pizza and beer at Rocco’s (more about that place in a bit). Nevertheless, since I had the afternoon off work and didn’t want to wait indoors for our meetup, I headed downtown an hour early with camera in tow.

Now, I’ve seen this elephant before, lastly when my buddy John visited over Thanksgiving, and we simply took a few shots with our Smart Phones. But this time I had my Canon S5, so I grabbed an HDR:

I’m fairly certain that this might be my greatest HDR capture yet. Especially with the blue skies and white clouds behind, thanks to Photomatix for helping me pop the colors and contrast (Of course, I cannot wait for Photoshop CS5, check out the new HDR file handling it boasts. Can I get a Boom Shakka Lakka?).

Here are the rest of the shots I captured while waiting. All in all I’d say arriving early was worth the wait!

From the archives

I found a bunch of CDs full of old photos spanning all the way back to my days at Oregon State. More to come, I’m sure, as I’m sifting through thousands of photos in my spare time.

The picture of Ichiro is when The Sentinel scored a press pass for me and some photographers at Safeco Field (I used somebody else’s camera). The “No Alcohol” photo used to be my desktop background at school (ironic, eh?). And the bottom photo is my cousin’s children watching the eagles fly along Lake Coeur d’Alene.

Beer slushy

I put a beer in the freezer this afternoon to get it chilled. Two hours later, it was definitely chilled – it poured like a 7-11 slushee. After sitting in the glass a few seconds it grew … and grew … and grew!