New Year’s Day
For the past four years on New Year’s Day, I have taken a night photo at Gasworks Park. No particular reason but over the past couple years there is a noticeable change in the cityscape. One very noticeable change this year was that the tree on top of the Space Needle is already gone. At first I thought it was just not lit but since I had also taken a day time photo at Kerry Park, I see that it’s not there either. I wonder why?
About 6:15 pm, clear and cold and Lake Union is flat calm. I brought my Xenon flash light gun and used a 10 second shutter then hitting my subject with the flashlight for about 1 second after 8 seconds had passed. Turned out pretty good.
An interesting happenstance after about 6:45pm, we were just packed up and leaving when I saw a gal swinging a pair of lit orbs. I stopped and asked her about them. Her name is Brie and she told me these glowing orbs are called “Pod Poi” (and they’re made by a company called FlowToys, click on this link to check them out) – she swings them in circular motions the way you’d see a fire twirler doing at a Hawaiian Luau, she told us that the Pod Poi are used for practice so you can eventually move up to actually swinging the fire. The Pod Poi have so many combinations of flickering or color changes, here are two of the many options. The purple/blue will pulsate so it gives an interesting dotted pattern then the rainbow colors give a smooth swirl. When I saw these on the back of the camera, I thought the dotted pattern was better but looking at them on a large monitor, I really like the smooth rainbow and the subtle silhouette of Brie. Both are equally fascinating to me, I love looking a the colors. Watching her do this was mesmerizing, and with the city lights in the background, it is a visual indulgence.
She was gracious to allow us to take some long exposures of her swinging the Pod Poi. So Brie, if you’ve found your way to the blog, thank you it was great meeting you and thank you for introducing us to PodPoi.
Here’s what I got, first at Kerry Park then at Gasworks on New Year’s Day, 2015
