T.L. Mair Fine Art Photography

Sunset at Fort Casey During our stay on Whidbey Island we had the opportunity to visit many beautiful places, one of them was Fort Casey . Once on the Island we drove to our little home we had rented for the week, then we started to explore, as we were driving we came upon a row of houses that all looked alike, I told my wife I thought they looked just like the houses in Fort Yellowstone, at Mammoth Hot Springs, turns out they are the officers houses at Fort Casey, we had no idea there was, or had been a fort in that area, I guess we should have done a little homework, but then again we love the excitement of finding these places on our own. We drove into the Washington State Park at Fort Casey and had a look around, what a cool place, there is the Admiralty head lighthouse built on a little mound so it's light could be seen by  sailors to safely guide them around the rocky cost line. There are also two "Batteries" the Moore , and the Kingsbury, these ...

Sunset at Penn Cove   As we took the ferry from Mukilteo on Washington 's mainland to Whidbey Island it was kind of exciting, I had never ridden on a ferry. If you have never ridden on a ferry it is a different experience, they are big...BIG...floating parking lots, You pay the toll, they tell you where to park in the staging area, then when they are ready for you to board you drive your car onto the ferry, and they tell you where to park. Once on the ferry you can, if you want, get out of the car and move about the different decks. On the main passenger deck on the larger ferries they have a galley, and serve sandwiches, and drinks, they have booths just like in your favorite fast food place, and auditorium type seating if you don't want to sit at a booth. You can even go out on the deck to watch the waves go by, pretty cool!! Once at Whidbey Island we drove off of the ferry and began to explore what would be our home for the next week, it is a beautiful place...

Mukilteo Lighthouse #2 Recently on our first trip to northern Washington state my wife and I had decided to stay on Whidbey island .  to get to Whidbey island you have two choices, you take the ferry from Mukilteo, or you drive an extra 30 miles by going up the Burlington, then crossing the bridge, we were staying in Coupeville, and taking the ferry seemed to be the shortest distance, and my wife was looking forward to taking a ferry, neither of us had ever had that experience. The first night we stayed in Seattle , then drove up to Mukilteo to check out how to get on the ferry, and everything involved with that. While we were at Mukilteo Kena, my wife, had heard about a place called Ivar's, she had been told to not eat inside but rather to eat out under the awning so we could watch the ferries come and go, turns out there are more than one Ivar's and this one was not the one with the outside seating. After checking out the ferry, and eating dinner we deci...

The Amazing World We Live In Recently my wife and I decided to take a short trip to  Utah 's  Bryce   Canyon . We wanted to go when there was snow on the red rocks, so we kept checking the weather, waiting to hear of snow storms, wile snow is not real common in southern Utah, it does snow at Bryce Canyon, which is really not a canyon, but rather a series of "Amphitheatres"  made up of columns called Hoodoos, that make a kind of arch around the cliff face. The fact that Bryce canyon sits at just over 8000 feet means it does get snow, but this year was a different year for snow in all of Utah, we never did hear of snow storms, but time was running out for us to make a winter trip, so we booked our stay at Ruby's Inn, in Bryce Canyon City, and took our chances, as luck would have it the day we arrived it had been snowing all that day, and through the night, visibility was about 15 feet, and foggy, since we only had two full days, and a morning on the th...

Northern Monarch Ok so you have been out photographing, you've come home and downloaded the images on your card, or had your film developed. Hopefully you don't leave those images on that card! Now that you have looked at the photographs you thought were the real keepers, the ones you just couldn't wait to see, now what? If you are like me, and I would think most people are, you pick out the ones that were exactly what you thought they would be and sent them off to the printer excitedly waiting for them to arrive. But what about the other images, you know, the ones you didn't even take the time to look at, what about them? Do you delete those files to make room for more images on your hard drive? I know I may be bad, but I don't delete anything, I have three external hard drives that are loaded with images.  Some I have never even bothered to look at, others absolutely need to be deleted, you know the ones that are out of focus, or blurry because it w...

I have never really photographed a lot of  panoramic landscapes.  I did a few back in the days when you had to blend and align them yourself, but until recently I never tried the automated process in programs like Photoshop.  Depending on the program, however, you may get vastly different results. I ventured into the local mountains a few days ago, set up the camera, made all of the necessary adjustments in camera and proceeded to take a series of images to blend together for one of my new panoramic images.  The process went flawlessly because I had taken the time to do things right in the camera on site. Pleased with the results I left early one morning to take more photos.  Unfortunately there was not a very pretty sky so I decided to just take a panoramic of the valley where I live. I set up the camera in the same way, took all of the same precautions necessary to insure perfect exposure with enough overlap for the software to properly blend the ...

I call this one "Eternal" these are Mute Swans, these swans are the largest swans, slightly larger than Trumpeter Swans, Mute swans were brought here from Europe and placed in parks, and private ponds because they are so beautiful, these are the swans that you see with their necks in the classic curve, and wings up like sails. Problem is these swans are not afraid of anything, I have seen them chase off large predators, and they are beginning to displace the swans that are native to the US . I think they are beautiful birds, and I was lucky to catch these two. These are feral swans now, returning to a wild state, and were photographed in the whet lands near Midway Utah, we call this location "The river bottoms". I hope you enjoy them!!   www.tlmair.com