Monday, January 25, 2010

'Round Midnight Post Alley


Midnight Post Alley
Photo & Text Copyright 2009 Seattle Daily Photo. All rights reserved, including reproduction or republishing.
I took a late night photo walk after catching the last set of the Bill Frisell Trio at the Triple Door last night. Post Alley was almost deserted :-).

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice photo. I love this part of Seattle!

Luis Gomez said...

Sweet! Lovely image. It is almost an ad for a cell phone.

Chuck Pefley said...

Nice, Kim. Did you put your gum on the wall, too?

Wayne said...

How come I've never seen Post Alley?

I never get shots like this because I'm afraid to go into dark alleys at midnight.

Did Frisell play The Bacon Bunch or Tales From The Far Side? Maybe he needs more than a trio for those.

Mindy said...

Great Shot. Is that gum on the wall?

Louis la Vache said...

Very nice, Kim - a very evocative image.

Don and Krise said...

Great night time shot. The one soul walking along really offsets the amount of people that stroll through there during the day.

Oakland Daily Photo said...

Nice, melancholy,jazzy scene. I find it hard to shoot at night without everything coming out blurry. This is me tipping my hat to you.

Kim said...

Joni, I bet you do! Have you ever shown your work there?

Luis, that is too funny. I hadn't noticed how obvious her being on the phone was :-).

Chuck, not me! Just tried to avoid any fresh patches on the pavement. . .it's really sticky off the wall as well as on.

Wayne, You are going to have to wander down there next time you are in town. Find Rachel the Pig and go down the stairs next to her, or stay on the left sidewalk going down Pike Place. This area downtown meets my comfort level for late night walks--never entirely deserted even at 2 or 3 in the morning, and really pretty tame in winter. Toughest thing you might find is an inebriated soul emerging from a bar. Come on, where's your sense of adventure!? I forget that for you this is a foreign city in a violent country, so probably a good thing NOT to seek out its dark alleyways. ;^) Post Alley is never dark, though. And look at the people you might see!

Mindy, yes, that is gum on the wall--it's the famous Market Theater Gum Wall, a going phenomenon in Post Alley for the last 15 or so years. It gained widespread notoriety last year in a travel guide's "10 Most Icky Places to Visit" guide (2nd only to the Blarney Stone on the list!). You can search for shots of it I've done over the years by writing "gum wall" the search box at the top of the blog page.

Louis, thank you.

Don, that is for sure. Thank you! The next time you and Krise are up here, let's go photowalking.

Carolyn, thank you. Night shots are really impossible without a tripod, and I usually use mine out on night photowalks. But for the past couple weeks I've been experimenting with my cameras' highest ISO of 3200 and trying handheld shots. This is one of them. I am not facile enough at this setting to get the movement effect I was aiming for with the pedestrian in the shot. I would have liked to have seen a bit of blur with her feet to indicate movement. I was pleased just to get focus and exposure, period. I keep experimenting and trying to get better. I was so glad to see her coming up the alley and had to work fast to get the settings ready for when she came out of shadow and hit one of the light pools. It's still not a great shot, but hope I'm progressing.

Thanks all!

brattcat said...

Looks like someone was 'walking' her home via cell phone.