There are times when the world looks really bleak … more bleak than a few weeks of Seattle gray strung together like an antique necklace which hasn’t aged well. Then there are brilliant pops of sun that show up allowing you the light to see the patina and history of the necklace, giving it new life and character.

Monday was that day. My cousin was in town and he brought the sunshine we all needed to take our blue tinted lenses and turn them rosy. Spring is here and with it brings new life, opportunities and a fresh start.

Trust that this will happen and the rest will fall into place.

What a stunning day. Blue skies, dark alleys, projects wrapping up and time with my bride approaching on the horizon. It feels almost like I’m about to exit a black and white alley and step into a world of technicolor bliss. Just a few more massive frothy puddles to dodge and I’m home free.

The sun is out in Seattle and for that we are grateful. Spring is just around the corner, freeing us from the annual darkness and gray.

For now we bask in the frosty warmth.

Ok, so these are admittedly a bit odd and out of the norm from my standard photo a day. They’re a composition of two separate shoots I did this morning, one in Pike Place Market‘s alley next to the gum wall and the other is Anthony’s on Pier 66. The latter is one I almost included in the photo a day series last year on 8.30.2010 … somehow managed to not include it because of a great panorama. This was just two days after I leapt from the sky at Skydive Snohomish and three days before Spun left Starbucks to get going on Smitten + Spun. What a week that was!

So ever since then I’ve been waiting for a pristine day. One that is crystal clear where even the clouds that added nice texture to that missing photo were gone from the sky.

Today was that day. For some reason though, having this massive blue canvas behind the point of the roofline felt really empty, especially after walking through Pike Place Market. So I improvised with something bizarre. Two apps Pro HDR (a tried and true app that I’ve been using long before Apple decided to make an HDR option for the iPhone) and one that I use almost every day, The Best Camera.

So the wonkieness comes in with how I used Pro HDR. I didn’t just use two shots of different exposures, I used two totally different photos and merged them together. It took some finessing to adjust which was better suited for the brighter/darker image, but once I got that squared away, it was just a matter of tweaking the contrast, hue, etc a bit to get it the way I wanted. From there, I took these mutant, layered, mishmashed images into Best Camera and tweaked the hell out of the color on them.

Yes, blue skies in seattle are a rarity, according to KOMO News we get 58 a year. I’ve heard … sadly … elsewhere it’s as high as 71. So why nuke the sky with graffiti? Because I’m optimistic that we’ll have another one soon, and this was just too much fun to not use the blue canvas as a painter’s paradise.