Crisp as Autumn

This morning's crisp air reminded me of the brisk of autumn!

Summer Landscapes

Today's photos are from a trip we took to Tighlman Island last summer (map at the bottom). Some days the sky cooperates nicely! The first image was taken at f2.8 as I was playing with infinity focusing and hyperfocal distance (at 16mm, focusing at 10 feet will yield depth of field from 5ft - infinity). The third image has a .6sec shutter speed to get some flow in the watter, but still sharp enough to show ripples.





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Baseball is in the Air!

It seems that even during the Winter Olympics people are already buzzing of Baseball. Maybe it's hoping for a warm summer. Here's a shot from last season from my favorite stadium, Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

Taken at f/10 @ 16 mm, 1/400 sec, ISO 320,

The Anticipation of Snow - the one that's with you

In anticipation of DC's second major snow storm of the season, I thought I'd give a little warm up from a relatively light snow from earlier this week. Although it was only a couple inches, it was absolutely one of the prettiest snowfalls in history because it was so light that it stuck to every single branch on every tree.

I went out in the morning and walked outside and naturally saw a beautiful scene. It is frequently said (and the title of Chase Jarvis' Book) that the best camera is the one that's with you. I of course didn't have any of my good camera equipment with me that morning, nor do I have an iphone with fancy buttons on it, so I dusted off my 4 year old 6 MP Olympus Stylus 600 that was reviewed on CNET in 2005 and grabbed a few pictures. As you can tell I pushed a little bit of the contrast and colors in a few of these.

Stay safe and bundled up out there!






The snow on the tree looks like cherry blossoms! Almost reminds me of spring.

Capitol Dome - Directional Light

This is a shot from just after my photo session with Rody last week. This was taken around 4:15 where the sun is coming in from a nice direction creating individual shadow detail making for a a nice 3D effect. Shadows are just as important as light. Because of the slight cloud cover I also got some of the setting colors reflected nicely.

Look what's behind you

Last Spring I woke up early one morning during cherry blossom blossoming week to try and catch a sunrise over the water. Low and behold the morning was dismal grey, I was able to grab a few shots I liked anyway. Just as I was about to pack up I turned around and saw all these really interesting trees that were mostly going ignored by the 1000 photographers out that morning.

So many people say to buy an apple...

Debbie and I went down to Charlottesville, VA for our Anniversary last month and it was apple picking season. It was great being able to just use my camera without the over lurking fear of giving a client a screwed up product...of course I'm not sure if that's worse then giving my wife a screwed up product. More in another post about the place we stayed, this one is all about the apples.


I knew I wanted to grab a picture of Debbie, and although it wasn't completely planned to do a multi-framed image, I new that her nack for goofy expressions would come in handy. She has since given up on not getting her picture taken and has learned to just live with it as she knows I'm never going to make her look bad (not that I could if I tried).

I had a manfrotto 682B mono-pod with me that afternoon that I got used off of ebay. It's a little large for my taste, but it has little legs that come out the bottom if unscrewed so it can double as portable light stand when needed, although I wouldn't trust my kit on it without me very close. To this I screwed a justin clamp (the if I can only take one thing with me doo-dad) and put a lumiquest SBIII on the flash head and gelled it with a small amount of CTO, you can see this WB effect based on the blue shadow on her shadow side cheek.

I brought the whole thing in real close just out of the frame to the left. The lighting wasn't incredibly consistent with a few hot spots here and there. My excuses include: the wind blowing, the people we were holding up, and a lot of apples to hold, so I had to work quick. But in reality, I probably only notice them in comparison to each other. You can tell the effect of the flash based on the one in the middle which was shot sans flash continuous shooting to ensure I caught the right amount of apples in the air....again...there's only so many times you can get Debbie to pick up that many apples.

A couple ambient only shots:

Some of the last bit of Color

....not really. As photos last a bit longer than the leaves, we can always remember it. I'll be doing just that over the next several weeks.... as the last of the leaves change and wash away, I'll try to stretch fall out a little longer...don't worry I don't think I have any more leave pictures!

This photo has a small white balance push towards tungsten (not all of the way).  Most SLR's have the ability to finesse white balance manually away from the pre-programmed settings by adjusting degrees of blue/yellow and green/magenta in a grid like pattern.  This one entailed a slight blue/magenta shift to bring out the purple hues in the leaves.

Country Road Church

I alway see churches like this in movies, so when Debbie and I were out for a bike ride just south of Charlottesville, I had to spin off the road to grab a few frames while the sky was cooperating giving me those great white on blue streaks.

Because of the great contrast between the statue and the sky I went out of automatic metering to ensure I underexposed below what the camera would think it should be to get good saturation of blues and greens.

Funny.....here's the same view from google

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Old Skool Pension Bureau

Looking down the street at the National Building Museum  (used to house the Pension Bureau) it's not hard to imagine horses and carriages on the street circa 1890 instead of the newer fad of "auto"-mobiles now present.  to help the imagination, a few simple steps of significant burning around the edges, half-toning, and bringing up the black point.

Small White Balance Shift

The human eye/brain is pretty amazing at fooling you and telling you lights are the same color when they're actually not. The camera goes through a process to try and figure out what the actual color of white is (or should be) and attempts to make white look like white (or grey look like grey). Outside it's actually blue-ish, your house is more orange, and many fluorescents are actually green. 90% of the time I control my white balance manually allowing more control over what colors are subdued or pop. Try going outside while setting your white balance on tungsten and see what happens, I spoke about this once before.

High Contrast Scenes

As some of you may have noticed, I've been doing a lot of high contrast scenes the last week and it's kind of been on purpose.  Just trying to push in some interesting directions and make the ordinary a little more interesting.  Here's one I saw after getting out of the car on my street.  With the leaves falling and cars going by it makes a really interesting line going down the street.  Combine that with some extremely narrow depth of field and you've got yourself a picture.

I tried using my car for the picture because my hubcap is cracked so I thought it might be more interesting, but the splash of red from the volvo(?) tail-light won me over on this picture instead.  I like the perspective line of the cars, the line of leaves, the narrow depth of field line leading you to the wheel and the red tail-light leading my eyes up.......maybe I'm just looking at pictures too much.

The Halloween Spirit

Just something to put you in the Halloween spirit.

Overlooking the City

The Capitol dome on a background of a cloudy sky.

Looking Down on Fall

Decided to change my view a little bit and get up high. It's interesting what you can see when you're up there just looking around.

Hard at Work

I like the contrast of the book clad office with the cars on the street below. Sometimes you forget when your in your office about the world around you, but when you're on another building looking at 10 or 15 people in their offices, it's an interesting sight.

Senate Park

I've been walking by this spot for several weeks and finally decided to grab the tri-pod. I kept looking around for the police, but surprisingly I wasn't stopped....first time. The second one is an HDR for two of the zones, and I was amazed a the cone of light coming off the top of the dome.

Police and Perspective (distortion that is)

It never seems to fail that anytime I go out at night with a tri-pod I get stopped by the police, never during the day. I understand they're just doing their job and I'm always polite to them....but do terrorists only do surveillance at night?

Beautiful Day

I do a lot of my work at Georgetown Law School, so when you're going back and forth between events and the weather is beautiful, you just have to grab shots and make the ordinary into the extra-ordinary.

And of course you get a chance to play around with wide angle distortion when you're not screwing up anybody's face.

Enchanting Halls of Government

Something about this passageway grabs a lot of people.  In fact, it's always interesting to put someone in that first window on the right and make them do something zanny....maybe another post....for now we only get the couple fading away.