30 Seasons

Talent Show Portraits

2009-05-13T14:22:10Z

A couple of years ago I was asked to take photos for my daughters elementary school talent show. The photos were going to be used in the yearbook and were also sold as a fund raiser for the PTA. At that time I was starting to practice my new found "strobist" techniques and setup a black backdrop and 2 speedlights to shoot the portraits for about 40 different acts. It was a great learning experience.

This year I was out shooting at the Maryland Zoo when I received a call asking if I was available to take the photos again this year. The only problem was that the talent show was that night and the photographer they had scheduled was unable to attend. I have been actively seeking opportunities to shoot portraits for my portfolio so I agreed to shoot the event.

I already had a roll of white seamless, so on the night of the dress rehearsal I setup my equipment and the white seamless and proceeded to photograph over 40 different acts and individual portraits.

This time I had four speedlights, two in the front and two in the back to make sure the white seamless was truly blown out white.

The kids were great and both the parents and I are very happy with the results. I'm already anticipating the call again for next year.

Photographing for Zoo Auction

2009-04-26T14:25:00Z

One of the advantages (or disadvantage) of being unemployed is you have time to volunteer for charity projects during the day. I have been spending a great deal of time for the past couple of weeks photographing items that will be used for a Smithsonian National Zoo online auction.

One of the main fundraising events that the Zoo hosts each year is Zoofari. They always have a silent auction at the event and this year they added the online auction as well.

You can view and bid on the items at the Zoofari link. The auction ends on May 13th.

Here is a selection of some of the items I photographed.

Monocacy Battlefield

2009-03-21T14:16:23Z

Yesterday I visited the Monocacy Civil War battlefield for a couple of hours. I have driven past this area hundreds of times but this was the first time I visited the park. My plan for this trip was just to scout out the area to find potential subjects I want to shoot for my Civil War in Infrared project. Ideally when I shoot in infrared I'm primarily looking for puffy white clouds in a blue sky. On this day I had almost complete cloud cover so many of the infrared photos I took look very ominious.

Overall I think I found some good subjects but none of the photos I took are good enough for my project. Since this area is very close to my house, it will be easy to return to try and get something that can be added to my project. Now that I know what I'm looking for in this area, I can come back when the clouds and foliage are just right.

Here are a selection of photos from this recent trip.

For those that are interested the Monocacy Battlefield is the site of a Civil War battle that occurred south of Frederick Maryland on July 9th, 1864. This was a small battle in comparission to Gettysburg or Antietam but it proved to be very crucial for the Union troops to protect Washington DC. The Union troops at Monocacy were outnumbered and outgunned against the Confederate forces. They held their ground and delayed the Confederate advance by a day. They lost a great number of men and lost the battle but they were able to delay the Confederate troops that were marching towards Washington DC. This delay gave the Union soldiers time to reenforce Fort Stevens in Northwest Washington which saved the Nations Capital.

Luke at the National Zoo

2009-03-18T18:40:04Z

For the last month or so I have been spending more time at the National Zoo. I recently took over as the leader of the Friends of the National Zoo photoclub and have been meeting with the zoo staff on a regular basis to handle transition issues. The photoclub has some great members and the Zoo is starting to use our photos on a regular basis for the website and zoo magazine. We have also been volutering to shoot the weekend events. This past Saturday I shot the Cockadoodle Zoo event and I dropped off photos from that event yesterday. After my meeting with the zoo photographer I went to visit Luke the lion.

It is amazing how big Luke has gotten in the past year. Here is a selection of photos I took from my visit. My what big teeth you have there Luke.

Photowalking DC at Night

2009-03-09T14:13:39Z

On Saturday night I met up with about 40 other photographers at the Lincoln memorial for a photowalk along the Potomac river at night. The event was setup and hosted by Shawn Duffy and I think everyone that showed up had a great time.

I haven't done very much night photography so I had plenty of lessons learned to take away from this event.

The first challenge I found was not specific to night photography but to my natural tendency to compose tight shots. I felt like I didn't bring a long enough lens. I had my 16-35mm and my 24-105mm lens. I could have really used my 70-200mm zoom to get some tighter compositions. Almost all of my shots were taken near the 100mm range and I was always wanting to get closer. The plus side is that I was forced to think wide and I had to take my time to look for interesting wide angle compositions.

The second challenge I found was getting good focus in a dark situation. On some of the closer subjects I was able to use my flash light to get good focus of the subject. On others I was able to focus on the brightly lighted monuments or buildings. But when I got back to my desk to review the photos, many of them were just too soft. Most of the time I was trying to use the hyperfocal distance to ensure adequate focus throughout the scene. For example at a 100mm focal length and F16, shooting a subject about 200 meters away the hyperfocal distance would have been about 21 meters. That means everything from 21 meters to infinity should have been in focus. So I'm thinking that the softness had to be due to camera shake during a 15-30 second exposure. So I either need to check my ball head to make sure its stable, or it could have been movement on the ground or bridge due to the cars passing by. I will need to go out and experiment some more to try and determine a good solution to this problem.
Before the event I had some ideas on what I wanted to accomplish. One was to do a little light painting of some statues that are on the bridges in DC. For this shot I had to use my flashlight on the subject to obtain good focus. Then during the 30 second exposure I took my flashlight and painted light on the dark side of the statue. I spent most of my time trying to highlight the faces. I also tried some light painting on the VietNam memorial statue with a blue gell. But I was not as happy with that result.

This was also the first time I have walked across the bridge and shot from the George Washington Parkway side of the Potomac river. This is one location I would like to come back to shoot some more, both during the day and night.

At the end of the walk I started to head towards the metro station and home along the empty reflecting pool. The water is currently drained while they do some maintenance and repairs. There were a couple of puddles of water in the pond and I noticed some great reflections of the monuments. So I ventured out into the pond and took advantage of the opportunity. Its not very often that you get a chance to take a shot of the monuments from the middle of the reflecting pool. The water in the middle was only about an inch deep, so I was able to line up this shot of Lincoln.

Overall I'm happy with the results of the recent walk and I'm anxious to get back out taking photos at night. You can view more photos taken by other photographers on the Flickr group Shawn setup for this event.

A Red Panda Story

2009-03-04T21:33:57Z

The Red Pandas love the cold and a recent snow storm dropped a couple of inches of snow at the National Zoo. The fresh snow provided an excellent chance for Shama to enjoy the change in the weather and relax in the snow. Red Pandas typically live in cool temperate forests on the Himalayan foothills. They range from western Nepal through northern Burma and in the mountains of southwestern China. A Red Panda typically weighs between seven and fourteen pounds.

On this fine afternoon, Shama was sun bathing in her favorite tree. All of a sudden she sees an interloper jump into her yard.

Here you see a small squirrel. He weighs about half a pound and he is intent on getting to the food tray that is connected to Shama's tree.

He carefully approaches Shama to see if she is willing to share her food. It has been a long winter and he needs to find some food and the Red Panda food is very tasty. Shama doesn't approve and the squirrel needs to improvise.

His solution is to climb up higher in the tree and knock some snow onto Shama to see if he can shake her from the perch.

A quick check and he sees that she has decided to move and he can now eat his Red Panda food in peace.

Now you may ask, "Where is Tate, Shama's new boyfriend?" Well he is oblivious to all that is going on and relaxing in the snow.

You can learn more about the National Zoo's Red Pandas at the Zoo website.

New Desktop Wallpapers

2009-02-20T18:14:43Z

One of my goals for this year was to increase the amount of marketing I do for my photography. One of the ideas I had many years ago was to create some desktop wallpaper images that I can give out to people. When I was working I would try to rotate my desktop wallpaper on a monthly basis. People that stopped by my desk liked the different images and asked if they could have the wallpaper as well. So I started creating them for people to use.

I haven't done that in a while and I figured that giving back to the community by creating wallpapers would also help me with my goal of marketing my photography. So here are two recent desktop wallpapers that I created that you can download for your computer. Click on the image to be taken to a page that gives you different sizes for your computer.

Cruising Down the Road

Mist in the Trees

They are free for your personal use. I just ask that you do not use them as a basis for creating additional graphics. If you wish to link to the images, please do so by linking to my wallpaper page, and not to the files directly. Thank you very much.

A Trip to Gettysburg Battlefield

2009-02-17T15:04:05Z

On Presidents day I headed up to Gettysburg to spend a couple of hours on my Civil War Infrared project. I also planned to stay for some sunset photos over the battlefield. While heading up to the Gettysburg area I noticed some great cloud structures in the sky which works very well to show contrast in Infrared photos. I also decided prior to going up that I wanted to concentrate on black and white infrared (rather than my normal orange toned IR photos.) I can process them either way, but I went up trying to pre-visualize my results in black and white.

When I arrived at the battlefield (near the Pennsylvania monument) I was happy to see that the cloud patterns were excellent and I was very happy with the results.

I also brought my color camera and grabbed some color photos as well.

I was not as happy with the sunset photos because I forgot my split ND filter at home so I had to play with these in Lightroom to get the foreground details to show up. That just means I need try again.

Upcoming Photowalking Events

2009-02-15T15:05:02Z

The weather is starting to warm up and spring is just around the corner. It seems like the Photowalk vibe is starting to pick up again.

Shawn Duffy has just announced a night time photowalk of the Potomac near the Lincoln memorial. His photowalk will be held on March 7th and will start at 7PM. I'm planning to attend and I'm looking forward to getting some good night time shots along the Potomac. You can get additional details and a map of the route at Shawn's website.

Andy Smith has also announced a photowalk of the Harrisburg PA downtown area on April 18th at 10AM. I was recently told by a friend that the Capital building in Harrisburg was modeled after the Paris Opera house and it would be a great place to take photos. I'm looking forward to my first visit of this city and photowalking is a great way to get to know a place. You can get more details about this walk on Andy's website.

I recently started working on plans for the next photowalk I want to host. I'mplanning to host a photowalk of downtown Frederick MD. I have the route mapped out and I just need to determine the date for the walk. My plan is for a weekend in March. Once I have the date set I will post the information here and at all the various regular announcment sites.

Speaking of photowalk announcment sites, here are some resources to help you find a photowalk near you:

Flickr.com city based groups.
Photowalking.org
Photowalklist.com

If you have no idea what Photowalking is about, head on over to this Wikipedia entry on Photowalking.

A Radio Announcer Portrait Shoot

2009-02-13T15:34:49Z

On Monday of this week I did a photoshoot of a radio announcer that is building a website to promote his freelance voice talents for radio and TV. In preparation for this shoot I re-watched the Strobist DVD set so I can refresh my lighting techniques. If you don't have the DVD set, I highly recommend it if you want to learn about using small battery powered flashes for professional results.

I'm starting to build my own portfolio so I can earn some extra income doing headshots and family photoshoots. At my old office I frequently shot many of the financial advisers that visited our offices for marketing and promotion photos. For this photoshoot JJ was looking for headshots, eviornmental portraits, and some studio detail shots that can be used on his website. He had some ideas of what he wanted, but he gave me free reign to be experimental as well.

Here is a selection of some of the photos that I liked from the photoshoot.

I'm still looking to build up my portfolio. So if you are interested in getting your own photos, please feel free to contact me and we maybe able to work out a deal.

Some Mistakes I Like

2009-02-12T20:04:09Z

On Monday of this week I did a photoshoot for a local radio announcer that is building a website to promote his voice talents for radio and tv spots. I have been trying to build up a portfolio of people photos to help me gain some freelance photo work myself. I will post some of the highlight photos later in another post.

While processing the photos my first run through the batch is to mark my rejects (i.e. out of focus, bad composition, blinkies, etc.) In Lightroom I just quickly hit the X key as I cycle through the shoot to mark my rejects. Usually I hide my rejects from my views so I can quickly pair down the photos I need to review to output for proofs. While I was marking the rejects I mistakenly marked another photo with an X when I wanted to mark it as a P (a pick.) So I turned my filter view back to show all and this photo was near it. For some reason I took a closer look at it and decided to spend about 2 minutes playing with it.

I boosted the exposure, did some curve adjustments, and converted to black and white. For some reason I really like this mistake. I love the look he is giving me and I like the texture his skin has in the photo.

For this photo shoot I had two 580EX flashes firing through shoot through umbrellas. I had one directly behind him pointing at a brownish wall at half power to make the background white. I had another to his left front at about 90 degrees firing at quarter power. The front umbrella didn't fire (batteries were starting to go.) The light from the back bounced off the side walls and ceiling and even off the front umbrella to give this weird back lighting effect. The back strobe ended up being the key light and everything else was the fill. This type of effect gives me ideas on how I can capitalize on this type of look. Lighting from the back is an interesting concept and I will need to play around with this idea some more.

Missing Photography and Missed Photos

2008-12-30T17:44:00Z

All of the experts say that if you want to improve your photography you need to take lots of photos. The best way to accomplish that is to take pictures on daily basis. Several months ago I started a project that got me to take photos on a daily basis. Back in July of this year I started a photoblog called My Drive.

At my old job I would drive into work before sunrise each day and I usually would be heading home around sunset. Each morning I would see great photographic opportunities as the sun rose above the horizon. So I started to bring my camera each day and I would shoot what looked good from the car. On the drive home I would see remarkable sunsets and I would shoot images from the car on the way home. As I was driving I would see something remarkable and I would point my camera in the general direction and fire multiple frames blind out the window. YES, I kept my eyes on the road when driving, all of my shots were either shot without looking, stopped at a light, or pulled over by the road. Every once in a while something would be worth posting to my website.

I have now been without a job since the middle of November and I'm finding I'm really missing this project. I still try to bring my camera with me on outings, but I'm not driving during the magic hours any longer, so the good shots are very hard to come by. I will keep posting images when I get them, but my focus for now is on finding a new job.

While I was working on the mydrive project I noticed several missed photos on the days I didn't bring my camera or was not able to pull off a blind shot.

A perfect example is a wonderful scene I saw about a month ago. While driving to work one morning I was heading down my street. The sun was just rising above the horizon and the rays of the sun were filtering through the trees on the horizon. It was the type of shot I see on a regular basis and would have been enough for me to grab for the camera to try and get the shot. However, also at that time a landscaper was riding a mower cutting the grass, he was heading straight towards the scene I was looking at. Right as he was about to be silhouetted by the sun he hit patch of dirt and a cloud of dust was thrown in the air by the mower. It was the perfect silhouette of the man on the mower, a halo of dust, and yellow sun rays filtered through the trees in the horizon and giving him a wonderful halo of light. It was a wonderful scene. Even though I didn't have a camera with me at the time, I brought my hand to my face as if I had a camera and made a camera click sound to capture the moment in my mind. I still remember it vividly to this day and I don't think I would have noticed it if I wasn't in the practice to always be looking for photos.

My First Magazine Cover Photo

2008-12-22T14:02:29Z

Here is a copy of the cover for the January/February 2009 issue of Celebrate Gettysburg. I have been published in several magazines in the past, but this is my first cover. Celebrate Gettysburg is a lifestyle magazine that serves the local Gettysburg community. It is published on a bi-monthly basis and is available for free in many of the local Gettysburg hotels and shops. They have a mailed circulation of over 10,000 issues and a readership of over 20,000. It maybe a small publication, but it is my first cover photo.

This shot was taken at the Gettysburg photowalk I lead back in May of this year. During the walk I shot this image of snap peas at a stall in the farmers market. Vendors setup stalls on Saturday mornings in the town circle.

The magazine should be available now in the town of Gettysburg and I'm planning on heading up there over the Christmas holiday to pickup a couple of copies.

Family Christmas Cards

2008-12-19T20:34:43Z

This is probably the only time in the year that I actually look forward to checking the mailbox on a daily basis. We have entered the Christmas Season and our mailbox starts receiving Christmas cards from friends and family from all over the world. My wife's aunt, uncle and cousin in Tasmania would be the card that travels the furthest.

It seems like more and more of the cards we receive each year are family photos and as a photographer these are the cards I appreciate the most. It is great to see the kids grow each year.

We have been sending out family cards for as long as we have been married. Just like the rest, we started sending out photo cards about 6 years ago when I got my first digital camera. There are vendors everywhere that make sending out photo greeting or holiday cards as simple as shoot, click, and buy. My preferred vendor for all my prints and photo cards is MPIX.com. After a couple of years of sending out the standard family photo in front of the fireplace, Christmas tree, etc., I decided to experiment with my photoshop skills.

So in 2005 we sent out our first themed Christmas Card which was a hit to all the friends and family.

In 2006 we sent out a high contrast black and white family portrait which was trendy from the GAP ads at the time. Then in 2007 Michele and I started thinking of ideas for the next card during Thanksgiving. At that time there was a documentary on TV about Andy Warhol and the theme of the 2007 card was set.

This year we started thinking about our plans for the Christmas card at the start of November. I knew I was going to create a composite image so I setup a white seamless backdrop in one of the spare rooms in the house. We had all kinds of ideas on what we wanted to do. Then at lunch we were talking about memories of Christmas and I mentioned that my Grandmother always had ribbon candy in a bowl for Christmas. It is the kind of candy that looks ohh sooo good, but in reality is sticky, hard, and not that tasty. We both laughed at the memories of Grandma candy and our theme was set.

The next step was to find some, which surprisingly wasn't very hard. The local CVS had it and we bought a box. When we got home for the shoot I opened the box and found most of the pieces were broken, and the ones that were not were terrible colors. So back to CVS and we bought 2 additional boxes hoping for a good piece. After some test shots of the candy we started doing some mockups for the various poses we wanted to try. Here is one of those mockups. My plan was to shoot each person individually and then composite it into a single image for the card. Check out the mad drawing skillz in my mockup.

After several test shots and different versions of composites, we have arrived at the Christmas card for 2008.

We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Joyous New Year.

Harpers Ferry Photowalk

2008-11-13T00:02:29Z

A couple of weekends ago I attended the Harpers Ferry photowalk hosted by Jeff Revell. One of my favorite times of the year to shoot is Fall. This year I haven't been out photographing much this season, so I was glad I had a chance to get out and shoot some of the Fall color. Harpers Ferry makes for a great location for Fall colors.

I have been to this location a couple of times to photograph at the Bolivar Heights for some of my Civil War work. This photowalk provided me my first chance to take some time and walk around the town. It is a small historic community and there are plenty of subjects to shoot anytime of the year.

On each photowalk I try to experiment with my equipment when I set out on the walk. The last couple of photowalks I brought my 180mm Macro lens for the 5D and my 24-105mm on my Infrared converted 400D. The infrared always gives me a different perspective and the 24-105mm lens works best on that camera. The 180mm macro on the 5D gives forced me to have a different view of the world around me and gave me some excellent results.

On this photowalk I brought the IR camera and I choose the 16-35mm ultra-wide lens for my 5D. I liked the almost fisheye quality this lens gave me on my subjects.

Shown below are a few photos from the walk. I also have a set of photos up on Flickr. You can also view the other participant photos in the Flickr pool setup by Jeff.

Vintage Ride

Harpers Ferry Foot Bridge

Ivy on Brick