30 Seasons

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.


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.

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.

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.

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.