July 2008 Archives

There was a 5.4 Earthquake in Southern California today and I first learned about it from several people I know in Southern California on Twitter. I'm currently listening to a SoCal new station on the internet to just keep up with what is going on. Everyone that I know in that area is doing fine and it sounds like there is no major damage.

I just remembered that we also had an earthquake here in Maryland many years ago. I  wrote about it in one of my old blogs that is no longer up and running. So I'm posting this entry from my archives.

Earthquake
December 10, 2003

On December 9th I felt an earthquake. That is not really unusual since I spent the first 35 years of my life in Southern California and have felt many earthquakes. But on December 9th I was at work in Rockville Maryland. At about 4PM a quake with a magnitude of 4.5 hit and was centered about 28 miles west of Richmond VA. They say you can have an earthquake anywhere in the world. I just never expected to feel one on the east coast. I really don't have a problem with earthquakes, as long as I'm not in a structurally weak building or driving on or under a overpass. Most of the time that I experienced a quake, I found it kind of fun and exciting. 

There will be a photowalk of the Washington DC National Mall on August 22nd at 6pm. This photowalk is being organized by Trevor Carpenter from Photowalking.org fame.

The plans are to meet on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at 6pm. We will be walking down the National Mall towards the Capital building. I'm planning on attending and several other local photographers are scheduled to attend as well.

Here is the Upcoming link and a link to a map of the route.

Get more info over at Trevor's site.

Each month in the year brings different photographic opportunities. As part of my 30 Seasons project I'm starting to document each of these opportunities so I can revisit them in the coming years.

Last year I learned about the McKee-Beshers Wildlife Management Area in Potomac Maryland. Every year the parks department plants sunflowers in a large open field. I tried to photograph the flowers last year, but I was about a week too late to get some good sunflower photos. The peak of the sunflowers are typically the second week of July.

This year I was able to keep close tabs on the development of the fields and received scouting reports from several other local photographers. This allowed me to visit the fields a couple of times this season during the peak of the sunflower blooms.

My recent visits allowed me to take a large number of photographs and several that I feel are good enough to go into my portfolio.

I plan on returning to the fields later in the year once the flower heads have gone to seed. I suspect I should be able to get some good bird photos at that time.

Here are some of the photo highlights this year from the Sunflower fields.


Sunflower Sunset — © 2008 Mark Anderson


Sunflower Light Painting — © 2008 Mark Anderson


Sunflowers in Infrared — © 2008 Mark Anderson

During the 4th of July Holiday I took the time needed to make some much needed website changes. I have now unified the look and feel of my main photography website and this 30 Seasons blog.

I have also finally gotten around to setting up a portfolio as well. My main goal was to provide a way for people to view my work, and also purchase prints if they wanted.

I debated between going with many different options on how to host my portfolio. I could have hosted my own portfolio gallery templates or go with a service. I decedided the fastest and easiest option was to go with a hosted service. There are many players in this space and I have tried most of them (i.e. PhotoShelter, SmugMug, ImageKind) but I decided on Zenfolio to host my personal portfolio. The number one reason I chose them over all the others is their partnership with MPIX for printing. I made the switch to MPIX for all my professional printing about a year ago and I love the quality. They also offer competitive printing rates and services.

So this weekend I loaded up about 100 photos to my portfolio and also updated my websites with new templates. It was a busy weekend, but I like the end result.

Please leave me a comment if you see anything odd or hinky and I will try to get it fixed as soon as possible.

I received a new Canon G9 point and shoot digital camera from my in-laws for my birthday this year. My recent vacation to California gave me a real chance to give this new camera a test. It performed like a champ and is now my "carry everywhere I go camera." The images that come off the camera are great and the size is a little larger than most compact cameras, but is still very portable. The noise at anything above 400 ISO is a little bad, but it works well in most situations.

One added bonus is this camera has video capability. For a while I was thinking of getting a Flip video camera to play around with. But my new G9 is working great as a video camera as well.

On our vacation we went to the Aquarium of the Pacific and I took several videos of the exhibits.




The video quality suits me just fine and I have been recently exploring the world of moving pictures.

The day before I left for vacation I did a family portrait shoot for a friend at work. I typically don't do portrait sittings, but I'm always willing to help out a friend.

This is the second time I did a shoot for a group of this size and I felt more comfortable with my strobist techniques. The family and I were happy with the results and I may continue to do more of these in the future.

Most of the shots I took were the run-of-the-mill variety shots. Once I had those nailed down I proceeded to do some of the fun shots I always wanted to try. As I get more comfortable with these portrait sittings, I'm willing to do some experimentation. With a group this size I was finally able to try the laying on the ground looking up shot. I was laying on the ground with my 16-35mm lens (at 16 mm) and a shoot through umbrella next to me at 1/4 power. If you have never tried this (and don't mind getting dirty) give it a try. Both the family and I were pleased with the results.