Photo Of The Week (Another Day)

Canon 17-85mm f 4-5.6 IS USM          ISO 100   66mm  1/160  @  f 9.0

Hello again everyone.......

This next image is not the one I was planning on posting, but every time I show this picture to folks I get the same "that's one of my favorites" response. So I thought I would go with what the folks want and this is one of my favorites as well.

Like my first post, this image was taken overlooking the Shenandoah Valley.  The exception is that this is the sunrise of the next morning. It was just as cold as it was for the sunset but the warm, fresh coffee we had helped out. One of the good and bad things about being a photographer is getting up before dawn to go out and shoot. The good is you don't have to deal with people getting in your way, the bad is well you have to get up before dawn. When I look at what I shot every time I drag myself out of bed in the early morning it's always worth it, as you can see in this image. This shoot was no different, we had to drag our selves out of bed at 6:00am, it was cold and windy, but that sunrise was so stunning it was worth it.

I think this picture is a great example of changing your view of the shot and thinking outside the box. I read a great book by Scott Kelby and one of the things I remember was if you don't like the shot you have, take three steps left or right and change your angle to the subject. I like to take that a bit farther, in some cases the best way to get a better shot or a different shot is to get down on one knee and that's it. That’s what happened on this shot.  I was shooting the sunrise and after and few shots I thought to myself, OK what else can I do, that's when you have to move around and find another angle or find another subject or something else to put in the frame. Doing those little things can make a normal image something special.

Photo Of The Week (Only The Red)

Now this picture is one of my favorites! I know it's just another flower, yippee! But this flower is something more to me. This is the flower that changed things for me as far as photography goes. Now understand, I have taken many pictures before this one. Nice pictures too. But when I saw this one I thought, "I took that?"

I had just bought my Canon 70-300mm 4.0-5.6 IS and was looking for an excuse to use it. Unfortunately it was raining out and my house is not big enough for that lens. As I was about to put my camera away and sulk, I looked outside just one more time and to my surprise the rain had stopped and the sun was shining.  I went outside to look for something to shoot and only fired off a few until I came across the flowers hanging off our front porch. Now getting this shot was somewhat tricky. I did not want the red brick background of our house to washout the flower. The Canon 70-300mm has a minimal focus distance of about five feet and standing up against our house was not enough distance. So here I am, dangling off the porch railing and almost falling off a few times!  (Hey, anything for the shot!)

You can never underestimate the light after a good rain and an even better light after a good rain at/or around sunset. So after I was done, I put my camera back into my bag and didn’t think about the shots until a few days later when I downloaded the CF card to my iMac and was amazed to see what I had captured. I had many nice images from this shoot, but this one stood out for me. The colors are so vivid, the depth of field and the water droplets are so crisp. I usually get the same reaction from people when I show them this image and they say "you took that – wow!"

Around the same time I took this image I had been trying out some new Lightroom presets from Matt Kloskowski. I decided to try a few with this image. After two or three different ones I then tried the Matt's 300 Look - Strong preset which gave me a great starting point for an interesting image. I played with some of the settings (clarity, saturation, etc.)to come up with this next image - Only The Red.

Several months later, a friend of mine was thinking of having an art showing at his home and had asked me if I would put up some of my work. This was one of the particular images he thought would be good to display.  I thought, I’m not sure if I have anything good enough to bring to the show, but what the hell. The day of the show came and everyone loved this image. I have to thank my friend  (we'll call him Justin) for pushing me to put some of my work in his show, otherwise I don't think I would have sent out for an 11x14 print of this image, which by the way, is now hanging in my living room. I realized that holding a print in your hand gives you the satisfaction you can't get from looking at them on your computer screen. (Canon 70-300mm 4.0-5.6 IS     190mm  ISO400  1/160  f 9.0)

Photo Of The Week (Metro Rush)

Hello again, just thought I would throw you another image to see!

This one I created in D.C. last fall. Being that it was my first time in Washington D.C. I had many idea's going into this part of our trip. So many places to see and photograph that I knew I would not have a chance to get everything, so I had to prioritize. Well the D.C. subway was not on my list of must have shots.

Our first stop in D.C. was Arlington National Cemetery to pay our respects to all who have served to protect this great nation. We then moved onto the monuments around The National Mall. Going to Arlington was easy (after figuring out how to buy a pass) with a Metro station right across the street from our hotel. My first time in D.C. was also my first time on a rail system that extensive. The Metro made it very easy to move around D.C.

After seeing some sites we ended up at the Lincoln Monument to watch the sun set and head back to our hotel for some dinner. We made our way to the Arlington Metro stop because it was closer. While we were waiting for the last train, I was looking through some of the shots I took and thought I would try shooting the train in motion. I didn't think I could pull off dragging the shutter in that low light and hand held. I've never tried it without a flash which is the most common use of that technique. So I tried a few shots while we were waiting (1/8 sec f4.0  ISO 800  17mm Canon EF-S 17-85mm 4.0-5.6 IS). They looked OK on the camera but I figured they would be blurry once I got them on a real screen, but to my surprise they were not.

The motion in this image is nice but what does it for me are the lines. The lines are what make this image a keeper. It's almost like the train is getting suckeddown the tunnel.  This is a great example of you never know what you might get because if you have ever been on the D.C. Metro you'll know taking a picture is not the first thing you think of when you see it. Lets just say it's a little gloomy down there. I also got lucky that there were not many people on the platform, in most cases it's full of people waiting, we just happened to be getting the last train of the evening

Photo Of The Week (Shenandoah Valley Sunset)

I was trying to think of what would be a good first post on my new blog. After pondering for a while, I thought, hey what do I like to read on my favorite blogs. Well,  I like to read how photographers created their pictures. So I would like to start with explaining how I created some of my images. If I leave anything out that you have questions on, please let me know. So here I go!

 Canon Rebel XTi     Canon 17-85mm f4-5.6 is USM    ISO 100  17mm 1/80 f6.3

I took this picture one breezy, cold evening over looking the Shenandoah Valley in the beautiful state of Virgina. I remember driving for awhile, trying to find the perfect spot for the sunset because I knew I would only have one or maybe two tries to get a great sunset image. See, it was October and I knew the weather was not going to play nice on the whole trip. Well, it did end up that the weather turned out to be great for October, but the one thing you learn fast in photography is getting the shot when you can because you may not get a second chance. We were driving on the Blue Ridge Mountain Parkway a few miles from our cabin and there were overlooks every few miles so we had plenty of choices and picking the right one was proving to be very difficult. I kept going to the next one hoping it would be a better view and most of the time it was. I don't remember which overlook we were at for this image, there were so many, Brown Gap, Rockytop, Big Run, Naked Creek and on and on. So after finally picking one overlook because we were running out of time, I parked the car and set