Ground Cover Angel

My wife loves angels, so one year for Chanukah, I bought her this clay angel for the garden.

This location isn't the angel's normal habitat, but I liked the contrast of the terra-cotta, green ground cover (don't ask me, I don't know from plants!) and the fallen leaves.

Shot in the fall of 2004 with my Digital Rebel and it's 18-55mm kit lens.

Testing...

I'll be photographing a wedding at the US Naval Academy Chapel this coming weekend, using, among other things, a borrowed Digital Rebel XTi and a my brand-new Sigma EF 530 DG Super flash unit. So it was time to test, test, test.

Since I haven't been "in the yard" for several years, I schlepped my gear to the Naval Academy, about six miles from our house. As luck would have it, the Chapel was closed for Labor Day. But my trip was far from in vain, as it was useful to scout out shooting locations and note the location and movement of the sun (I went at 2PM, same time as the wedding will be Saturday).

In the process, I shot just over 200 pictures (many of which were just bursts of 10 or more images of the same thing, just to stress the camera, flash, new 2GB Compact Flash card, and the smaller battery of the XTi.)

I'm happy to say that all the gear came through with flying colors. I especially like the Digital Rebel XTi (400D) as compared to my camera, an "original" Digital Rebel. My now 4-year old camera uses the original Canon DIGIC image processor, whereas the XT and XTi use the next generation DIGIC II procesor. Whereas my camera takes about 2.5 seconds to "wake up", the newer models "wake up" instantly - sometimes this can mean getting or not getting a shot.

Beyond that, the control layout of the XTi and the way you use the very nice 2-1/2" LCD for all camera operations are well thought-out. The XTi is noticably smaller than the original DR, something I thought I'd have a problem with - but to me, it didn't seem cramped at all - it was just right (I don't have especially large hands, mind you.)

Although the Chapel was closed, many of the rest of the buildings were open. I stopped inside Dahlgren Hall and got this photo of a replica of a 1911 Wright Navy B-1, the very first airplane delivered to the U.S. Navy.
Dahlgren Hall has had many uses over the more than 100 years of its life, including an indoor ice-skating rink. Much of it is now given over the the Drydock Restaurant, which on this day seemed to be layed out for a mess.
After a while, I left the Academy and walked the few blocks to City Dock to get a bite to eat and watch the crowd enjoying the pleasant weather by Spa Creek.

"The B & B Talk Show"

Sandy was doing some VHS archeology today - she wants to take our 25 years of family videos and transfer them to DVD - a great idea.

I picked up one of the ancient tapes and suddenly there was our son Ben and his friend-from-birth and next-door-neighbor Bryan, ten years ago at age 11.

Trained by me from a young age to be a wise-guy, Ben and Brian were performing their long-running "B & B Talk Show." They were two talented kids even back then. Bryan was already a pretty good pianist, and Ben was learning a lot from him.

Most of the "show" was just what you'd expect from two kids this age, a lot of lame jokes and shennanigans - probably not of much interest to anyone but me, my family, and Bryan's family.

One thing I noticed is that Ben was already working on his "Hey Kids!" expression (see the fourth photo below.)









At one point, the video jumped ahead four years to Ben & Bryan doing a 15-year-old's version of B & B Talk Show. By now, Bryan was an accomplished keyboardist, guitarist, and drummer. Ben had also become a darn good guitarist and was getting up to speed on drums as well.

Suddenly, as if in a time warp, the scene before me was once again Ben and Bryan at age 11, brandishing "swords" and nunchucks (I think Sandy had transferred 8mm video to VHS and happened to get some segments out of order.)

To see what Ben looks like today (or at least a few months ago,) see this post.

Meanwhile, maybe I can prevail on these two clowns to do an updated B & B Talk Show for YouTube.

Slo-Mo

Another "Wild Kingdom" photo shot during a recent trip to the Marlyand Zoo in Baltimore.

This is an especially nice-looking Spur-Thigh Tortoise (Geochelone sulcata), probably weighing over 200 pounds (they can grow to 240 lb, according to the Zoo.)

Ol' Spur-Thigh's usual stomping grounds are the southern fringes of North Africa, a band that goes all the way across the continent.

Taken with a Canon Digital Rebel (D300) Taken with a Canon Digital Rebel (D300) mounting a Sigma 70-300mm Macro II zoom lens racked all the way out to 300mm.

Brockville Farm

A rusty wheel from an ancient farm implement guards the door of a long-unused barn in Brockville, Ontario.

Taken last week while visiting my wife's cousins in rural Brockville, an area full of beautiful farms south of Ottawa.

For this photo, before snapping the exposure, I envisioned that the textures, shapes, and shadows suggested a black-and-white treatment. Shot with a Canon Digital Rebel and Canon EF-S 18-55mm zoom. Back in the electronic darkroom, I applied a gradient mask in photoshop to produce the B&W version.

The small photo at right doesn't quite show off the texture, so be sure to click on it to see the larger version

Pour Les Oisseaux

I don't know what it is lately, but my best photos over the last few weeks have been for the birds. Well, of birds, that is.

I met this handsome fellow on the deck of the ferry from Cape May, NJ to Lewes, DE the other week. We were returning home after having seen the Rain concert in Atlantic City the night before. Atlantic City, in our humble opinion, is dumpy and depressing, but the ride down the Jersey Shore to Cape May the next morning was anything but - one handsome beach town after the other.

Taken with a Canon Digital Rebel (D300) mounting a Sigma 70-300mm Macro II zoom lens.

Storm

Here's a storm drain manhole cover on East Pratt Street that I must have walked by hundreds of times on my way to work. One day recently, I did a double-take when I realized that it was full of blossoms that had fallen from the tree above it.

I thought this was something photographically worthwhile, and I took a few shots with the Canon A640 I carry in my backpack. After getting back home and editing the image in Photoshop, I really liked it, but I wasn't sure it would appeal to anyone else.

At times like that, I often do a sanity-check with our son Ben, so I emailed him a copy. Here's his reply:

I love this storm image and I’ll tell you why. Because the word storm carries with it a feeling and meaning of volatility. But then wrapped around it and even sometimes covering it up are these beautiful flowers of nature. This shows both extreme ends of nature. It also represents that maybe the storm was what caused the beautiful flowers to fall, yet they are still beautiful afterwards.

Puttin' on the Schvitz

Welcome to August in Baltimore!

It's hot...it's humid...I'm talkin' serious schvizten here.

The other day, I stopped thinking about the weatherly misery just long enough to catch some boys just ahead of me, crossing a bricked patch of street adjacent to my Light Rail stop.

Out of the camera, the image had the boys almost, but not quite, in silhouette. Using the Levels layer in Photoshop Elements 4, I darkened the shadows further. Then I slid the midtone control quite a ways to the right (dark) side. This darkened the image overall and made the bricks more prominent, but it also surprised me by resulting in a sepia-like tone.

I had planned to add a gradient layer to convert the image to B&W, but at this point, I decided to leave well enough alone.

Meanwhile, we only had a temperature-humidity index of 100F today, down from a "feels like" 110F yesterday.

Rain - The Beatles Experience

It's Real Love

Yes, we did see the Beatles, live, last Saturday night in Atlantic City! Or about as close as it's possible to do so since August 29, 1966.

These four American lads sing, play, and even move like the real thing. Actually, without trying to be heretical, in many ways, experiencing Rain is better than the experience you would have had at an actual Beatles concert in the '60s.

At their last live concert at Candlestick Park in '66, the Beatles played for all of 33 minutes. They had only released Rubber Soul that March and were in the middle of their Revolver project; over 100 songs, including some of their very best, had yet to be written. And had you been there, you wouldn't have heard them anyway, what with those puny amps and all the screaming girls.

On the other hand, at Saturday night's Rain concert, they played for 1-1/2 hours. The songs were a smorgesbord, sampling every era from the Sullivan show to Abbey Road, complete with three costume changes. You could hear each note, and each note was perfect.

I can't say enough about Rain. If you are a Beatles fan, you will definitely find it worthwhile to see them.

As for my photo for this post - well, stage photography certainly is not my forté. I just set my Canon A620 to ISO 400, pointed, and hoped for the best.

On the other hand, you can see some great stage photography by young Torontonian Carrie Musgrave at delineated.com. You can pick out some concert photos by scanning the archive list, but it will be more than worth your while to take a half-hour or so and enjoy her entire portfolio.

A Day at the Zoo...

I took our almost-12-year-old nephew Josh, a budding nature photographer, to the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore last weekend - I haven't been their since our own kids were younger than Josh. My brother Mark (Josh's dad) decided to come at the last minute, and we had a great boys' day out, roaming around the zoo and photographing the animals.

Of about 80 or so shots I took, most were for the birds, but some photos I took of some birds turned out pretty good. The best was this one of a handsome Lappet-Faced Vulture (Aegypius tracheliotus). This bird, an old-world vulture, is in the African exhibit at the Zoo. He was kind enough to sit still for me while I composed the photo. Who knew that a vulture could be so good-looking?

Josh, at almost twelve, is a little to sophisticated to fall for the various kids' stuff spread around the zoo, but 47-year-old dad Mark and his 57-year-old brother me couldn't resist a little childish fooling around. Here is Mark doing a wonderful job posing as a lion.

The Lost Blog

My blog, Imagine There's An Image is now read-only.

Somehow, I lost all access to my original Google account, meaning GMail, Blogger, and a host of other services. One day, my password just stopped working. I've gone through all of the things Google tells you to go through to recover my access, but to no avail.

So here I am with 2nd Exposure, a new blog under my new Google account.


As with the old blog, this one will be primarily for and about photography and photographers.

To start things off on a good note (ouch! bad pun!), here's a photo of an amazing entertainer, Charles Lee, taken at Inner Harbor in Baltimore last Friday. Mr. Lee thrilled us and brought smiles to all of us in the lunchtime crowd with his renditions of Motown classics.