Future Midshipmen

Two brothers greet me through the window of one of my favorite houses in Annapolis.

I was talking to their dad, complimenting him on the great, photo-worthy paint job he'd done on his house and on the bench in front of it, when they appeared in the Window. I always point out this house to the customers I take on photo safaris in Annapolis.

View From Eastport

If you've been following this blog, you know I'm fascinated by reflections in water. I've found that early morning (or late afternoon/early evening) is the time to catch the most dramatic reflections.

I think it's because the low angle of the sun acts like a spotlight on the horizontal surfaces of the buildings and boats, which then have plenty of light on them to reflect back onto the water. Whatever the reason, get up early or hang out late if you want to catch the good light.

I took this photo at 7:30 AM one morning from Eastport, across Spa Creek from Annapolis. Full disclosure forces me to admit that this exposure was a mistake, as I didn't notice that my camera was still set for an exposure compensation of minus 1-1/3 stops. I saw the error of my ways right away on the LCD, set my camera back to "neutral", and took several more "normal" exposures.

Back home last in my digital darkroom, I decided to open the "bad" file in Photoshop Elements and see what I could do with it. All it took was to lighten up the high values with the Levels dialog to brighten up the buildings and reflections. This left the dark values in the sky and the water pretty much as they were and resulted, I think, in an image that has more dramatic impact than the original scene.

To us old-timers, there's nothing too surprising about this - we all know about how underexposing transparency film can sometimes increase saturation and contrast to produce a more dramatic version of what we see with our eyes. There's no free ride, though. In the old days, this technique could result in noticibly increased grain in the dark areas, like the sky in this photo. In the digital world, the equivalent of grain is noise. When I magnify this photo on my computer screen, I can see the noise in the dark areas.

On the other hand, the photo prints really nicely as a 10-inch wide print. The noise isn't noticible at this size, but I wonder how it would look enlarged to 20 or 30 inches?

One thing I can say for sure is that this image as a 10-inch print passed a critical test.

My wife likes it!

Doorway Shadow

Taken during an early-morning stroll up Pinkney Street in Annapolis. Pinkney is an old, narrow lane full of colorfully-painted houses. You can always count on something worthwhile to photograph on Pinkney.

420 Racers

Here's one of the Annapolis Yacht Club piers on Spa Creek, near sunset in mid-August 2003. The boats are small racing sailboats used by high-school-age Junior Sailing Program members for instruction and competition.

One of my more nautically-inclined friends, upon seeing this photo, told me that these small boats are called "420 racers," referring to the boats' length in centimeters. For use in competition, this little fleet is ideal; since the boats are all the same, winning is a matter of seamanship rather than equipment.

I took this photo from the drawbridge spanning Spa Creek, which separates downtown Annapolis from Eastport. Over the years, I keep coming back to photograph this nicely-lined-up set of racers from different viewpoints, time of day, and seasons.

East Street Window

Fleet Street Abstract

Snowy 'Z'

This is part of the Maryland WWII Memorial, covered in freshly fallen snow. The memorial, dedicated in 1990, sits just below an older overlook on a hill looking down over the Severn River, US Naval Academy, and the rest of Annapolis.

Sunless Sunrise Meetup

Happy Labor Day!

This past Saturday, I had organized an early-morning event for our photo Meetup group, Shutterbug Excursions, for 6am in Annapolis. It was a last-minute thing whose theme was "Greet the Sunrise," and at best, I expected three or four other die-hards to show up.

Instead, we had twelve enthusiastic Excursionaires - our largest Meetup to date. In the photo above by George Skeption, you can see (left to right) George, Carol, Dan, Quilly, Josh, Your Intrepid Correspondent, Tracey, Elsa, and Gary.




The main idea of this Meetup was to experience the magical morning light as we walked around sailboat country, but as luck would hav it, this turned out to be a sunless morning. This didn't faze the Excursionaires one bit; you can see some of their photos from the event here.

By 8:30am we were in Eastport, tired and hungry, so I led the gang back across the Spa Creek bridge and up Main Street to Chick & Ruth's Delly for breakfast.

Chick & Ruth's is an Annapolis institution. As usual, it was packed on a Saturday morning with locals and visitors, including a group of Naval Academy graduates from the class of 1968 (I didn't see Senator Webb, unfortunately.) Owner Ted Levitt nevertheless quickly found us seats close together, and we enjoyed a good breakfast with lots of fun schmoozing.

To cap off the morning, we got to participate in a Chick & Ruth's tradition: at 9:30, everyone in the restaurant stopped, stood up, faced the large flag in the middle of the place, and recited the Pledge of Allegiance.

Impulse Photography with a Digicam

One of the great things about having a good-quality little camera is that you can do impulse photography. Sure, you've heard of impulse buying - well this is the same thing, but with taking photos. You can't impulse buy unless you have money, or more likely a credit card, on you. Likewise, you can't impulse-photograph unless you've got a camera on you.

And this has been the absolute best thing about my digicam, (a 2006-vintage Canon A620) as far as I'm concerned. It's small enough that I take it with me pretty much everywhere, and when the mood strikes, I'm ready to shoot.

I was in Annapolis this morning - not scenic Annapolis, but a few blocks away in the nothing-doing-nothing-interesting part. After my business there was over, though, I remembered seeing a nice photo the other day taken at Acton Cove, which was only a few minutes drive away. Acton Cove is on picturesque Spa Creek, and I had my Canon A620 in my jacket pocket, so there you go.

No big deal - just a few photos on an impulse. Little time expended and little risk involved. If I end up with nothing good, who will know?

The little punt that was tied up at the small public dock at Acton Cove had a nice shape, and with a little Photoshop to compensate for the flat lighting, I ended up with a pretty nice impulse photo.

Before I headed home, I needed a sheet of black mat board, so I headed over to Art Things, which was right on the way. They always have some sort of nice display on their porch, and this time, what caught my eye was a container full of different-colored, retractable Sharpies.

Out came the Canon A620, and I took a quick photo. Whoops, I got that little shakey-camera icon on the LCD, and sure enough, the shot looked a little blurry. A few button presses, and I switched from ISO 50 to ISO 200. Picture taken, problem solved.

Impulse satisfied.

Shutterbug Excursions

ShootingUp_0734
Originally uploaded by Steve Rosenbach

If you live in the Baltimore-Washington metro area and are looking for a lively group of fellow photo-enthusiasts, you couldn't do better than the Shutterbug Excursions Meetup Group.

Our fearless leader, Lyn, organized the group on Meetup.com just a few weeks ago, and yesterday, we had our very first meetup in Annapolis.

We met at City Dock Café and headed out along Ego Alley, then over the the Naval Academy. From there we walked over to one of the many old street that have picturesque houses along the way, like this one.

By then, we had been out and about for over two hours, and most of the gang bid each other goodbye for the day. Three of us, Lyn, Tracey, and I, decided to soldier on, and we walked back to City Dock. After a few minutes of snapping photos around the Alex Haley memorial, we were treated to a full-scale hailstorm.

No problem, we just ran across the street and took shelter in Market Place. By then, we were hungry anyway and took advantage of the food concessions inside. Once the storm passed by, we had the best lighting of the day; by then it was getting on towards 7pm, and sunset, I knew, would be around 7:15.

We took more photos on the Spa Creek Bridge and around the Eastport end of the bridge, continuing well past sunset. Here's photographic proof of our steadfastness; the picture of Lyn and Tacey is timestamped just before 8 pm.

For a bunch of people who had never met before, we all got along really well and had a lot of laughs.

Happy July 4th!