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.

Fleet Street Abstract

View From Row 13

What to do while waiting on the apron of the airport? Why, take photos out the window, of course.

This was on a flight back from Norfolk to Baltimore. At first, there didn't seem to be any "there", there, but after a while, I got to playing with the angles formed by the wing and nacelle, the luggage loader and the cart behind it.

By the way, we sat there for about two hours; the flight crew spotted a potential wing flap problem as we were almost ready to taxi to the runway. Southwest called in a mechanic, but the problem wasn't fixable on the spot, so we rolled back to the gate and deplaned. With a new part beign flown in, they were estimating that the plane would be fixed and depart in about three hours. We decided to punt and rented a car - it was a pleasant afternoon and an easy ride back.

Taft Memorial Shadows

DC Magic Bus

Union Station Café Chairs

I-95 Wildlife

An aggressive seagull gives me the stink-eye and a squawk to warn me to stay away from the bit of bagel that I dropped for him. Some gratitude.

To take a photo like this, you have to get down... literally get down, as in lie down on your stomach. To the delight of some and the puzzlement of others who were going in and out of the Cheasapeake House rest stop on I-95.

Blue Screen

My fabulous students from the Adult Hebrew class I teach generously gave me an Amazon gift certificate last month, and what I ordered with that gift arrived tonight - this nifty Dolica Tripod and Ball Head

So having this nice new tripod to play with, I thought I'd try it out with a self-portrait. The ball head made precise positioning of my Canon XSi DSLR much easier than with my cheapinski "Best Buy Special" tripod. I used a wireless remote control to trigger the camera for what turned out to be a six-second exposure. The resulting image didn't show any camera shake, so I'm happy (of course, there was no wind and no tractor-trailers passing by in my family room...)

It's a very nice tripod for the money - lightweight, of course, but the ball-head is very secure, the legs are individually adjustable for angle at the "hip," and the center column is reversable for down-low shooting... features not often seen at this price point.

Lunch!

Nomiki has the best food and nicest personality of any of the lunch wagons on the University of Maryland Baltimore campus. You'll find her every weekday at the corner of Lombard and Penn. Fortunately for me and my co-workers, less than a block from our office.

Great breakfast too... come hungry!

Queen Of Hearts

Happy Valentine's Day!

Quilly and tthe Giant Arm

Here's my friend Quilly contemplates art, nature, and the meaning of life under the Giant Arm.

Quilly is one of my Shutterbug Excursion buddies. One of the great things about this group is that when we go out to shoot, if there's nothing to noteworthy to shoot, we can always take photos of each other. Quilly helpfully stuck a contemplative pose while he stood just beyond the mega-arm.

Little Drummer Boy

"When you see red, shoot it!"

Someone told me that a few years ago, and I've found it's usually good advice.

So the Chinese New Year Parade was a great opportunity, as red is considered a propitious color, and red was all over the place. The reddest group at all was this group of young musicians and their red drums. I loved it!

By the way, when I was a kid, Little Drummer Boy (the song, that is,) scared the crap out of me. As a seven-year-old in 1957, I couldn't understand the words over my Uncle Heniek's crackly old radio, and they wouldn't have made sense to me back then anyway. But that ominous, dirge-y music!

I like this Little Drummer Boy much better.

Proud Flag Bearer

Belated Happy New Year, my friends!

Last week, I finally did what any sane person should do on Chinese New Year - I went to the nearest Chinatown to watch the New Year parade. This one was in DC, and I went with Shutterbug Excursions, the local photo group to which I belong.

Naturally, we all had a great time. I'll post some more photos soon, but I wanted to get this one up first.

This fellow's determined gaze and the proud way he is holding the flagstaff reminded me of the propaganda posters during the Mao era. Of course, it was just a fluke of the moment I pressed the shutter that he happened to look up like this. I didn't notice the poster-like expression until I reviewed my shots on the subway heading home (the full image is here.)

Shutterbug Excursions at National Harbor

I had to get up at Oh-Dark-Thirty this morning in order to get to National Harbor, but a chance to hang out with my Shutterbug Excursions gang is always worth it.

To tell you the truth, while the new National Harbor is nice enough, I wasn't really all that photographically inspired there this morning. On the other hand, I had a lot of fun with the gang, as always.

After shooting in the cold for about 1-1/2 hours, our gang regrouped at a nearby coffee shop, where we took over all the sofas and big cushy chairs. Jim B had been shooting with a nifty pair of 1950's-vintage German rangefinders (a Voigtlander and an Agfa,) but when he pulled this Leica iiic out of a pocket, I just had to have my picture taken with it.

Brought back good memories.

Our group is really growing, with over 200 members now signed up. Most have not attended one of our meetups yet, but we seem to be attracting a lot of attention. Today's meetup drew fourteen photographers, and we've had more than 20 on several occassions. That's not bad for a group that just came into existance last July.

Despite the cold weather, February is a busy month for us. Last week, we went to the Chinese New Year Parade in DC, and next week, we're going to the National Zoo.

Here's me at the end of the Segway Safari I went on with Ed Luria of Washington Photo Safari in early October.

In the interest of full disclosure, I was going about five mph at the time... maybe. To make it look more dramatic, using Photoshop, I selected myself and the Segway, inverted the selection, and used the Motion Blur filter to speed things up a bit.

Oh, and see that bandaid over my left eye? Um... yeah, I had a little overconfidence problem with the Segway during our 20 minute training before the Safari...

Don't let my foolishness dissuade you from giving a Segway at least a try - it's great fun.

Old Riggs Bank Building

I meant to blog about the Segway Safari I went on with Washington Photo Safaris back in early October - what a blast! But I didn't get around to it then, and no time to do it tonight, so for now I'll just post this photo of the grand old brick-and-sandstone former Riggs Bank Building at 15th Street and New York Avenue, about a block from the White House. I took this one about 15 minutes into the Segway Safari (dismounted... you don't want to be Segwaying and shooting at the same time.)

Meanwhile, let me unabashedly give a plug for WFS and it's chief b'wana, Ed Luria. If you live in Northern Virginia, DC, or Maryland, love photography, and haven't gone on one of these safaris, check out their website and give it a try.

Man in Bistro

My brother Mark and I went to DC Sunday afternoon to have lunch with our cousins before their return to Israel. As we were being seated, I noticed this elegant gentleman deep in thought (or maybe just studying the menu) by the window.

I normally stay away from stealing moments like this, because I'm too slow and fumble-fingered to be a good candid photographer. But this gentleman was an interesting subject, and I really liked the lighting coming through the window, lighting half of the man as well as the bright red shirt behind him, while leaving the other half of him in shadow. So I grabbed my camera and channeled Henri Cartier-Bresson for a minute:

"What is best in photography is that you are catching an instant that will disappear. The photographer is like the voleur, the thief; he steals a moment, a fleeting moment and then he runs away with it in his camera. Being a photographer you have to be quick, quick, quick; you have to be like quicksilver, yes, like a tightrope dancer with death at the end.”

Well, I wasn't quick, quick, quick, but as this gentleman seemed to be concentrating on something else, I was quick enough.

Leaf on 21st Street

Our wonderful Israeli cousins Tammy and Itzik were in Washington this past week, and we drove to DC to pick them up at their hotel and spend the day with them. Mindful of the dictum, "it always pays to schlepp one's camera, I grabbed my Adorama Slinger as I headed out from home.

With the exception of our recent Shutterbug Excursions outing to Great Falls, I hadn't taken any decent fall foliage photos... and no fall close-ups or macros at all. But after I dropped my gang off at the hotel and parked my car around the block on 21st Street, I found this classic autumn leaf laying around in the curb. Moving it to the nicely-bricked sidewalk, I saw this ready-made frame and snapped a few shots.

This may have to do for Fall 2008. The leaves are still colorful on the trees, but there aren't too many left.

Boeing FP-5 Hawk

Jug

Here's a P-47 Thunderbolt, affectionately known by its pilots and crew as "Jug" because of it's jug-shaped fusalage.

A good air combat fighter and a superior ground attack aircraft, the P-47 was the largest single-engine fighter of WWII.

This one is at the National Air & Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. Immediately behind the P-47 is the Enola Gay, a Boeing B-29 bomber, and the very aircraft that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in August 1945.

In the background at right is the Boeing 367-80, or "Dash 80", as the Boeing engineers used to refer to it. The Dash 80 was the prototype for the 707, the first American commercial jet airliner capable of non-stop transatlantic flight.