78th Annual Cumberland Valley Photographic Salon

Each year, in the winter of the year, the Washington County Museum of Fine Art holds a photographic Salon.  As near as I can tell, this is just a juried photographic exhibit.  Whoever feels they have worthy pictures can enter the salon.  There is a juror who reviews the pictures and chooses the ones he feels will make a good exhibit.

This year there were no categories; there were no criteria.  So it was up to the Juror's discretion.

In order to be prepared to display the images in January and February, the images must be submitted by Thanksgiving  or thereabouts.

Annette and I have entered in the past with some measure of luck.  We have each had some chosen to be hung in the exhibit.  Last year, we were not so fortunate.  Neither of us got a picture into the exhibit.

This year there was stiff competition.  There were 401 entries and only 65 were chosen. That means that 5 out of every 6 submissions were returned to the artist without being hung.

I was lucky.  My picture, entitled, Yellow House on the Hill was chosen for the exhibit.  I am tickled.

My other entry, Antique Car Remains, was not chosen for the exhibit.  Oh, well, I still enjoy this photograph. 

The exhibit will start on January 22 and run until early March.  There will be an opening reception and awards ceremony on January 23, 2011 from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m.

If you get a chance, stop by the Washington County Museum of Fine Art in City Park, Hagerstown, Md. and see the exhibit.  I hear there will be a lot of very good images displayed.

Mabry Mill

Just a quick post this time.

On the way home from Florida, Annette and I did not want to spend the whole day in the car.  We wanted to have some kind of photo shoot on the way home.

So we took a detour.  We got off of the highway and drove about thirty miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Along the way we came across Mabry Mill (Mile 176).  The mill was fascinating because of two things for me.

1.)  The water was carried in the wooden troughs for quite a ways.
2.)  The water was used to power three distinct portions of the mill.  There was a grist mill, a sawmill and a workshop.

The light was very contrasty in the late afternoon.  The mill sat down behind the roadway in partial shadow.  So I didn't get many usable pictures.  Oh, well, I have to learn to quit making excuses!

Here are two pictures from the mill.  I hope you enjoy them.

Mabry Mill

Mill Stones from Mabry Mill

Atietam Battlefield Luminaries

 December 4, 2010 was the occasion of the lighting of the luminaries in the Antietam Battlefield National Park.  There were approximately 23,000 luminaries placed and lit!  I can't even imagine the amount of effort and coordination that went into that!

When we arrived there about 4:00 p.m., we were very excited to get out and take pictures.  In retrospect, we should have just walked the area pre-planning our shots and then went back to the car until it was dark enough for the luminaries to glow.  That way we would have been warm.

It wasn't all that cold; probably around freezing.  But standing out on the damp ground is a slight breeze made it feel much colder.

Oh, well, at least we were able to chat with other photographers.  I love to chat with other photographers.  I want to see how they see things; how they approach their shots.  Who knows, I might learn something useful.

After darkness descended, the auto focus did not work.  Even when I tried to focus, there was not enough light to see if the focus was good.  So I had to guess at the focus.  I just rotated the focus ring to infinity and backed off a wee bit.  Pretty crude!  Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't.

Anyway, here a four pictures from the shoot.  I hope you enjoy them.

This first one was shot near the park headquarters building looking down towards the Dunker Church.

 The shot above and the shot below are of the Maryland Monument.  I lucked out in the photo above.  I didn't know that the other photographer was going to light paint the monument.  It just happened during my 30 second exposure.

This was my last shot of the evening.  As we were walking toward the car, I stopped and climbed up the bank in front of the Dunker Church and planted by tripod.  Since the tripod was already collapsed, I got down on my knees to frame this shot.  I was really cold at this point, so I was in a hurry.

I told the guys that I was with that this Luminary shoot would be great fun...in June!

Thanksgiving in Daytona Beach

Our son has the perhaps enviable opportunity of living in Florida for a year while attending school.  He is experiencing something different that good old, small-town Pennsylvania.  But that also means that Annette and I had the opportunity to travel to Daytona Beach for Thanksgiving.  We drove down two vehicles and came back in one.  Our son is tickled to have his car.

On Friday morning, before our son eve thought about opening his eyes, Annette and I headed for the beach.  Unfortunately, it was an overcast morning.  But that didn't stop us from taking pictures!

These first three pictures were taken under the Daytona Beach Pier.  The building on the pier, which I believe was once a restaurant, is in very poor repair, which in my opinion makes an interesting photograph!

 Annette is my "fixer".  She can talk to anybody.  She has such a great, happy, personality that people instantly like her.  (I don't know how she got stuck with a stick-in-the-mud like me.)

Anyway, she walked up to the fisherman in the pictures below and struck up a conversation, the outcome of which was that he allowed her (and me) to take pictures of him as he surf fished.  His yellow rain gear made a great contrast to the overcast day.

When took a break from fishing, he brought out the bird feed.  He obviously had a history and a rapport with the birds.  He got them to eat out of his hand and then he got them to sit on his head!!!

 A little later, I noticed a family come out onto the beach.  Two little boys from the family had their sand buckets and went looking for...for...I don't know!  They went looking for whatever little boys go looking for at the beach.  Anyway, I thought they made a great picture as they walked side-by-side along the edge of the water.

Harrisburg Parking Garage Tour

Annette and I did not know what to expect, but whatever vague notions we had in our minds did not match what happened.  We were not mentally prepared.

The Harrisburg Camera Club had a photo shoot today.  The description of the shoot just said Downtown Harrisburg and the meeting location.

So when Annette and I got out of the car, we didn't want to lug around all of our gear so we both agreed that we would just take our cameras with the short lenses.  I guess we thought we were going to walk around the streets and shoot people or architecture.

We saw the Camera Club Group starting to walk away from the meeting place, so we ran to catch up.  That was when we learned that we were going to the top of a parking garage!

So up we go.  But from that perspective, a wide angle lens is not what you need.  You need a telephoto lens to zoom in on details of buildings or on far away buildings and sights.  So the first parking garage was a little bit of a bust!  But, I left that vantage point early and went back to the car and got our long lenses and tripods, both of which came in very handy!

In total, we went to the top of four parking garages in downtown Harrisburg!

Here are some of the pictures that I took.

 In the picture above I liked the G for Garthwaite and I liked the lion/gargoyle.  Do you think I should get rid of that drain?

 I liked the strong lines of this building to the left and the contrast between the colors and the contrast between the straight and rectangular features of the building and the more chaotic features of the leaves.

Similarly, I liked the straight and angular aspects of the building contrasting with the organic shapes of the tree.  The black of the building helped the yellow leaves to "pop".

The two pictures to the left are two different pieces of the same parking garage.  This garage was actually the third one that we climbed.  We were late getting there because we had a little detour.

Annette, Clara and Cheryl and I got off of the elevator one floor too soon.  We ended up at the Starbucks at what I guess to be the back of the Whitaker Center.  The girls had to have a coffee.  Clara wanted to buy but couldn't because she left her purse at home!  But it's the thought that counts!

While we were there, one of the Whitaker Center employees saw me standing with Annette's camera and my camera.  She asked if we did weddings.  I said, "Yes."  She asked, "Do you charge a lot?"  I said, "Yes."  But she was still interested in talking to us about shooting her wedding.  So we gave her a card and told her to look at other weddings we had shot and see if she liked our work.  Maybe we will hear from her.  Maybe we won't.

 I was just a little too late for this shot to the right.  Earlier in the day the sun was creating more interesting shadows on this white wall.  So, the lesson for both me and you is this:  Shoot it when you see it!  Don't wait!

We stayed until almost 5:00 p.m.  It was dark enough at that point for cars to have their lights on and I was able to get this picture with the streaks of red lights from the tail and brake lights.

Oh, well.  That was enough for us.  We had been shooting for four hours and we were ready to go home.

But still, it was a great day.  The weather was beautiful and we had the company of fellow photographers!

Great Falls Kayakers

While we were at Great Falls National Park on October 30th, we had a great opportunity to watch some guys practice their kayaking skills.  From the observation platform, we watched as they came over the falls and made their way through the rocks and down the rapids.  Then they got out of the water and carried their kayaks upstream to try it again.

They were either practicing or they were showing off for the 20 or so people on the observation platform!

After they did this for a few times, they tried something different.

When water rushes over a fall it speeds up.  It then crashes into the water below and swirls back up in a "J" shaped flow.  At the tip of the "J" is a place where kayaks can sit without paddling and without going up or down stream.  This is the sweet spot where the kayak below started.

Once in that sweet spot they would rock the kayak backward and forward until the nose would go into the water, similar to what you see in the first two pictures.

Once the nose went under, the kayak would flip.  Just like this next sequence of pictures.

 

 

Then the kayak was upside down and they would have to roll the kayak to right it.  Their heads were under water for a few seconds!

It was really cool to watch and to shoot.  But I bet it was really COLD to do.  It looked like the guys had on wet suits.  But their faces and hands were still exposed.

Now remember, this is the last day of October!  That water wasn't 80 °F.  It was probably closer to 60°F.  I don't know how they did it!

We don't even like to get in our pool unless the water is 80°F!  The first time we went in our pool was on Memorial Day at the end of May.  The water was 68°F.  Everybody went in and got wet, but nobody stayed in the water for very long.  It felt like it was freezing!  What did this water feel like to these guys in these kayaks????

For you camera buffs...I took these pictures with a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens.  I really like this lens.  There is plenty of light so that I could freeze the action.

Great Falls - Reflections on a Great Day

On Saturday, The Harrisburg Camera Club went on another photo outing, this time to the C&O Canal National Historic Park near Potomac, MD.

But first...If you get a chance to drive through Potomac, MD, do it.  That has to be one of the richest areas in the country!  I wish I had the Mercedes-Benz dealership there.  It seemed like every other vehicle was a Mercedes!

And the houses!  Wow!  They were mansions.  Huge homes!  Massive homes!  Wow!

But anyway, the camera club went to the C&O Canal Park. We had to leave our house at 6:00, in the dark.  That is when I am normally just crawling out of bed on a work day!

It was just a gorgeous day.  The sun came up and the sky was blue.  It was a little chilly at first but warmed up to a manageable temperature.  Just beautiful!

Since it was the nearest thing to the parking lot, we started out by the C&O Canal Tavern with the sun just coming over the hill.  I tried to get some pictures of the Tavern reflected in the canal.

I got the reflection, but the tavern was in the shadow of the hill and was not in the sun light.  Kind of flat to me.

Next we crossed over the canal and found this large viewing platform.  This is the view...

Some times I think I am going to quit trying to take landscape pictures.  They never convey the feeling that you have when you are standing there.  This one gave me such a great tranquil feeling, the still water, the reflections, the beautiful sunlight.  But this picture only hints at the magnitude of the scene.

As we looked up the canal tow path, this is what we saw.  A beautiful scene complete with the trees providing shelter by arching over the path and the canal.  Assuming that these trees, or ones like them, were here by the canal in the days the canal was in use, imagine the cooling shade, the protection from the sun and the wind that these trees supplied!

Just downstream of the Tavern was a barge, which, for only $5, would allow you to climb aboard and enjoy a tow by mules up the canal. 

I wish I had seen the barge move.  It is one thing to know that they hitched the mules to the barge and had them pull the barge along the canal.  But it is another thing to actually see the mules accomplish this.  Without seeing it you have no idea of how much effort the mules had to exert.  You have no idea of how complicated, or not, it was for the mule handler to hitch up and control these animals.  And maybe there are other aspects to it that we cannot imagine, not having seen the barge in operation.

Not to be too obvious, but I am sure by now that you have figured out the "reflections" of the title has two layers.

What do you do with your pictures?

I was once asked, "What do you do with your pictures?  Do you just keep them on your computer?"

That made me think for a minute.  Hmmmmm?!?!!!

I was telling the person how much Annette and I enjoy photography.

• How we take vacations in picturesque places just to capture the pictures. 
• How no one else would enjoy our vacations because we just drive around and stop when ever we see a photo opportunity.
• How we take Sunday drives just looking for pictures.
• How we enjoy doing portraiture.
• How we enjoy photography workshops and classes.
• Etc., etc., etc.

But...What do I do with my pictures?

I have over 20K pictures on my computer. Is it a waste if no one else sees them?  (It's probably less embarrassing if no one else sees 99% of them!)

Annette and I have done a small handful of weddings.  For most of the weddings we have created an album for the couple and then we create a photo-book.  Each photo-book we have created, we have ordered a copy for ourselves.  You would be surprised how many times we have shown those books around!

We also belong to the Harrisburg Camera Club, which has a projected image competition.  Now that is what I like to do with my pictures!

Two years ago Annette put in pictures for the first competition of the season and I didn't bother.  But I went to see the competition and I was hooked.

At the competition, the photos are projected onto a screen.  A score is given and the images are critiqued.  It is an amazing opportunity to learn!  (Now I know all about convergence!)

There is a points race.  The scores are totaled for all of the competitions for the club year and the person with the most points gets a blue ribbon and bragging rights!

This year there will be six monthly competitions running from October to March.  Each club member can submit up to two images each month.

The club year runs from September to summertime.  We have had the October Competition and it is time to submit the images for the November Competition.  Here are my submissions:

What do you think of them?

Galleries Open to the Public

Way back on July 19th, I wrote a blog about a wedding that Annette and I shot the Saturday before.  I put some teaser pictures in the blog.

Annette and I are always careful that it is the bride and groom who are the first (outside of us) to see the pictures.  In this case, we put passwords on the galleries so that only they could see the pictures.

Well, we have gotten to the point where the pictures are online and the couple is ready for the password to come off of their wedding galleries.

So, if you would like to see some of our pictures of the wedding, please go to www.garthwaite.smugmug.com and go to the wedding gallery.  Click on the wedding that is in a Sub-Category and enjoy.

I especially like the picture of the bride dancing with the flower girl.

I set up two flashes with remote triggers (PW's), one to the left and one to the right. 

I also like the picture of the Flower Girl signing the picture frame.  I liked the low angle of the warm light streaming through the window and onto the girl.  The look of extreme concentration is priceless!

Anyway, take a look, enjoy and leave a comment.

Thanks!

Blurry Pictures

At the Project Image Competition for Harrisburg Camera Club this past week, the judge told us not to be afraid of blur.  Sometimes blur is a good thing, like when using a small depth of field to make the background blurry and focus the viewer's attention on the main subject.

One of the club members has been experimenting with abstract photography, which is also a good place to use blur.  On our trip to the cemetery yesterday, that photographer put a polarizing lens plus a neutral density filter on the lens of his camera so that he could get a long exposure.  He then shook the camera up and down or left and right or in circles for the whole exposure so that he made some wild abstracts.  He has shown his abstracts at the camera club meetings and actually gives talks on how to create them.

So as I watched him doing those crazy things with his camera yesterday, I decided to try it myself.  I didn't take the time to add the neutral density filter so my exposure outside in the sun was limited to 1/13 of a second.  Not that long really.

Anyway, here is the best image of the half dozen I took using this technique.  What do you think?

Lowlight Photos at Renfrew Park

Annette and I were very lucky this week.  Almost the whole week was about photography!

Tuesday night was the Projected Image Competition at the Harrisburg Camera Club

Wednesday night we met with our wedding couple and showed them a virtual copy of their wedding album.  Other than a few tweaks, which Annette has already taken care of, the album was good to go.

Thursday night we went with the Antietam Photographic Society to Renfrew Park in Waysnesboro for some low light photography.

Saturday we went with the Harrisburg Camera Club to Paxtang Cemetery.  See the previous post.

What a week!

This post concerns the Low Light Photos at Renfrew Park, which is a museum and park that is based on an old farmstead.  It is very nice.

One of the Society's members instructed the group on how to take low light photos.  Here are some of the results...

The first two pictures were at the beginning of the shoot.  You can tell because there is still light in the sky!

There are two techniques on display here.  The first technique gives a warmer result.  See how warm/yellow the little building is. This was accomplished with a large battery powered flashlight. While the shutter is open, the building was "painted" with light from the flashlight.  The light was just moved back and forth over the front of the building.

 The second technique gives a whiter light because the flash for a camera is designed to give off white light.  So as you correctly figured out, while the shutter was again held open, the bush and the building were "flashed" with a flash strobe several times.

Which of these two do you like best?

 Annette found this next picture.  It is interesting because there are a couple of light sources.  There was a night light behind the smaller building that was lighting the face of the larger barn.  To add to the light, I opened the shutter and wandered around the picture using a camera flash to light the tree, the smaller building and the dark side of the barn.  The tree came out a little hotter than I would have liked.  You can tell that the shutter open time was fairly long because the clouds are kinda smeared.

bi

The last picture tells a little bit of a story.  This is an empty house at night, waiting patiently with the lights on for the owners to come home.  

I lit this picture with a flashlight.  Trees are real light suckers.  It takes a lot of light to get the tree to be anything other than a black silhouette.

Paxtang Cemetery Shoot

Well, guess where the Camera Club went to shoot!!!  A cemetery!!

This morning we went to the Paxtang Cemetery in Harrisburg.  I thought there would be a boatload of things to shoot.  There is a Mausoleum, beautiful trees in the fall foliage finest, tombstones with details, etc.  Annette went along with me to keep me company.

It turns out that I struggled to find things of interest to me.  Still, I took 275 shots.  Of course now that I have gone through them I have narrowed them down to less than half of that.

Let's take a look at some of the pictures I got and I'll give some random thoughts on each.

The first place we started was the mausoleum.  It was a beautiful building.  Each little wing had a stained glass window at the end.  I worked with this window for a long time.  With just the available light, the window was bright and everything else was pitch black, so I added flash to try and even the exposure out.

The area was not a brightly lit room like an office or a classroom.  It was fairly dark.  After all, it was in a mausoleum!  I wanted a more somber lighting.  It was difficult to get the amount of flash to the point where I wanted it.  I also played with the color compensation.

After the mausoleum, I went out into the open air.  It was just a beautiful day!  The temperature was just on the cool side of perfect.  There was a bit too much wind for some of the tree and plant pictures that some of the other photographers were taking.  But otherwise, perfect!

When I went out side I decided to work on details.  So I went around looking at the various tombstones.  Everybody is unique in life and I guess that want to maintain that uniqueness after death, because there were so many types of headstones.  Here are some of the detail pictures that I took...

 The angel in this next picture was envisioned over a hundred years ago.  So I was thinking...I wonder if humankind's idea of beauty and peacefulness have changed in the past one hundred years?

My answer, judging from this angel, is that, no, beauty has not changed all that much.  I have seen the square neckline with the stylized flowers in cloth in my lifetime.  The girlish face has smooth skin and would still be attractive today.

 This next little statue was only about 8" tall.  I enjoyed its calm demeanor.  I didn't know whether to include the tombstones in the background or not.  The light color might draw your eye away from the angel.  But without the tombstones, the statue could be in a garden rather than a cemetery.  I think part of the angel's story is that she is watching over a grave.

I often call Annette, Nettie.  Annette asked the nieces and nephews to call her Aunt Nettie because Aunt Annette was hard to say and sounded like Antoinette.  I think Annette should use this image as her wallpaper on her computer, don't you?

Chicago Visit

On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week I had the opportunity to go to Waukegan, Illinois to visit a supplier for my employer.  We had a great visit and it was beneficial.


There were two legs to the trip:  Hagerstown to BWI and BWI to O'Hare. 

The plane on the Hagerstown to BWI leg was a Cesna 402.  If you don't know what that is let me tell you this.  There is room for the Pilot, the Co-pilot and 8 passengers!  Very small for a commercial plane.


One of my co-workers, who was on this trip, is a recent college graduate.  This trip to Illinois was his first airplane ride!  So he got to ride in a small twin-engine prop plane and a larger Jet airliner.  We were looking for the little plastic wings that they hand out to kids to give to him for his first flight.  But we never found any.

On Tuesday evening we were able to go into Chicago and see some of the sights.

We went up the Hancock building, but there was a line to get a table.

We came back down and I took some pictures of the Water Tower.

Then we went over to Millenium Park Where we saw the following:

I don't know the name of these columns and fountain.  Can you help me out?

 The Millenium Sculpture, which is more commonly referred to as "The Bean".  This was a fascinating sculpture because it was polished to a mirror-like finish, which allowed the surroundings to be reflected.
 

I also don't know the name of this outdoor theater/stage.  Can you help me out here?

Dinosaur

Then we saw the Lions in front of the Art Institute.  Guess which image was made using the flash!  As a clue...I thought it was fascinating that the light from the tiny flash on the G11 only reached the Lion and did not reach the building in the background.

We were also able to see the Buckingham Fountain.  Unfortunately, we got there just as the band was finishing the last chorus of the last song of their performance.

It was so dark that I had to set the camera on the ground to have any hope of getting a picture that wasn't blurred beyond recognition.  I was also trying to get the moon in the picture.

Rumor had it that they were shooting Transformers 3 in Chicago this week.  You can see from this picture that they had wrecked quite a few cars in the making of the movie.  I haven't seen the earlier Transformer movies, but I may have to go see this one so that I can try to find this scene!

All in all it was a great trip, but I am glad to be home!