Washington at Night

Annette and I have not been very active with our photography since the big trip to Death Valley at the beginning of December.  But in January we took two trips to Washington, DC.

The first trip we were showing some of the mall to some friends.  We went to the National Air and Space Museum on the mall.  We didn't think that we would have and opportunity to go anywhere else, so we didn't bring our big cameras.  The only cameras that we had were our cell phone cameras.  What were we thinking!!!

After the Air and Space museum, we stopped to see Albert Einstein and then walked over to the Lincoln Memorial.  It was dark out and we saw some great shots, but cell phones cannot do the shots justice.  We decided to come back the next  weekend better prepared.

When we arrived we found parking on Constitution Avenue near the Lincoln Memorial.  The plan was to go over to the Jefferson Memorial and then make our way back past the Lincoln Memorial.  It didn't quite work out that way.

By the time we got to the Jefferson Memorial, the sun was down and the light was almost gone.  We didn't get many shots with color in the sky.  So we went to work on night time shots.

For this first shot, I was over on the side of the building and included some of the front entrance columns.  I din't know how much trouble I would be in if I moved the little sign.  There were a couple of Park Rangers patrolling the memorial.  But in retrospect, I should have moved it.

Can you see the silhouette of the couple?

For these next two pictures, I was shooting for symmetry.  

I had to wait a few minutes for people to get out of the first shot.  You can still see a partial person beside the column.  Hey, they have just a much of a right to be there as we did!  This is another one where the sign needs moved.  Next time I'll send Annette up to put the sign behind the column and then put it back when we are done.

It's amazing how the architects also like symmetry.  I moved to the center and found that the seam in the concrete was right in the center.  I didn't have enough time to wait for all the people to leave, so I had to accept them in the picture.  See the flash going off?  Was that guy taking a picture of me?  I wonder if I cluttering up his shot.

At our camera club, the next competition has the theme of "Reflections".  So Annette and I were conscious of the reflections in the Tidal Pool.  Annette has a very similar image that I think she is going to use for the competition.  Notice how clear the air is and how still the water is.

From the time that we took the picture above and walked around the Tidal Pool to the Washington Monument, the air went from seemingly clear to very foggy.  See the image below.

You don't get much opportunity to take foggy pictures, especially at a location two hours from home.  So we decided to experiment with the fog.  We got a couple of pictures of the Washington Monument and then moved to the World War II Memorial.

By the time we were done with these shots it was 9:00 p.m. and we still had a two hour drive to get home.  So we decided to leave the Lincoln Memorial for another day.  

Harrisburg from City Island

Back on November 11, 2012, the Harrisburg Camera Club had a group photo shoot on City Island.  Over 20 members showed up to take pictures.  One of those members was me.

The Harrisburg Marathon was on the same day and the place was packed.  Hurricane Sandy had put a serious damper on the New York marathon so there were plenty of runners looking for an outlet for all of the training and preparation they had made.  So, instead of the New York Marathon, they ran the Harrisburg Marathon.  We photographers found room to shoot once we got away from the race route.

My best pictures from the outing were of the Harrisburg skyline and the Susquehanna River.

One of the upcoming competitions has "Reflections" as the theme, so I was looking for reflections.

All in all, it was a beautiful day with time spent shooting and conversing with other photographers!

Death Valley - Eureka Mine

(Since the latest blog, when posted, goes at the top, you may want to start at the last blog on Death Valley  (Badwater), which was actually the first posted (see the dates) and work your way back up to the present (this post).)

Annette and I had seen an abandoned car near the Eureka Mine in several of the books on Death Valley and we wanted to get our own images of it.  So on Friday Annette and I went for a drive and we found the mine and the car.

The car was an old Buick Roadmaster with a straight eight.  That was a long engine block!

I was kind of disappointed that the car was so vandalized.  I would have been OK with all of the soft stuff (cloth and plastics) missing or damage and with names scratched into the paint, but why did they have to cave in the roof?

I also found that these two car pictures are an interesting study of the difference between shooting into the sun and shooting away from the sun.

I like this next photograph in Black and White both because it works in B&W and because of the impression of zigzag lines running up through the image.

Death Valley - Mesquite Flats Dunes

The dunes were probably my favorite location for the trip.

However, I got off to a rough start.  It was 5:30 a.m.  It was still dark.  I asked the instructor which lens would work best.  He gave the right answer but it was not the one I wanted to hear.  He said that whatever lens you leave in the car will be the one you want in the field.  Ok.  I get it.  But I had just bought the camera the week before the trip and I was not going to change lenses in the middle of a sand dune.  The sand was finely textured enough that any breeze at all would have it swirling in all directions.

So I chose the 24-70mm and trudged into the dunes.  And sure enough, once I had convinced myself to climb up the large dune in front of me, I found that I was too far away from the dunes in the back that I wanted a picture of.  Oh well.  I had to make the best of it so I shot at the 70mm end of the lens.

When I got the images on the computer, I was pleasantly surprised.  I liked quite a few of them.

The warm morning light was just wonderful.  The dunes have some great shapes.  And I was able to get some B&W images.  A great morning!

In fact, we enjoyed the dunes enough that Annette and I decided to go back to the dunes by ourselves on Saturday morning after the workshop had finished.  That time I took the 70-200mm lens and felt I was too close.  Oh, well!

In this first image, notice the little speck of a person and try to comprehend the size of the dunes.  Also, notice how the long shadows caress the dunes.

This next image is a picture of Annette.  No, really!  That is Annette in the lower right.  The only reason that I know this is because I was there.

On this next image, I cropped a little too close at the top.  Unfortunately, the crop was done in camera.  But I love the shadows in this image.  I like how they gently break over the round edge and deepen into  a pool.

I like to shoot perpendicular to the direction of the light, as I did in this next image.  It allows the shadows to define the shape and form of the object.  I like how the edge of the shadow goes from a blending into a sharp edge.

Notice the shadows and the softly flowing S curves in this black and white image of the dunes.

On this trip I started looking for black and white images and I am always open to abstract images and this next image is a combination of both.

Desert Track Abstract

On one of the hillocks as you enter the dunes, there is a tree with lots of character.  It was too dark on the way in to the dunes to see enough to compose a shot.  I was glad I was able to get this on the way out.  The photographer in the image was a fellow student.

Death Valley - Artists Palette

Artists Palette seemed to be a favorite of the group and particularly of the instructors.  Annette, too, seemed to love the place.  Each of them seemed to remark about the beauty of the multi-hued dirt soil.  But for me, we were taking pictures of piles of dirt.  Beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder.

To be fair, the dirt did have some interesting colors that are not seen back home.  The turquoise, the pinks, the various shades of brown and black.

This first image is meant to show those various shades and colors.

This second image is one of my first experiments with B&W on this trip.  I think the mountains look much more majestic and timeless in black and white.  What do you think?

Death Valley - 20 Mule Canyon

Wednesday was a day of shooting dirt.  In the morning was 20 Mule Canyon and in the evening was the Artists' Palette.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.  Let's start with 20 Mule Canyon, which is where we went for sunrise.

Sunrise was wonderful to watch.  You could see the sun light the tips of the far mountains, but with the near foreground not lit, I did not get any images worth showing.  

These first two pictures show the difference in light.  The first picture was before the sun light had reached this valley and the second picture was with the sun higher in the sky.

One reason that I included the first picture was to give you an idea of the scale of the landscape.  Notice the two people in the first picture and notice how big they are relative to the hills and mountain around them.

And now to my new-found interest in B&W images.  It seems a shame to throw away all of the various colors of the dirt in the canyon, but the B&W image show so much of the light and texture.

Our instructors gave us the assignment of shooting the same scene in landscape and portrait modes.  My attempt at this assignment is below.  For this particular pair of pictures, I like the horizontal image better.  It seems that the vertical image crowds the chocolate topped mound too much.  What do you think?

Death Valley - Rhyolite

Rhyolite is a ghost town on the road out of Death Valley toward Beatty, NV.  It is pretty accessible and that is why I was somewhat disappointed.  All of the building remains were fenced off.  I suppose it was for the average tourists' safety, but it meant that we couldn't get up close and personal with the buildings and it meant that the fence would show up in the pictures.  So they put a crimp in my style.

This first image is of the "Bottle House".  It appears that the builder used bottles as building materials.  The bottom of the bottles were pointed to the outside of the hose and mortar/cement placed around them.  I wonder how much light the bottles allowed into the house???

It appeared that the Rhyolite Mercantile was a building in transition and in transit.  With the windows boarded up, I hope that the building was transitioning to a better state that would help to demonstrate life in Rhyolite.  Also, it was up on blocks as though it had just been moved or as though it was about to be moved.

The instructors gave us an assignment  to make an artistic abstract image and then make an equally appealing image of the "reveal".  As you can see in these next two pictures, I was not very successful!  The first image is an abstract of a broken screen which was in the window of the caboose in the second image.  

The first image appeals to me, but I wish that I had used an aperture that would have given a greater depth of field, which for you non-photographers is the area with acceptable focus.  The second image I don't like so much because it just documents that there was a caboose without wheels sitting in a barren landscape.

At the lower end of Rhyolite was an "artistic" section.  There was a crude woman made from cement blocks.  Hhhmm...  There was a circular stone maze.  And there was an installation that was supposed to be an artist's interpretation of Da Vinci's Last Supper painting.  

It appeared to me that the artist had fiberglass blankets thrown over people enacting the Last Supper.  We photographers thought it would make great images to light up the sculpture on the inside with a flashlight and have the sunset sky in the background.  Notice how the telephone poles on the distant horizon appear to be three crosses.