Major League! Washington Nationals Beat St. Louis Cardinals, 6-1, 2 May 2009

Assault with a Deadly Weapon!
This past Saturday, I went with my brother to photograph the Nationals playing the Cardinals in DC. As games go, it was pretty good, and --even better for someone who is not totally enamored with baseball-- short. And to top it off, we had very good seats. In the past, the cable supporting the screens protecting the fans from foul balls cut across my field of view. This time, we were on the 3rd Base line but low enough that this didn't happen (see video of pictures below and this link for the flickr set of the pictures from which it came).


As a learning experience, I would rate the game pretty highly. In the past, I had been frustrated by watching the action at the home plate hoping to catch something striking there. Sometimes, I was lucky, but a lot of times, I found myself frantically searching for where the ball had been hit or thrown. This time I kept my lens not zoomed and watched the action over the lens (to spare my eyes from squinting). As a result, I was able to follow the movement of the ball much better.

One other thing that I experimented with was with Nik Software's Silver Efex Pro plug-in that renders very high quality black and white photographs of the original colors. You can see these and the color shots below
















Another thing I played around with is another Photoshop plug-in called Bokeh by Alien Skin. This little plug-in simulates the bokeh effect, the blurring around the focused-in on subject of one's photography, mimicking various lenses that do this quite well (which one may not be able to afford). You can see a comparison before and after below.



I also learned that when I attempted to use my Tamron 1.4x teleconverter with my Canon L-series 70-200mm F2.8 lens, I had a problem with vignetting (the corners being darker than the center). As a result, I'm going to investigate getting a better teleconverters since this is an apparent result when one uses inexpensive ones.

2009 Smithsonian Craft Show: Delicate Crafts and Even More "Delicate" Artists

This past Saturday, I went to the 2009 Smithsonian Craft Show. This is one of the premier crafts shows in the US and was hosted by the National Building Museum in Washington DC (see video of pictures I took below and this link for the flickr set where I've posted them).



As a subject, the craft show was difficult for a variety of reasons:

-It was crowded.
-Some of the things I would have liked to have photographed were under glass.
-Some of the things on display may have been finely crafted but they just were not that interesting as subjects.

The thing though that made it particularly difficult was that the individual artists called the tune as to whether one could photograph their items. Most of them were amenable to that, but one person got very nasty when I snapped a quick shot of one of his displays (to the point where another artist commented afterward to me that he had been very rude to me). In retrospect, I should have asked the "jerk artist" permission (and I did afterward with all the others). But I did find it very hard to understand the objection to photographing items on display if the artists already had pictures of their same works on their web pages (as several said to me when they did not give permission). In any case, I did feel that I got some good pictures (see below), but I don't think I'll be going to the 2010 Smithsonian Craft Show.














As for the technical details, I used my Canon EOS 5D Mark II and my tried and true Canon L-series 24-105mm short zoom.

Landscapes and Flowers at Meadowlark Gardens, 18 April 2009

The Saturday before last (18 April), I went on a trip to Meadowlark Gardens organized by Virginia Digital Safaris (led by Jack Nevitt and Alan Defelice). Meadowlark is a very scenic place and boasts some truly beautiful flowers and a picturesque lake (see video of pictures below and this link for the flickr set where the individual pictures are).


In terms of ambiance, I found Meadowlark a pretty congenial place. While there were some tourists, they pretty much did not get in the way. Tripods were allowed of course, and we were lucky that some light mist was on the lake when we started (see pictures below).














One final point of interest was the chance I got to do use a program called Helicon Focus that allows you to make a photograph's depth of field much better than one can get with a single shot. It combines a set of images taken at different focus settings to achieve this (see below).




As for the technical details, I used my Canon EOS 5D Mark II with a Canon Macro 100mm F2.8 lens, a Canon L-series 24-105mm short zoom, and a Tokina 12-24mm wide angle lens. I also rendered some of the pictures into high dynamic range (HDR) and pseudo-HDR using Photomatix Pro.

DC Monuments and Memorials at Night, 17 April 2009

This past Friday, I went on a photo-safari led by the peerless David Luria of Washington Photo Safari to photograph at night some of the most famous monuments and memorials around the National Mall. This was only the second time I had been out to do night photography, and I was reasonably pleased with the results (see video below of the pictures I took and this link for the Flickr set where the individual pictures can be viewed)



Overall, it was a reasonably easy safari to do. The weather was very fine, and while there were a lot of tourists, they only occasionally got in the way. The only shots that didn't come out were the ones of the World War II Memorial right at twilight (because of moving people resulting in "ghosts" on the images) and my experiments with nighttime high dynamic range shots. The EOS 5D Mark II SLR's ability to go to very, very high ISOs was a real plus, and I think the use of black and white on the Korean War Memorial and the Vietnam War Memorial statues enhanced them overall (see photos below)

The World War II Memorial




The Korean War Memorial





The Vietnam War Memorial






The Lincoln Memorial






The Washington Monument and Albert Einstein Memorial




As for the technical details, I used with my EOS 5D Mark II, my Canon L-series 24-105mm short zoom and my Canon L-series 70-200mm F2.8 mid-range zoom

Photographing the Greatest Show on Earth: Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus

On Saturday (11 April 2009) I had the privilege of photographing the performance of one of the most famous circuses in the world, if not the most famous one when it performed at the Patriot Center at George Mason University in Northern Virginia. Suffice to say, as a subject the circus was a photographer's dream with brightly costumed performers, whimsical clowns, pretty girls, fearsome tigers, horses, ponies, dogs, and non-stop action. My only regret is that I was not there directing a team of photographers positioned around the circus because there was so much going on, well...everywhere (see video of pictures I took below and this link for the gallery of pictures themselves that I have uploaded to flickr...having switched to that from Picasa).



As I said, the circus was a fantastic subject for a photographer like me. They had no problem with any sort of photography or video being done, provided it was for non-commercial use. And I had a seat at the very edge of the stage. The only difficulty I encountered was getting close to an elephant that they brought out to do a painting with its trunk in the pre-main performance performance period. So what did I photograph?

Well, there were the clowns and the ringmaster








Lots of Pretty Girls Dancing, Singing, and Doing Acrobatics










Contortionists, Jugglers, and a Guy on Stilts






Riders Doing Tricks on Horses and Motorcycles









Ponies, a Magnificent Horse, and Goats Doing Tricks






Tigers






Acrobats and Trapeze Artists









Elephants and Flying Dogs






Photogenic Souvenirs




I also got a chance to take some more short videos with my Canon EOS 5D Mark II, and this time, I was able to edit the videos and upload them to flickr in their full 1920X1080p detail (see below)





As for the technical details, I took a handful of shots at the floor show and souvenir stands with my Canon EOS 5D Mark II using a Canon L-series 24-105mm short zoom lens but for the main performance, I used my mid-range "fast" lens, the Canon L-series 70-200 F2.8 (which worked like a dream). To edit the video, I used Sony Vegas Studio 9 Platinum.

"Hostile Environment": the 2009 Cherry Blossom Parade and Japanese Street Festival

I am using the term "hostile environment" half in jest and half seriously. While photographing these two events:

1. Some obnoxious person grabbed at my arm because he felt that I was getting in someone else's way.
2. People watching the parade seemed to think that I had an obligation to kneel down or sit on the curb because I'm very tall (despite the fact that I took the trouble to get there early).
3. Someone in the dense crowd after the parade ended acted as if I was deliberately striking her with my camera bag (whatever happened to saying, "excuse me, could you be a little more careful?")
4. Someone accused me of deliberately cutting in the line for food at the Japanese Street Festival, despite the fact that the "line" was tenuous at best.

I was left wondering if on that day I transformed myself into a world class clod or if dense crowds bring out the very worst in people. I remember in past parades, a fist fight involving at least one drunk almost breaking out and fierce rivalry for curbside positions at another. I think the next parade I go to, I will either get a grandstand seat or try to view the event from above (see video of pictures I took below and this link for the gallery where I posted them).



I also got to break in my EOS 5D Mark II's ability to capture HD video. I did have a terrible time, though, editing the video on my computer. In the end, I had to render the clips into a less than optimal HD edition (720x480P instead of the 1920x1080p). Special note, when you watch this video, make sure you click on the HQ option in the bottom right corner of the video screen on the youtube page or you won't be seeing it in HD quality.

As for the pictures, my favorites of the parade are the ones below.





















And these are my favorites of the Japanese Street Festival.









Finally, I pretty much used my Canon L-series 24-105mm short zoom lens. That seemed more than adequate for the pictures I was taking. I used Photomatix Pro to render some of the single images into pseudo-high dynamic range shots (to make them more vivid).

The KoC "Night of Magic" with my Brand New EOS 5D Mark II!

He's playing before a tough crowd!

A couple of weeks ago, I attended the Knights of Columbus of St. Leo's in Northern Virginia's annual "Night of Magic." This event consists of a series of performances by local amateur magicians topped off by the performance of a professional one. Anyway, I had just gotten myself a Canon EOS 5D Mark II full-frame SLR (I couldn't resist the 21.1 megapixels and the HD video capability), and I felt that photographing the event would give me a chance to try it out (see video below of the photographs I took and this link for the gallery of pictures I've uploaded to the Internet).


Anyway, I thought it was a pretty successful outing. I got to practice photographing people (something I've resolved to work on) and I was pretty pleased with the EOS 5D Mark II's ability to go up to extraordinarily high ISOs (see pictures below).

A Tough Balancing Act...

...becomes quite the feat of levitation!

She looks on with wonder.

"There's nothing in the bag."

The little girl looks skeptical.

It's magic!

The Professional with his Rings

Doing it with a Smile

Voila!

As I noted above, the camera body I used was the Canon EOS 5D Mark II and my Canon L-series 24-105mm short zoom and Canon L-series 70-200mm F2.8 lens.