Philly City Hall

A look at part of the east facade of Philadelphia City Hall, with 1 Liberty Place, Helmut Jahn's postmodern homage to the Chrysler Building, in the background.

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.

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.

Queen Of Hearts

Happy Valentine's Day!

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

Happy New Year, my friends!

Today 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.)

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.

My Photos Are In the Toilet!

Last month, we already established that most of my photos suck. And now, it seems, some of my photos are in the toilet!

Actually, I walked into our powder room last Sunday monring as light was squeezing through almost-closed blinds. The light made an interesting pattern on the toilet; I especially liked the multiple ways the alternating bands of shadow and light curved.

So natch, I grabbed my Canon XSi and started snapping some pictures, as my wife once more looked on bemusedly. She's long gotten used to me taking photos of seemingly mundane and unbeautiful things.

No potty-mouthed remarks about this one, please.

Arlington National Cemetery Meetup

 

Our hyperactive Meetup group visited Arlington National Cemetery yesterday, our sixth photo meetup since we got started August 2nd.

I can tell you from my experience over the past two months that if you find yourself in a photo slump, try a nearby photo Meetup.com group - it's worked wonders for me, as I've been photographing nearly nonstop since early August. The energy from being around other enthusiastic photographers carries over between meetups.

I hadn't been to Arlington National Cemetery since 1964, when I was 14 years old. I was moved by the changing of the guard ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns, but not so much by the ceremony itself, as by the many WWII veterans attending. While most people were watching the precise ritual by members of the 3rd US Infantry Regiment, I was fixed on these true American heroes. As young men, they endured countless hardships for our sake, then came back home and quietly and modestly rebuilt their lives as well as the American prosperity of the postwar period. Now at the end of their lives, we are fortunate whenever we find ourselves in their presence. 

"...Known Only to God"	SSGT Frank DiFransisco, watches the changing of the guard.
	Marine Corps War Memorial
Pearl Harbor Survivor

My New 28 Megapixel Superwide Camera...

I don't know why I haven't tried this before... here's a panorama of the Charles River from the Back Bay in Boston.

This 180-degree photo is actually made up of five "normal" images I took with my 18-55mm zoom at it's widest setting. Equivalent to a 28mm lens on a 35mm camera, it's not a superwide by any means. But coupled with the PhotoStitch software that came with my Canon DSLR, I was able to create this panorama in a few minutes. The resulting image was 13,530 x 2142 pixels, or about 28.6 megapixels.

I did this on the spur of the moment last weekend while in Boston for a wedding, without giving it much thought, but here is a good article by Ken Rockwell on using PhotoStitch. Ken notes that even the least expensive Canon digicams made in the last two years, come with this software. The digicams even come with a special "stitch assist" mode to make life easier still.

I see this as a good technique for making some dramatic panoramas in Annapolis and Baltimore. Look for some soon.

Otakon 2008 Photos

These kids all fell into poses on their own. They're great models. I posed the "Final Fantasy Four against a blank white wall inside the food pavillion at the Inner Harbor - it ended up looking like seamless paper. Lighting came mostly from a skylight above and in front of the group. A little too much "butterfly" lighting, but all in all not bad.

Roxy Swings

"Roxy" (Lynn Roxanne Gambrill Green) of The Fabulous Hubcaps lets loose with a riff on the saxaphone.

Elvis Sighted In Maryland!

I saw and heard him myself! In Pikesville, no less.

Tom Connelly, aka The Elvis Man, is a pretty convincing Elvis. Along with The Fabulous Hubcaps, he was one of the acts this past Sunday at the Dancing in the Street event in Pikesville. In addition to great live music, there was an impressive display of vintage cars and various food and services booths. Sandy and I each had a foot reflexology treatment - pretty nice!

Shutterbug Excursions

ShootingUp_0734
Originally uploaded by Steve Rosenbach

I just copied this from my blog - I found this group a few weeks ago on meetup.com, and we had our first "meetup" last Saturday.

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.

as you can see, I was outgunned by all the Nikonians, most with high-end cameras. Fortunately, they all accepted me despite me being Nikon-challenged

Flag Ladder Foolery

At the carnival the other morning, I found this "flag ladder" lying next to a white trailer. I propped it up against the trailer, noticed the strong shadow, and liked the shapes and colors.

Back in the lab, the deep black shadows my eyes saw turned out to be not-so-deep greyish-blue. The photo at left is about the best I could do by just setting the trailer to white point in the Levels control (I use Photoshop Elements 4, so I don't have access to curves.)

I still wanted to see what my eyes "saw", so I used the polygonal lasso tool to select the shadow areas and make them really black. While I was at it, I lassoed the colored parts of the ladder so as to bring up the white areas.


Here's what the end result looks like. Definitely more dramatic, but did I overdo it? (BTW, the jpg here shows some jaggies along the edges of the black shadow, but in the full-sized image, the edge is very clean.)

What do you think?

Outside Pitch

While waiting for the train to head home today, I snapped some photo of the new Sports Museum next to my stop. There was a crowd heading to tonight's Orioles game, and vendors were out in force.

I met this friendly fellow, Kurt, a vendor for Outside Pitch, an Orioles fan magazine, and asked him if I could take his photo. Kurt obliged with a smile and a nice action pose.

Reginald F. Lewis Museum

The Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture is one of those places that I've just got to get to one of these days. It's less than two blocks from where I work, so I really don't have any excuse for not at least stopping by on a lunch break.

Reading Mr. Lewis' biography just a little while ago might just inspire me to go. Reginald Lewis grew up in a tough part of Baltimore, and by dint of hard work and perseverence, worked his way through college and eventually Harvard Law School. He founded the first African-American-led law firm on Wall Street, and in the '80s, became a CEO several times in leveraged buy-outs that saved and turned around several companies.

Mr. Lewis was also a great philanthropist, endowing foundations, scholarships, and other worthy causes with over 10 million dollars before his untimely death at age 50 in 1993.

The museum is a postmodern building that just shouts out to be photographed, as you can see.