Photo A Day Project Day 2!

Day 2 of a month of photos. I plan to do a mix of basically straight out of the camera and photos that have been processed a bit in Adobe Lightroom. I took this during my lunch hour at a small garden near the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. The garden, which runs the about a half-block is designed to showcase different habitats in the area and to offer gardeners some ideas of native plant species, particularly those that will attract butterflies. No butterflies today, but lots of bees - also a good thing! Enjoy!

Glass Insulator Abstract

This shot has a lot going on with it.  First, I turned the glass insulator on end and started taking photos of the bottom end.  Then, I fooled around with the HDR settings on my 70D, taking multiple exposures and blending them together.  In order to get a bit of a "painterly" feeling, during each exposure, some lasting over 10 seconds, I moved the lens so that is was between 50mm and 70mm during the exposure.  And he's the result of all that - plus a little tweaking in Adobe Lightroom.

Turquoise

A bit more rainy day fun.  We have this beautiful bay window with a nice seat in front of it so I can put objects on it and get some wonderful light on a gray day.  This is an abstract of three glass insulators although I see ripples in a turquoise pool of water.

A Little Bounty From Our Garden

We took a bit of a minimalist approach to gardening this year and ended up with one rather prolific cherry tomato plant.  Here are just a few of the hundreds of cherry tomatoes it has produced so far.

Sunset Over Savannah National Wildlife Refuge

For the summer of 2000, after law school, I stayed with my parents in Savannah to study for the bar.  I would occasionally trek out to the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge to take photographs.  This is one particularly memorable sunset I saw.  It feels a little grainy to me, but I think that's a really bad scan from a slide to digital.  This was shot on Fuji film - I think Provia 100.

Abstract Lily

This is a bit more fiddling around in Lightroom with a closeup photo of a lily.  Mostly, I tried to soften the edges and bump up the colors just a bit.

Thinking of Fall

The very cool for July weather here in DC has me thinking of Fall, which is my favorite season as a photographer.  The colors of the season and the crisp, clear air make for great photography.  This photo was taken near the Tidal Basin a few years back when I started playing around with moving the camera during the exposure.  I've also tweaked it a bit in Lightroom to really get the colors to pop.