Dan Perovich's Cyberfront Property

1/800 @ f/5.6, ISO 200, 55mm (EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS)The CaJune festival was today at Breaux Vineyards in Hillsboro, VA.  A few weeks back, my friends and I all said we wanted to go this year, but no one was quite sure when it was exactly.  Well, it wound up falling on the Saturday before Father’s day and the only person that could go was me.  I did not even know it was today until I read it in the newspaper this morning.  It was buried in between several other events which sounded much less interesting.

I packed the camera and my gym bag and headed to the bank to grab some cash.  On the 5 minute drive to the bank it started to down pour!  Bummer!  I decided to hit up the gym first and let the weather blow over.

Fast forward two and a half hours later and I was finally at the CaJune festival.  I couldn’t wait to get myself some jambalaya and do some wine tasting.  Unfortunately, I only had an hour before the festival would close.  Who closes a festival at 6pm in the summer?  That is prime time for some good eats and a bottle or two of wine!

My first stop was the wine tasting tent.  My $15 admission charge to the festival got me a tasting coupon for 10 wines and a 50% discount on tasting 5 more of Breaux’s cellar club select wines.  The people at the tasting tent were actually pouring full glasses of wine!  My admission fee definitely paid off.  It took about 30 minutes to make our way through the list of 10 wines to taste.  By this time, all the food vendors were already taking down their tents for the day.  WTF!?  If I were the event coordinator my mandate would be no one shuts down until after 6pm.  How else are the masses supposed to sober up at the end of the festival?

After doing both the outdoor and in door tasting (the cellar club select wines were not worth the extra $5 in my opinion) I bought myself two bottles of wine and went hunting for some photo opportunities.  The vineyards at Breaux are extremely picturesque.  They are planted right in the valley of a mountain range.  The pictures I took didn’t do this place justice.  Maybe a panorama would be better at capturing the beauty of the setting.

In the process of taking today’s picture, a girl and her sister came over to me and asked if they could copy my idea of the wine bottle on the vineyard fence.  The older girl assured me, “We’re just amateurs so you don’t have to worry.”  I chuckled at that, she thought I was a professional and would be worried that they were stealing my idea.  I told them not to worry about it, that I was an amateur too, and we probably were not the first people to be taking this exact type of shot.

I tried a few different aperture settings and both of my lens for this concept.  I shot both large aperture and small aperture photos.  The ones with the smaller apertures with larger depth of fields all had little “glithches” that kept them off my pick list.  I would have liked to get today’s picture with a larger depth of field.  Once again, I do not think I was concentrating on my shooting as much as I should have been.  Probably because of all the wine I tasted!!!

1/160 @ f/4, ISO 200, 75mm (70-200mm f/4L IS USM)My fiance and I decided to take our girls to the dog park today after work.  This was their first time ever at a dog park.  Being that they are usually indoor dogs and only a few of our friends and family members have dogs that Mela and Leila have played with, we were not sure how they were going to be with all the other strange dogs.  With Leila only being 6 pounds and Mela about 17 pounds, we were worried bigger dogs would trample them.

Once we got the girls to the park and in the first of the double gates, it was go time.  Just about every other dog in the park came running to the door waiting for me to open it and let our girls in.  The first 10 minutes were interesting.  Leila defended her personal space as best she could by showing her teeth, growling, and barking as loud as she could.  Mela tried to stand guard of her sister and did not go very far from her side.  After 10 minutes, most of the other dogs went back to what they were doing before, and Mela and Leila finally got a chance to explore the grounds.  It appears that Leila might have a boyfriend now.  There was one spaniel at the park that would not leave her alone.  All he wanted to do was have Leila chase him around the grounds, but she did not take the bait.

It was pretty tough to get the girls more than 5 feet away from me.  I had my 70-200 lens on the camera and left the short zoom in the car.  Even though I took about 50 pictures while we were there, only about 10 of them were in focus, but none of them were tack sharp.  I am going to have to practice my high-speed auto focusing and tracking techniques, especially if I want to shoot a sporting event or birds in flight in the future.

iPhone 3G captureShort post for today.  This picture was taken from my iPhone, hence the lack luster quality.  I took it at work in the kitchen.  The client which I am currently working for is in the process of moving buildings.  Over 75% of the people have moved already.  Just the group which I am working for is left at the old building for a couple more weeks.

Apparently, whoever planned the moved thought it would be okay to move the copy machines, vending machines and the water cooler before everyone was moved off the floor.  The last things to disappear where the vending machines and were apparently the last straw for somebody.  Full text below:

“Dear People Who Think the People Who are Staying Until July aren’t Worth Much:

If you take our coffee, there will be a riot.  We’re talking Post-Rodney-King-verdict-in-Los-Angeles-Style riots.

Sincerely,

The people who are working very hard to do their jobs, in spite of the constant rumbling of the tumbleweeds.

P.S. – please don’t take our furniture

P.P.S. – especially when we are sitting on it”

1/60 @ f/4, ISO 200, 700mm (EF70-200mm f/4L IS USM)I felt entirely sapped of all my energy again today after work.  Luckily, a teenie-weenie neon green bug caught my eye on the side of my car when I was leaving.  I popped into my trunk and whipped out my camera hoping to get a macro shot of this cool like insect.  Unfortunately, my 70-200 lens is no macro and did not have the focusing range in order to get a good macro shot of the little bugger. 

A macro lens is definitely on my list of gear to get.  In fact, I am thinking about moving it higher on the list.  My current priorities for new gear have a kit zoom lens replacement higher than the macro.  But now I am thinking it would be better to fill in my macro gap first before replacing any gear which I already own.  Either way, new equipment is not in the plans for anytime soon, I am on a new budget.

Back to today’s photo.  I started out with a semi-interesting color photo in Photoshop.  From there, I decided to play around with the Lightroom presets.  After trying them all out, I settled on the two I liked most, Creative – Aged Photo and General – Auto Tone.  In the end, I chose the Aged Photo preset.  A little bit of added vignetting got me to my end result.  I will admit, it definitely is not my favorite photograph in the project so far.  But hey, we all have our off days, right?!

Does anyone have any good resources for free Lightroom 2 plugins and presets?  Or are these usually something worth paying a few dollars for?

1/40 @ f/4, ISO400, 70mm (EF70-200mm f/4L IS USM)This picture is the first black and white in the Photo365 project.  Well, technically, it is not entirely black and white.  I have modified the photograph in Lightroom during post processing.

I was feeling a bit run down yesterday after work.  The end of the work day kind of crushed my good spirits created earlier in the day.  As a result, taking a picture for the project was not high on the priority list.  However, while the grill was warming up, I busted out the camera and took a few shots of the Vietnamese doll in my kitchen sitting room (or whatever the room is called that is attached to the kitchen, but has a couch and TV….just like on the TV show “Two and a Half Men”).  There was barely enough ambient light to capture this image without having to pull out the strobe and PocketWizards.

Upon importing the images into Lightroom, I wasn’t very pleased with any of the shots.  I had some other pictures from today but they were of some birds on the bird feeder next door.  I am not quite ready to start duplicating shots for the project just yet, so I decided to be a bit creative with post processing the photo of this doll.

First I needed to raise the exposure 1 1/4 stops and crop the “uninterestingness” out.  I then decided I’d play around with some of the predefined filters in Lightroom 2.  But in the end, I did not like the result any of them produced.  I decided to undo the filters and take the saturation of all the colors down to zero (creating a black and white image). Next,  I used the adjustment brush to add back the saturation of the red object on the doll.  A final touch of vignetting got me to the picture that I am sharing with you today.

Let me know what you think.

1/800 @ f/4, ISO200, 200mm (EF70-200mm f/4L IS USM)I wound up making it out to the Greek festival near Dulles Town Center today.  The festival wasn’t quite what I had expected.  I had imagined a large field filled with several vendors and activities along with a stage where entertainment would be taking place.  I guess I over estimated what a single church would pull together for the first year of their festival.  However, the festival did look to be a big hit with all the attendees.

It was hosted in an industrial park parking lot. Half of the area was filled with carnival type rides.  The other half had vendors selling jewelry, food items, Greek pastries, and freshly made Greek cuisine (think gyros).  There was also a large tent for eating and a band.  After taking a walk around the lot to scope out the scene, I saw that the dancers were scheduled to come on at 5:15.  I had a half hour to spare, so I grabbed myself a gyro and water and chowed down in the shade.  Boy was it yummy.

5:15 came and went.  At 5:30 an announcement was made that the young Greek dances would be delayed until 6:15.  It was then that i realized one of the dancers, a pre-school child, was standing a few yards in front of me.  It was at this point that I started to feel uncomfortable standing by myself with a DSLR poised to take pictures.  I definitely did not want to get labeled in a negative way for waiting to take photos of preschool children dancing.  I decided to head home, but only after picking up a Greek pastry sampler platter for me and my fiance to share.

Today’s picture was actually shot before heading over to the Greek festival.  I met a couple of friends at a park in Leesburg to check out the brand new dog park.  I had been in this park twice before, but there were never the number of people as there were today.  The place was hopping.  One car would leave and another would fill its spot a few minutes later.  Even the wildlife was out in force.  Across the pond from the new dog park was where I was able to find these two turtles catching some rays.  If anyone has seen the Slowskys Comcast commercials, he or she will understand the title reference. 

I wish I could have eliminated the glare from the sun on the turtles’ shells.  I tried in post production, but was successful.  I wound up leaving the glare unaltered in the end.  I should have spent a bit more time thinking through my shots and reviewing them on the LCD while on location.

The dog park looks great.  I can’t wait to bring my puppies there and fire off a ton of pictures.  I have a feeling I will be posting more than a few photos of Mela and Leila playing at this park over the next 11 months.

1/1250 @ f/4, ISO 200, 192mm (EF70-200mm f/4L IS USM) Another day, another picture. Today I made myself stop some place new on the way home from work. I figured that I need to get into this habit as much as possible. Otherwise, I’m going to have 300+ pictures of objects in and around my house. What fun would that be? I have also been browsing the local newspaper for upcoming events which might lead to some interesting pictures. For example, this weeked a Greek dance and food festival is taking place. I’m hoping to swing by on Sunday. There’s also an open house at the executive airport around the corner in August. I’m really excited for that event.

Now on to today’s picture. I was walking in this little park about a mile away from home taking some pictures of a squirrel digging in the playground mulch when I heard the roar of jet engines. Being that we are not very far from Dulles Airport (IAD), we get many fly overs every day. This plane, British Airways’ (I think) G-VF1Z, was lower than most. Luckily, I had my telephoto zoom on the DSLR, pointed it skyward and was able to shoot off about 8 frames before she was gone.

I have to say though, today’s picture probably wasn’t my favorite of the day. However, I had ulterior motives. One of the photo 365 groups on Flickr to which I belong is having a scavenger hunt this month. During the month of June, you have 10 topics you need to cover with your picture-a-day submissions. This picture is a perfect submission for the “Over you head” topic and allows me to cross another one off the list. Only 4 more topics to go: triangle, metal, white and music.

Runner upHere is thumbnail and a link to my favorite photo from today, “Up Periscope”, posted in my Runner Up collection on Flickr.

2.5 @ f/4.5, ISO 400, 30 mm (EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS)Tonight I wanted to shoot some long exposure photography.  I grabbed my backpack and tripod then walked down to my community’s pond.  Unfortunately, only one of the two fountains were lit up tonight.  However, there was a cool lightening storm taking place right over the apartment buildings on the other side of the pond.  Due to the longer exposures I was taking, none of the lightening bolts were exposed in the pictures.

With this picture, I was attempting to capture the reflection of the fountain in the water.  My focus point was on the real fountain and not the reflection.  I’m thinking I should have set my focus on the reflection.  What surprised me about this photograph is that even though I used an aperture on the larger end of the scale, the focus plain appears to be quite large.  Perhaps this has something to do with the longer exposure?  Does a longer exposure time in conjunction with a larger aperture increase the depth of field?

Today was the first time I had a bit of difficulty picking between multiple shots.  While out at the pond, I also took a picture of our community pool with its one security light exposing the scene.  I posted this picture to Flickr too, but outside of the Project365 collection.  Why not check it out?