Inspiration hit me tonight while on another photowalk outside the hotel.  The night sky was crystal clear and the moon was shining bright.  While I was underneath a tree in the parking lot I looked up and saw interesting light patterns being created by the moon and the leafs.  I played around for a little bit with just taking steady shots up through the tree, but it was not until I tried dragging the shutter that I started to get something that I really like.  Today’s photograph was created by rotating the camera in my hand slowly during the one second exposure up through the tree into the night sky.

Today I learned the importance of using a tripod for macro photography.  The depth of field is so narrow, it is near impossible to keep your focal point exact while hand holding.  I do love the way the colors came out in today’s photograph though.

I took a photowalk around the outside of the Marriott tonight with the intent to only use the 100mm f/2.8L macro lens for today’s photograph.  I stumbled upon the small Koi pond in the front of the building.  I thought that the low sun in the sky was creating some intriguing lighting on the pond’s surface.  I squatted down to get as even with the water’s surface as possible while keeping the lilly in frame.  In post, I converted the image to a black and white rendition.

I snuck out with a coworker today during the early afternoon to play eighteen holes.  It was a beautiful afternoon for golf, not too sunny and not completely overcast.  Somewhere on the back nine, we encountered this creature hanging out by one of the water features.  It was not until I got about thirty yards away from it that I could tell it was a styrofoam ornament.  I suppose it was there to try to scare off the many geese in the area.

My fiancee and I tried to take a trip to see the Cherry Blossoms in Washington, DC this morning.  However, when we got there at six o’clock in the morning, there was already no parking in the Tidal Basin area where all the trees are planted.  Being completely frustrated, we decided to drive back west and hit up Great Falls National Park instead.  Unfortunately, the falls were not as picturesque as they normal are due to all the rain we have had over the past couple of days.  They did, however, offer up the scene for today’s photograph.

I had the perfect timing this evening when I made my pit stop at the Interstate 95 reststop in Maryland.  Before I headed in to grab a bite to eat and a coffee, I was able to capture this brilliant sunset.  I enhanced the blues a bit during post processing, but I left the yellows and oranges unmolested.

I was lucky enough to catch the sunset today outside of my hotel.  I really like the way the tree was silhouetted on the right side of the frame.  In post processing I cranked up the saturation and luminance of the yellows and oranges a bit.

This was the view out of my hotel room window tonight.  Some kids staying in the hotel, and probably their dad, stomped out this message to their mother.  The widest lens I currently have in my camer bag is the 50mm.  I hope to change that real soon, however, for now I make due.  With a wider lens, I would have liked to capture more of the surrounding area, but the 50mm lens only gave me this field of view.  To add a little pop to the photograph, I used a preset to introduce a bit of a sepia effect and then pushed up the vignette a bit more.

We calls these “Death-cicles”.

This is a picture of some of the aftermath of the previous days’ snow storms.  I stopped at the Maryland welcome center on southbound Interstate 95 tonight.  I just had to pull out the camera to capture this scene.  The snow was piled up to over four feet talk in many areas.