Charleston

A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to be able to squeeze in a two-day trip to Charleston, South Carolina on a short flight from DC. It was a solo trip with two goals: photography and restaurants. Charleston totally delivered on both. I couldn't even begin to try and adequately cover the amazing Charleston restaurant scene from one trip (but please go to the Hominy Grill if you go!), but I thought I'd post some of my favorite shots from the trip. 

Central Charleston is an extremely walkable and photogenic area, full of what seem like endless layers of historic houses, gardens, and parks, all of which feel cloaked in a layer of mystery from the natural environment of live oaks and Spanish moss.  

 

Photo of the Day: Bye, Summer

I was on vacation for the past week in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and have to go back to work tomorrow. Before fully facing being back in the real world, I'm going through photos from the trip, and really like this one taken of my sister looking out at the lake at golden hour. 

With the yellow in the trees, there is also something very autumnal about this photo. Do you also feel this time of year like you can feel the season changing day to day? 

Chasing the Light in Phnom Penh

On a work trip to Phnom Penh, Cambodia last month, I was lucky enough to get a lazy Sunday to myself amidst a busy work schedule. I got out my camera and wandered over to a park surrounding the Independence Monument, which is in the middle of the city. The sun was setting, and families and young people were out, either playing soccer, sitting and enjoying the end of the weekend, or chasing each other around, as these two girls were. I love the energy of these, and they capture some of the magic of Phnom Penh.

Photos of the Week: Lights at Night

The other week, I took a photography class that was focused on night photography at a holiday lights display at a botanical garden in Virginia. It was a chilly and lovely night of wandering around and taking pictures at night. 

There's something so nice about lights in the dark at this time of year, when there are so many hours of dark, and it makes me think of this Mary Oliver poem:

The Buddha's Last Instruction
by Mary Oliver

"Make of yourself a light"
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal—a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire—
clearly I'm not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

Happy Holidays!

Cherry Blossoms Photography

The cherry blossoms were in peak bloom this weekend in DC. Thanks to some amazing spring weather, I was able to soak them up in two different locations: walking around the Tidal Basin area on Friday after work, and then exploring Dumbarton Oaks park on Saturday afternoon. If you've never been to Dumbarton Oaks, it has beautiful grounds and is a great way to see cherry blossoms without the crowds. 

There are my favorite shots from the weekend. Happy spring, Easter, and blossom season! 

 

 

Wisconsin

I'm one week back from vacation at home, including some very relaxing time at the lake in Wisconsin. Wisconsin is a beautiful place in August - warm but not too hot, green everywhere, and the full of the scent of pine trees. One evening I got some great golden hour photos of the trees by the lake and my sister and Neko the dog. 

Personality Grid

In my photography class this fall, one of our assignments was to do a "personality grid," a grid of different photos of the same person showing different personalities, while keeping the same basic frame on the person. 

You can tell the weather was a bit warmer when I took these of my friend on her front stoop while we had a glass of wine. We were supposed to use a prop, and I liked the idea of using wine since it's a natural thing for a person to be holding, and makes the result feel like these photos could have happened spur of the moment. In general, I really love the results of this, because it showcases so much more about a person than a single photograph.

If you're interested in doing some similar, you need to take quite a few more pictures that you end up using (I probably had about three times as many as ended up in the final product), and figure out a way to give the person direction on which mood to show. For me, the first part was asking someone who I thought would get a kick out of this, and then named off potential moods for her to personify as I took pictures.

Once I looked back at the photos I took of her, I decided to make this semi-focused on laughter (that counts as a mood, right?), since I had a lot of great ones of her cracking up, and also shows her sense of humor. 

Halloween

Some friends from college were in town last weekend for Halloween, and became Pam from Archer, a witch, a ventriloquist dummy, an Uber kitty, and witch number two. 

Columbia Heights Street Photography

I always knew Mount Pleasant/Columbia Heights, where I live in DC, where visually interesting places, but it took a couple of recent photography class assignments to actually get out and see how many compelling compositions, textures, shadows and people there are around me. I spent a couple of recent Saturday afternoons doing some long and rambling photo walks in my neighborhood, and had a ton of fun viewing things through the camera lens. These are some of my favorites, and it's fun to look at them now, because I don't think I would have noticed most of these things without having been looking to capture interesting visual moments. 

This last one is kind of weird, but I kind of like it. The neon noodle sign, the guy with the iPod, and how you can see the row houses leading into the skyline tell a visual story of the neighborhood to me.

Photo of the Day

I've been doing more photography lately, and thought it could be fun to post more pictures I've taken and think a little about what works or doesn't about them. 

I took this picture after getting off the metro pretty late last Sunday night, and turning around realizing the symmetry of the two escalators was interesting. I was glad to catch a woman wearing a fedora, which I think gives this nighttime, high ISO, black and white shot a mysterious feeling.

DC, Columbia Heights metro.