Looking out at Nelson County

Nelson County, where I grew up, has been on my mind quite a bit this week. It has been in the news lately (or at least, on my Facebook newsfeed and in the news in Central VA), as there is a 17 year old girl from Nelson currently missing. There is a Facebook group Help Find Alexis Murphy with all of the information. She's been missing now for 5 days, although they did find her car in Charlottesville a couple of days ago. Everyone is hoping that she is found quickly and safely.

Also this week, I rediscovered these photos I took with my iPhone last month as I drove from Radford to Richmond, VA. I realized that I would be driving just past the overlooks on the Skyline Drive that looked over the northern part of Nelson County where I grew up, and as I hadn't been there in many, many years, I thought I would stop at the first two overlooks and take a few photos.

Sometimes it's fun to play with the filters in my Camera+ app on my phone. I like the hazy, vintage summer day look of this one.

The house I grew up in could not easily be seen from the previous overlook, but when I grew up it could be seen from the overlook below. However, you can see how high the treeline is now, so there was very little view to be seen! Since it is overlooking Afton, the "town" I grew up in, I had to include the photo.

Beauty at Wolf Trap

Kathy and I arrived at Wolf Trap for Brandi Carlile a bit early - before the first of two opening acts even went on! So, we wandered about the main grounds for a while, near the entrance to the Filene Center, taking some photos of the beauty that we saw.

I got a new camera!

Since I received my first DSLR camera about 18 months ago, I've used it almost exclusively, particularly as my photography has grown. I still have my little Canon Elph point-and-shoot, but it's mostly been tucked away and only pulled out when the kids want to take photos. The camera is almost 7 years old, so I don't mind them using it if they want to take some photos. Unfortunately, about two months ago Henry dropped it on the patio outside - the photos have all seemed blurry since then, and the lens doesn't move as quickly as it once did. Knowing how far P&S cameras have come in the past 7 years, I decided it was time to get a new one, and I had some money set aside from recent photography sessions for that purchase.

I had a limited budget to spend, so put out a call online for some options, and received a wide array of suggestions in my price range. I was originally thinking of getting a waterproof digital camera, but I couldn't quite bring myself to spend the money on that when I wouldn't use the water proof features much of the year. Instead, I settled on the Canon Powershot SX500 IS, and took it to the beach with us this past week. I could not be happier with this camera!! The zoom is fantastic, it allows me full control of ISO, shutter speed, and aperture, and the auto correct features really make a photo pop.

We arrived at the OBX on July 3, staying through today. When we arrived, I pulled the camera out to take a few test shots in my parents' house.

How cute is this mermaid statue?!

That afternoon, we took the kids to my aunt's place on the beach. She had a lovely dinner laid out for us, but before that we headed down to the beach for a few (the water was freezing but we wanted to at least see the ocean!). Love these photos of Natalie with her Pop-pop! 

 Then we headed to Linda's pool, where the kids really wanted to be. Natalie had a blast launching herself into the pool (here she is jumping over Evan's head)

 And then Henry wanted in on that action (he's willing to go underwater too, but needs a lot more help!)

The camera also takes pretty great HD video, too. Who better to take the first video of than my little swimmer?!

Overall, a great first day at the beach, and I highly recommend the camera to any who might be looking for one! 

Playing with a new lens

This post was supposed to be the video that I took just after the one in the previous post, but Blogger is STILL not letting me upload it. I don't know why that happens - maybe because Blogger is a free service and so can only handle certain videos? I know I shouldn't complain...it's just frustrating when I want to share something cute with everyone and can't!

So, instead, here are the first photos I took at the OBX when we went down to celebrate my dad's 60th birthday last month. I mentioned this two posts ago, when I shared the photos my sister took of the fun they had with the kids before we arrived. When we arrived on Friday, I came with my new camera lens that I had not yet tried, but was eager to use! I've got a ton of photos to show using it - here are my first ones, taken during our birthday celebration with Dad.

I had to figure out with the lens (a prime 50mm fixed lens, f1.8) how to focus. As you'll see in this photo (the first that I took), I hadn't quite gotten the hang of it - Natalie was supposed to be the focus, but her dolphin was instead. Since then, with all of my practice, I've learned what the depth of field needs to be to correct for this problem. Even so, I kind of like how it came out!




Second attempt at a portrait photo (Henry is doing his "cheese" face) - much better focus on the subject!

 Carrie took this shot for us - family fleshpile!

 And finally, Dad's 60th birthday cake. While maybe not super exciting, it was delicious and exactly what he wanted (he always asks for the same cake - vanilla with lemon pudding inside). The rest of us were pretty excited about it too!

March in Leesburg

I finally counted - in March I took over 40 photos of the cherry blossom (and other) trees as they started flowering in our neighborhood. As gorgeous as the blossoms are in DC (and I'm so happy I got to see them this year, particularly as it was the 100th anniversary), I think that Leesburg isn't too shabby either! I obviously can't show off all of my photos here, so I'll just pick my few favorites and put them up.

The first trees to blossom were the white ones

 I love the light on this next one; I snapped this photo early as the sun was coming up.

 Henry under the trees

 The previous photo was taken on a Friday. That weekend, we got some pretty big rain showers, and wind, so all of the petals started falling off of the trees, including the two in front of our house. There were so many that it looked like snow!

World War II Memorial

On the way back to our cars after shooting the cherry blossoms, Kathy and I walked past a couple of monuments. I've not seen the Washington Monument often at night, and I certainly did not yet have a photo of it beautifully lit up!

Behind us was then the the World War II memorial. I think it's actually my favorite memorial - the shape is beautiful, it's directly between the Lincoln Memorial (seen in the distance below) and the Washington Monument, and it's absolutely gorgeous when lit up at night.

The photo above is the detail of  the inside of the pillars in the photo on the left.


Below is the view of the circular fountain as seen from the walkway in the photo on the left.

The fountain was too beautiful not to use my telephoto lens to take close-ups of the individual jets.

Something about this last one is just my absolute favorite. I love having a camera that can take really good night photos!

Cherry Blossom Festival 2012

Almost two weeks ago I met my friend Kathy in DC so we could take some sunset photos of the cherry blossoms before the rain that was due to hit (and did it ever!) that weekend and removed all of the blossoms. They say that sunrise is actually the best time to photograph the blossoms, due to them being planted around the Tidal Basin, facing east, and right on the water, but there was just no feasible way to get into DC that early, so we figured we'd try for sunset instead. Turns out that the light is really great that time of day as well! I took a TON of photos, but managed to cull out my favorites to post here and not inundate readers with too many pictures of flowers on trees. 

Let me note one thing: the light is actually the same throughout these photos. Yes, it was getting progressively darker out as it got later, but the primary differences is lighting were obtained by using various settings on my camera.

I love this shot of the sunset through the cherry blossoms

Reagan National airport is just past the tidal basin in Virginia, so we constantly had airplanes flying by. I was really happy to get this shot of one taking off in the sunset.

Kathy and I spent quite a bit of time taking photos of the Jefferson Memorial across the water. Not only do I think it's a gorgeous building, but it's honoring TJ!

I really want to paddle boat sometime - I've never done it!

This photo shows you the actual lighting at that moment - sun was down, no flash, but I was still able to pick up some really pretty colors

I had to include at least one shot I took of the tulips. As you leave the tidal basin area there's a 20 yard or so area planted with tulips of every shade. I'm still not sure that this is even my favorite shot - I love the ones I took of the white and yellow tulips as well. But the red is just so striking!

None of these photos convey the vast amounts of people present that night. This year was the 100th anniversary of the gift of the cherry blossoms from Japan, and because of that the festival was even more crowded this year than I've seen in years past. I'm happy that despite the masses I was able to take some pretty good pictures!

Editing photos on my phone

I recently downloaded two camera apps for my phone: Camera+ and Instagram. I paid $0.99 for each of them, as I figured that wasn't too much to be able to take cooler photos with my iPhone. With these apps you can take a photo and add effects, color washes, borders, etc to them. Each is good for different things, I've discovered. For example, Camera+ has more options for color effects, which let me take a regular photo and up the contrast to get this beautiful shot of Henry.

On the other hand, Instagram lets you do some really cool "faded" or "dated" looks, which can make a normal photograph look almost vintage. These next three I took in downtown Louisville, KY while there for work a couple of weeks ago, and I love the nostalgic vibe they give, particularly the second one of the bridge.

I took this last one of the fire at the Outer Banks that I posted about two posts ago. The original is actually the first one in that post, and is again shown below. using Camera+ I cropped it, applied one of the "washes" to it, and gave the picture a completely different feel. I actually think I like the changed version better - there's just something about the colors that I really like.

I had some free time one evening, so I took a couple of photos I had already taken before I got either app and played with them in Camera+. That let me fade the photos, or enhance them, as shown below.

In the one to the left of Natalie and Ruth I upped the color contrast, and made the two of them stand out from the background a bit. I like how they pop out, but everything else fades into the background.

In the photo below, I particularly like how just changing the color scheme a little bit makes the flower petals look like snow!

I'm hopeful that these two apps will lead to some other really cool photos, and I'm glad to have the option to take better photos with my iPhone, which I always have on me - I can't say that about my big camera!