Old Town Alexandria Portraits - with THE most adorable puppy

Hello!

Meet Katie and Dustin and their adorable dog, Penny.  We took advantage of the warmer weather we had in November to take some photos so they could use them for their Christmas card.  And seriously, there is no more picture-perfect location than Old Town Alexandria.  I have photographed here a bunch of times, its always beautiful.

Whenever I photograph in Old Town, I make time for photos on the cobblestone street.  We did have to dodge around cars and other people taking photos.  It's a popular spot.

Another Old Town favorite - using the brick alleyways.  The rustic bricks adds a charm you don't see elsewhere.

Once we photographed in the town area, we walked a bit over to a nearby park with a sea wall of rocks that create a perfect place to sit with the water in the background.

Dogs just make like better.

And if you haven't noticed yet, Penny has three legs, which just makes her even cuter!  This was my first time meeting her, and I thought that our walks would be slow to accommodate her loss of limb.  Boy was I wrong!

Penny stood in this spot for so long, it created a great opportunity  for some cute photos.

💗

Dustin is from Washington state, so we had to get some photos in their Seahawks jerseys - even Penny!

🎄Merry Christmas!🎄

James Family Photos - Again!

 Meet the James Family!  Or re-meet them, as I have posted photos of them before.  If you want to see their photos from before click here: James Family Photos.  We even did photos in the same place this time.  If you haven't been to Chapman State Park in Indian Head MD, I highly recommend you check it out.  We had a great time smiling, running, jumping, and lots of hugs and kisses!

Meet Ethan, Melissa, Oliver, Luke, and Liam.

Squeezing always makes for a cute photo.

Once we got picture of everyone together, each son took a turn with each parent.  The fall leaves were a beautiful background!

Luke makes THE best face ever!!

(he smiled, too, but I really love this photo)

Like I said - great faces 😄

This was my first time meeting Oliver.  Boy oh boy does he know how to pose for my camera!

Superhero pose!

Boys love to run, so why not photograph them while they run right at me? 😆

It's also good to get some pics of just Mom and Dad.  Don't worry, the boys weren't far away.

Can't do a blog post without at least ONE black and white - so sweet.💗

I also got individual pics of each boy.  Some while they were running.....

Some while they were posing......

And some while they were sticking their tongues out!

Remember when I said boys love to run?  Well they also love to climb.....and JUMP!

Family photos are always and adventure!

💜And I love it every time💜

Senior Portraits: Ben

I had the unique pleasure to photograph this young man to commemorate his SENIOR YEAR in high school.

Meet Ben.  Not only did I get to photograph him as a senior, I've photographed him before AND taught him in middle school!  It's been wonderful to see him grow from a little 6th grader to a strong young man looking forward to becoming a full-fledged adult!

See some more of his photos! 👇

Can you tell which sport Ben plays?

Ben's mom is wonderful!  If you want to see the photos I took at her wedding click here.

Ben's dog, Molly.  She is crazy.  I had a lot of photos of her jumping up or on top of Ben.

And then we finally got a nice shot where she was still.  It only lasted a second.

Once we did all the posed shots, we had fun doing some action shots.  

This shot, and the next are some of my favorites.  The intense athlete through the net is just cool.  And he has the ever-so-slight smirk at me, which I love!

Congratulations, Ben!

Exploring Maine

Hello!

I recently traveled to Maine to visit my friend and her family.  That means I was able to visit Acadia National Park with my camera in hand.  I am hoping to visit many more national parks as a photographer in the future.  I visited plenty of them when I was a child (thanks Mom and Dad!), and I recently went to the Smoky Mountains (see my photos from that trip here: Smoky Mountains).  I have no deadline for this hope, just something that I would like to do as a photographer--a skill certainly did not have at the age of 9.

Whenever I travel anywhere (even a local park for a simple walk), I always want to be there for the sunrise.  Sunrise and Sunset are the best times of the day to take pictures, and it is so worth it for me to get up at insane times in the morning.  I arrived at the park around 4am.  The sun was scheduled to rise at 5am, and the hour of light before that time is photo-gold.

Now everyone will tell you that Cadillac Mountain is the best place to watch the sunrise.  That's probably true.  BUT, I did not want to be around other people because of obvious health reasons and I didn't want to share my photographic space with 200 hundred other people.  After some research (aka Google searching), I decided to head to Boulder Beach for my sunrise photos.  I was mostly alone.  Only 4-5 other people even came to the "beach" for the sunrise, and we all pretty much kept our distance from each other.

A big reason I chose Boulder Beach was to practice long exposure technique.  I always enjoy trying this technique, and I love the look of "soft water" in photos.

(want to see more soft water attempts?  Check out my Smoky Mountains post!)

The boulders of Boulder Beach were described online as the size of bowling balls.  That is true for about half of the boulders.  The other half, however, are the size of bean bags (the kind you sit on, NOT the kind you throw).  That made maneuvering over these things a lot harder than I anticipated.  Not only were they rather large, they were wet and very slippery.  I ended up simply crawling over them on all fours.  It didn't seem smart to try and walk, end up slipping, and breaking something.

The cliffs next to Boulder Beach, which I did end up climbing.

Distant view of Boulder Beach.  After the sun had properly risen, I walked for a bit on Ocean Path, which has plenty of options to walk out on the Otter Cliffs (south of Boulder Beach).  You can see that the "beach" is not large.  I also like this pic because, after zooming in, I saw that one of the other photographers on the "beach" was taking a picture of me as I was taking a picture of the "beach."  At least I think he was.  I was pretty visible in my purple hoodie on the edge of a cliff.  I do hope that he got a good photo 😊

After Boulder Beach for the sunrise, I ventured over to Jordan Pond. and walked the Jordan Pond Path.  The first part follows these planks that are narrow and uneven.  I almost sprained my ankle plenty of times because I was looking around almost walked off the planks!

From almost every vantage point on this path, there are beautiful views of the "Bubbles."  These are two mountains next to each other at the north end of Jordan Pond.  I assume they got their name because they really do look like two bubbles!

Probably my favorite shot of the Bubbles.  It was fun to get them centered in between the other mountains on either side of them with the rocks in the foreground.  Centered compositions just make me happy 😀

This photo I am really excited about!  It was with this photo that I attempted (and mildly succeeded) a new technique called focus stacking.  I took three photos of the same scene, each with a different part in focus (mountains, rock in the middle, rocks in the foreground).  Then I directed photoshop to blend the three together, using the in-focus parts of each photo to create one image.  I was a giddy child when it came out😁  I will definitely be trying this technique again in the future!

Once I finished the Jordan Pond Path, the park was starting to fill with people.  Because of that, I decided to say farewell to Acadia.  But I did do local exploring with John and Cynthia later in the day.  We hiked Bald Mountain, just a few minutes from the house.

Once we got to the top, I had some fun with my camera 😄

John would make a good model!

I lent Cynthia my old (my very first) DSLR camera and started to teach her the basics of exposure on manual mode.  She was having fun with her camera, too!

Reflection in the sunglasses is always a fun shot for me. ❤

💜Till we meet again, Maine💜

Outer Banks 2020

Happy Summer!  I was looking back through my old blog posts and realized that I hadn't posted Outer Banks photos in a loooong time!  I'm not sure how that happened, but I will be taking the time this summer to share plenty of Outer Banks photos with you.  It is a gorgeous place to photograph and not sharing my images is just not right.

This post will focus on my time in the Outer Banks this past June.  This year, I added a new lens to my collection that enabled me to capture images that I hadn't been able to before.  I now have a Tamron 100-400 telephoto zoom lens.  I LOVE this lens.  It has been incredibly helpful in photographing the wildlife around the OBX and getting some interesting crescent moon shots.

But I digress......The photos below are shown generally in the order I took them during my time in the OBX.

The first couple of days in the OBX we had rain, rain, and more rain.  It's not ideal when you're on vacation, but the benefit is getting some reflection pictures!

Rain can also give way to pretty sunsets.  The house we rent is right on the Sound, so we have uninhibited views of the sunset every night.

If I were to ask you think of a beautiful or majestic bird, the seagull is probably not the bird that comes to mind.  I have heard them described as the "rats of the sky."  I still had fun practicing tracking a subject with my new lens (which was REALLY heavy).

If you've ever been to the OBX, you have probably seen the Ghost Crabs scuttling around on the beach.  I do find them entertaining to watch, myself.

More fun with reflections, although this one isn't thanks to the rain, just the ocean wave receeding.

The OBX is so open, I take so many panoramas to try and capture the expanse.

In Maryland, we have the Blue Heron.  In the OBX, the herons I saw were white.  I was in a Kayak when photographing this guy (and a couple others).  There was no way I could have gotten this close to him by land.

This guy was fun to watch, and no where near a skittish as the Heron, so I was able to get fairly close to him.  

He is a Cormorant.  I did eventually scare him off, but he was chill with me for a while.  I approached very slowly.  I would paddle twice, take a picture, paddle a little more, take a picture, etc.  Slow process, but rewarding!

Kite surfing is the sport of choice in the OBX.  These guys were definitely showing off in front of our house for a little while.  Synchronized jumping is always fun!

The Rodanthe Pier.  I put the camera as close as I dared to the water to tray and get it in the foreground and some sunrise reflections in the water.

The combination of ocean waves and sunrise lighting make experimenting with long exposures a fun challenge.  From the start of Golden Hour before the sunrise, you have an hour or less to play with this technique before you have too much light to make it work.

The full sunrise.

Would you believe me if I said I shot this with a drone camera?  I didn't, but I could have!  I was on top of the Rodanthe Pier, pointing my camera straight down, making sure to not get the pilings below me in the shot.

Crescent Moon.  Did you know that a Crescent Moon can be called "God's Thumbnail"  ?

Sun going down, allowing the moon to shine brighter.

Pelican!  I have photographed these guys in flight in previous years at the OBX, but this was really fun to photograph him on the piling.  He didn't like me much, though and took off fairly quickly.

This is a vulture with a red-winged blackbird.  The way they were sitting side-by-side on the railing reminded me of Mufasa and Simba sitting and looking at their Kingdom (everything the light touches).

Then the vulutre turned around and very clearly gave me "the look."

While Kayaking, I went exploring through some shallow channels.  One of them had hundreds of snails positioned on the reeds growing in the water.  I hate to admit it, but I LOVED photographing these little guys.....

Every snail had its own composition within a photo.  Each one felt so different.  Plus, you know, reflections!

Post-storm rainbow!

The sun was melting into the water!

Another ocean-side sunrise :)

As the sun was rising, a surfer went out to catch some waves.  I had a good time capturing images of him on the waves with the sun in the background.

Oh, the pidgeon.  Another example of a NOT-majestic bird.

But, I still enjoyed photographing him :)

Underneath the Rodanthe Pier.  The sun was creating striking shadows of the all the pilings under the pier.  Then the person in the back stepped into the perfect placement.

Sinking sun again!  And if you look closely, there are two kayaks in the water., watching the sun set from their spot on the water.

This is always one of my favorite compositions.  With everybody using their phones to take photos, their photo is easily seen on their screen.  Then I take a picture of their picture.  Photo-inception!

(yes, I love that movie)

So beautiful. ❤

This is the view from our back porch.

*sigh*

Till next year, OBX.

📷