Digital Photography Blogs (Personal)

Well, the family was able to slip away for a week and head down to OC. I put together a video of Blair's little adventure. And for the record, we did not give him the nickname "bootleg" but it does seem appropriate.

Click here to view video.

After searching for a long time, we finally said end to the go fast era and are now officially cruiser-style boaters. This weekend we took delivery of our new boat. As you can tell, Blair is quite comfortable on it and found his spot - driving! Enjoy the movie.

Click here to view video.

On Tuesday, we got to see the Blue Angels air show practice off the Severn River. Here is a little slide show created with my Canon S3.

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We were fortunate to sneak away for an extended weekend down in Key West. We just love it there. 83 degrees, sunny, with a nice ocean breeze. Blair traveled great and really enjoyed himself. He found the puppies fun and was a flirt with the ladies. The trip was way to short and very memorable. This picture of Blair about sums up the rest of the week. Of course, I could not resist doing a slide show of the trip.

Click here to view video.

It always seems that I am behind the camera 90% of the time or Sherry is the remaining. We hardly get pictures of the two - now three - of us together. We finally took some time for ourselves and took a family portrait. Accidently, I picked out my "slimming" outfit - a blue ribbed turtleneck and Sherry put on a red sweater. We already had Blair dressed in his blue and red polo sweater. After I saw the shot, I kept teasing Sherry that Blair was wearing a little of both of us (blue and red) but had a little more of me in him. People ask me all the time what to wear during portrait / engagement sessions and my response is always be yourself and wear what is comfortable. This turned out very nice with no planning.

Technically speaking, this was a self-portrait without using the timer camera function. I put the Camera with a 70-200mm lens, flash, and Pocket Wizard on a tripod. I then remotely fired the camera with another Pocket Wizard in my left hand. The flash helped fill in some shawdows and also gave us in indication that the camera fired. These Pocket Wizards are a nice little toy that I would like to use more and more.

Today is a very sad day. We lost our long time companion, family member, and pet Abby. She was part of our lives for almost 13 years. The house will certainly be empty without her talking to everyone.

Here is the last picture of her with Blair and I. In looking at this image, this was Blair's first week home back in May. She was slowing coming around and learning to accept him into the house. But then again, let's not forget she was a cat and loved things on her terms.

As predicted by our local forecasters, we woke up this morning to the snow falling. It is amazing how nature can just make the most beautiful scenery. A lot of friends and clients always ask me how do I shoot pictures in the snow. The camera wants to find that mid gray point and always underexposes the image. This causes your now to look gray and dingy. The key is exposing the camera by +1 to +2 depending on how much snow is there. Also having the white balance set on auto or the little cloud icon helps if is still snowing.

I was playing around with some software I got up in NYC to create a slide show of Sydney's Christmas yesterday. I also had the challenge of it looking great on their 50 inch plasma TV. Dave and Mo seemed very pleased with the results too and instantly wanted a copy. Here is a link to the show for your enjoyment.