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Posts Tagged ‘black and white’

Personal, Photography, Technology, Travel | 0 comment

Black and White Challenge – Part 2

Nokesville, VA

To follow up from a post a few Fridays ago, I’m posting here more black and white photos I made specifically for the Facebook Black and White Challenge. Being that these were made over the holidays, we spent a lot of time with our family. The familiar surroundings sometimes makes it difficult to make new photos. The scenes are too familiar, and nuances that make for compelling images seem difficult to pick out. Sometimes, you just need to change your angle. Get higher, or get lower. That is usually my first go-to move! Here Dani, a little dachshund becomes much larger in the photo. I put my head and camera right on the ground. I took a series of photos as she sniffed around the grass. In a stroke of luck, she licked making her look like a lioness!

Dani-in-the-yard
Dani-in-the-yard

Moody Environments

In these other photos, the mood was really helped by a thick fog rolling in from the river. It was an unusually warm air day, but the water was still cold creating the foggy scene. You could almost feel the low ceiling when you were standing by the edge of the water. Not too much noise was cutting through their either – only lapping water and shore birds. This image of the tree branches cutting through the negative space of the cloudy background made me think of canvas paintings of a coastline. This is almost exactly how the photo was captured in camera:

Trees-through-the-fog
Trees-through-the-fog

The last took a little more work in Photoshop. I placed a neutral density (ND) filter in front of my wide angle lens. This filter does not change the color tone of the scene, it only makes it darker – like sunglasses for your camera! Putting the camera on a tripod, the ND filter allows you to lower the shutter speed which makes the moving water smooth into a blurry sheet at the bottom of the photo. To simplify the photo even more, I removed some string running across the pylons, and other piers that jutted into the left and right sides of the frame. It makes for a more minimalistic presentation that my eye likes much more than the original. Have a great weekend, readers!

Foggy-pier
Foggy-pier

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

Event, Photography, Travel | 0 comment

Black and White Challenge – Part 1

Tysons, Virginia

Are any of you familiar with this Black and White Challenge that was spread throughout Facebook late last year? At this time, I had seen a few of my friends post up some incredible images. Overall, I thought that it was a great way to push you to make some new monochromes images for sharing. It works by posting up images 5 days in a row. With each submission, you nominate another person to the challenge which keeps it proliferating online. I’d like to thank Jae for nominating me to participate, and I enjoyed sharing the images! Luckily, I had some client-work coming up, so I did not have to look far for some situations in making some new images.

Santa-Claus-waving
Santa-Claus-waving

I was scheduled to photograph a bar mitzvah that had some great lighting setup by the event planners. The uplighting created a nice contrast to my flash which always makes for some nice black and white images.

Alexandria, Virginia

Bar-Mitzvah-Hora-dance-©TimeLine-Media
Bar-Mitzvah-Hora-dance-©TimeLine-Media

The other schedule shoot was at Tysons Corner Center. They had an outdoor Christmas market setup on the Plaza. They wanted to get some nice overhead views of the plaza and ice rink with lots of people doing their holiday gift-shopping. I thought that evening would work best with the light as is usual for most landscape photography. The best angle was to go into the new Tysons Tower to get an overhead view of the shopping with the expanding northern Virginia area as a backdrop. I was just lucky to get that nice colorful after-sunset sky. Although there is no color in the submitted photo, there was still a nice gray gradient in the empty upper right of the frame. I enjoyed the chance to photograph from such a great vantage point, and to be lucky enough to see it at a perfect time of day.

Tysons-Corner-Center
Tysons-Corner-Center

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

Personal, Photography, Portrait | 0 comment

Updated portrait | Virginia Photographer

Happy Thursday! It’s my 38th birthday today, and time to update my portrait. Thanks for the all the messages on social media – it is really nice to have them stream in! it is one of the best things about the new technology. It is a great excuse to hear from people that you have not seen or talked to in a while. You can reminisce again about birthdays past and make plans for future celebrations! In addition to all the messages, I set up my camera to make a new self-portrait with some lighting.

GGB updated portrait at 38
GGB_portrait_at_38

My 25th birthday was marked by a day of national tragedy. We felt it here in the DC area, and the memory of the events will always be felt when the date comes around every year. The solemnness of ceremonies and memorials on TV and across the Internet lets me also be reflective on my own events. I can take things in; reflect on a milestone day along with everyone else, as a tribute to those that were taken that day, and to be thankful for another year.  It will be back tomorrow, but it’s nice to have a break from the norm. It is nice that so many do the same on your birthday, even if it borne out of sadness.

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

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