Sometimes, I wake up and skies like this one greet me. How can I pass on taking a photo when I’m faced with such beauty? I cannot, will not, must not.
Taken in North Bethesda, MD.
Falling upwards
I got home one afternoon just as a summer storm was about to break the heavens open. I had a choice: do some consulting work, or set up my camera and get some photos. The camera won.
Got all sorts of great photos of the clouds wrestling with each other during the prelude to the wet show. As the rain started, I decided to do some high speed photography as well. Set my 5D to 3200 ISO, put it in Aperture Priority mode and the aperture to f/2.8 (the largest my 100mm lens could do), and had lots of fun capturing raindrops in mid-air. It helped that I knew my 5D would go all the way up to 1/8000 secs on the shutter speed…
It looks as if I’ve photographed a wet window pane here, but trust me, those raindrops were caught in mid-air, as they were falling downwards.
I thought it’d be fun to process this photo differently, and to turn it upside down. So the raindrops are falling upwards here. 🙂
Photos taken in North Bethesda, MD.
Night falls gently on the old river
This was taken from the roof of the Key Bridge Marriott Hotel in Arlington, VA. I’d just finished a meeting and asked a favor from John, the hospitality manager: could he please let me go up for a few minutes to take photos? He kindly agreed, and he, along with a security guard, escorted me through the labyrinthine corridors of the top floor onto the pebble-lined roof.
What a gorgeous view that hotel has! I quickly took a whole series of photos, and I still need to post-process quite a few of those. I really like this one, as it shows the sun just about to fade over the Virginia hills while the old Potomac River goes on about its business.
Reassurance
One photographic subject I never tire of capturing is the sky. It’s quite an amazing subject. No other in nature changes colors and shapes like the sky. The fantastic hues of its sunrises and sunsets, the cloud movements, especially before a storm, the amazing variety of its makeup, all make for wonderful photographic moments. (And I mean moments, because it can change very quickly sometimes.)
Take this photo, for example. It was taken just a few minutes after the photo shown below. This one makes the viewer think a storm is just breaking up to reveal better skies, but the weather was fantastic. It just so happened that by using a 100mm lens and getting closer to the clouds, I was able to get a different atmospheric mood. Skies are quite amazing that way. Have a look at this next photo, and you’ll get a fairer picture of what the weather was like that evening.
Photos taken in North Bethesda, MD.
Animation videos
I’ve been holding onto these videos for a while, and finally got the chance to post them. The first is Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham. I’d looked around for it for the longest time, and never could catch it when it was on TV. Found it on YouTube. 🙂
This is a video that involves animation, and it was a sort of mockumentary done with Dizzy Gillespie. Supposedly he’s hired to do the music for a new product, but the director isn’t happy with what he hears.
If you like Gumby, then you’ll like Mr. Morph. Here are two videos with him.
Do you like 80s cartoons? I know I do, and I miss them. It was so nice to sit down on Saturday and Sunday mornings and watch cartoons on all major TV channels! Now all we’ve got is mostly crud, on both the Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon. Gone are the good old cartoons…
This video mixes live footage with some pretty innovative and artistic animation.
This is a nice little clip of computer animation showing a worm crossing a road.
Raoul Pop 