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The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, much more famous, was also very interesting to shoot. We have all seen countless photos taken here of family members and friends of the deceased. Though I probably would not know personally any of the individuals listed on the wall (I was ten years old in 1968), the mournful atmosphere could be felt by anyone.
The next three or four postings were taken as we joined this line in paying our respects...
I didn't even know the Korean War Memorial existed, but a friend asked that I stop by and take a few pictures while we were in Washington. Gladly done for a vet...a friend who fought for our freedom.
...the same taken from a very different angle.
Moving outside now...this has got to be one of the most creative sculptures around. Taken at dusk, this photo had to be brightened a bit for this posting, in spite of a histogram that showed good balance.
These were along the front of a gift shop.
On another day this was taken of the same fountain...
Down on "street" level the place was transformed into a miniature city at night. A gift shop is straight ahead; the aforementioned restaurant is to the left.
The lights in this fountain went through a rotation of colors...to capture each one I parked myself against a nearby tree for stability and snapped away. The shutter speeds for this and the following postings were anywhere between a fourth and a twentieth of a second.
The atrium at the Gaylord is just incredible. Within the huge enclosure are these house-like shops...off to the right of this shot is a full-blown restaurant with "outside" seating and a stream running nearby.
The huge glass wall, plus the domed glass roof over the atrium, made for some good picture taking from our third-floor balcony. This fellow was obviously headed to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport with passengers and crew.
Had to do more touch-up than one might think for this shot. The pane borders made it obvious that lens distortion had to be fixed, then the image was rotated so that the bottom of the pane under the jetliner looked more/less horizontal.
These vacation shots were all taken with the Fujifilm s7000, but now that I own a Big Rig with interchangeable lenses (which I don't plan to interchange, at least for now), my understanding is that with Photoshop CS4 all you have to do is enter the lens used for a shot and the distortion adjustment is automatic. Hope so...
The primary reason for our journey to the northeast was for a conference my wife was attending at a place on the edge of Washington, DC called the Gaylord Resort. This is a panorama taken from the balcony of our room, stitched from four photographs, looking to the cavernous inside atrium.
Taken on a walk through the Kitchen Kettle Village in Intercourse, Pennsylvania...
This is how the women, and older children, got around - even on the highways. Sometimes the Amish pay the ultimate price for their beliefs...
Guess the locals would get used to seeing this sort of thing, but the anachronistic element is a shocker to outsiders. We tourists just gape and sneak pictures while they tend to their business in their own way as the world rushes by them, quite literally.
The country is beautiful in summertime, as can be seen here. There is even an extra serenity due to the lack of telephone poles or telephone lines anywhere.
Spent a couple of days in Delaware, which we used as a base to spring on up to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania for an afternoon. We decided to leave the main road and we found this roadside stand run by an Amish family.
It was an experience to see such modern-looking homes that otherwise seem normal, but lack electric wires. It was difficult to refrain from asking the family for a tour.
If you will notice, there are two abandoned bicycles next to the driveway. When the kids on them saw me lift my camera they fled, and were behind the food cart when it was snapped. Suppose I wouldn't want my kids to be photographed by strangers either...
Times Square is so incredibly crowded...much more so than when I visited the city regularly in the '80's.
Our tour boat wound around to see the Statue of Liberty. As soon as it was snapped I knew that this shot would be used with text to the left.
A picture was taken of a flag after our return to Houston. The text itself was created using one of Photoshop's built-in styles. Then the mask tool was used to underlay the flag within the text. Last, just the torch was copied and placed over the text to give it the appearance of being behind the statue. All of this took a couple of hours of experimenting.
Interestingly, after all that work this photo ended up looking lousy in print. Seems to look better electronically...
Enter paparazzi number two. With his height, this guy had a distinct advantage. Looks like the short one is checking out his competition...
Did not think about it at the time, but guess it was inevitable that the paparazzi showed up. This guy was short, so he wrestled through the crowd saying, "Let me through - I'm short, I'm short!" As soon as he arrived at the front of the crowd, right next to the barricade, he whipped this baby out and began snapping. It intrigued me that the lens controls were covered with black electrical tape, and the make of camera was filed off.
Here the makeup crew is prepping Timberlake and his co-star.
This fellow was filming the crowds that had grown outside the barricades, along with the "behind the scenes"-type stuff. The equipment behind him is a huge camera boom.
Just some flowers that happened to be nearby...
This is the set-up just to hold the lights at night. As seen from the sign posted earlier, the crew was slated to be on this location for two days. We hung out here for a couple of hours, then happened to walk by that same night and saw the entire scene brilliantly lit from all sides - a reminder that actors and crew must work hard all hours.
The crew here is setting up a prop on the building. The two men facing the other way on the left are extras.
At Rockefeller Plaza we chanced upon this movie shoot. We were amazed at the amount of equipment and number of people involved - the sheer logistics of shooting just a scene or two in the middle of New York City. They had a couple of the surrounding streets packed with 18-wheelers full of that equipment, using barricades to block off the plaza itself where the actors did their work. The "FWB" stands for "Friends with Benefits", starring Justin Timberlake. We hung around several hours, long enough to see them work with the extras and Timberlake himself.
Another view of the same building as our boat moved down the Hudson...
The sheer uniqueness of this building was the attraction, with the undulating waves rippling through an otherwise mundane column of windows. This was taken from the harbor.
Moving outside now...this has got to be one of the most creative sculptures around. Taken at dusk, this photo had to be brightened a bit for this posting, in spite of a histogram that showed good balance.
