Please comment on these photos.  If you like them, let us know why.  If you don't like them, let us know why.  If you're a professional photographer and are willing to spend a few minutes, please feel free to share technical corrections.

Ultimately, Christine and I would like to get into the business of selling photographs.  Not necessarily as a primary occupation, but wouldn't that be nice too?

Middle Son

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."

- John Adams

Nikon D7000 - 45mm, f4.8, 1/4, ISO 200. Post processing with Lightroom 4.

Mimi's Birthday!

"With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come." - William Shakespeare, "Merchant of Venice"

Mimi's 90'th birthday party!  Mimi is Christine's maternal grandmother.  She was a bit under the weather, and couldn't come to her own birthday party, so we took the party to her.

Light conditions for this photograph were challenging.  The foreground was lit with a single can light in the ceiling, while the rest of the room was quite dark to facilitate a slide show on the wall to Mimi's front.  To compensate, I used Lightroom 4 to vignette the photograph to highlight Mimi, and darken the edges more uniformly. The high ISO required some noise smoothing.

Nikon D7000 - 18mm, f6.3, 1/160, ISO 10,000.  Post processing with Lightroom 4

Con·trast

[v. kuhn-trast, kon-trast; n. kon-trast] 

verb (used with object)

1. to compare in order to show unlikeness or differences; note the opposite natures, purposes, etc., of: Contrast the political rights of Romans and Greeks.

verb (used without object)

2. to exhibit unlikeness on comparison with something else; form a contrast.

3. Linguistics . to differ in a way that can serve to distinguish meanings: The sounds ( p )  and ( b )  contrast in the words “pin” and “bin.”

noun

4. the act of contrasting; the state of being contrasted.

5. a striking exhibition of unlikeness.

6. a person or thing that is strikingly unlike in comparison: The weather down here is a welcome contrast to what we're having back home.

7. opposition or juxtaposition of different forms, lines, or colors in a work of art to intensify each element's properties and produce a more dynamic expressiveness.

8. Photography . the relative difference between light and dark areas of a print or negative.

Origin:
1480–90;  (v.) < Middle French contraster  < Italian contrastare  to contest < Latin contrā- contra- ¹  + stāre  to stand;  (noun) earlier contraste  < French  < Italian contrasto  conflict, derivative of contrastare.

 

 

Steampunk

“I cannot imagine how the clockwork of the universe can exist without a clockmaker.” – Voltaire

Nikon D7000 - 18mm, f3.5, 1/50, ISO 400.  Post processing with Lightroom 4

Exit/In

"Without music, life would be a mistake" -  Friedrich Nietzsche

This is a small venue in Nashville where my family and I saw VNV Nation perform live.  It was a small, intimate show with lots of bass.

Nikon D7000 - 52mm, f5, 1/100, ISO 100.  Post processing with Nikon Capture NX2.

Lincoln Memorial

"Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say, for one, that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow-men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem."
- Abraham Lincoln, Address Delivered in Candidacy for the State Legislature. (9 March 1832)
 
I took this photo on the same walk as the Arlington photo below.  Coincidentally, February 12th is President Lincoln's birthday.  The memorial was set up with chairs and velvet ropes, which drove the normal mass of people to the edges and created some significant challenges for setting a tripod up.

The memorial is quite dark, but I really dislike using flash. The original photo was underexposed. To make it useable I brightened the image and increased the contrast, while increasing the D-Light (dynamic lighting feature in RAW images).  I also cropped it a bit.

Nikon D7000 - 105mm, f5.6, 1/15, ISO 100. On Tripod.  Post processing Nikon Capture NX2.