Oriole Park at Camden Yards - from the press box

Today I had a chance to take one of the behind-the-scenes tours of Oriole Park at Camden Yards, located near downtown Baltimore. I have wanted to take the tour for quite a long time, but everything happened to fall into place and today I was able to have enough time (and was fortunate enough to be able to procure a ticket as well!) to take the tour. I was not able to purchase one of the tour tickets online and I was slightly worried that the tour would be sold out. As luck would have it, the tour group consisted of the tour guide, a couple from New Jersey and their young daughter, and myself! The tour guide was very knowledgeable, and provided interesting tidbits of information throughout the tour. The tour itself visited several areas, to include the luxury boxes, the press box, the basement including walking through the tunnel the umpires use to access the field, and the Orioles dugout. Interestingly enough, two World Series trophies won by the Orioles and several individual awards such as Gold Glove and MVP awards were on display directly behind the owner's suite. It was interesting to see a World Series trophy up close as I had never seen one before!

The press box was very interesting, it is entirely open air, so of course there were quite a few dents in the doors, walls, and scuffs on the roof from balls being fouled into the area. The "windows" are protected by shades on non-game days, so I had to balance my camera on a small ledge in order to take this shot. I took several shots to hopefully be able to eventually layer the entire field so none of the grounds crew, who were maintaining the field, would be visible in the shot. I highly recommend the tour if you have the time while visiting the Baltimore area!

Oriole Park at Camden Yards from the press box

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Blackbird and Bomber

Today I was fortunate enough to be able to again visit the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center, located in Chantilly, Virginia (near Dulles International Airport). Due to it being a weekend (and very busy due the site playing host to a family-themed "Be a Pilot" event) I was not able to use my tripod for any shots. I unfortunately forgot to pack my Gorillapod, but I was able to procure the last Gorillapod SLR-Zoom (and BH1 ball head) from the Penn Camera location in Tyson's Corner, Virginia. Using this I was able to wrap the Gorillapod around various railings at the Udvar-Hazy Center allowing me to keep my camera steady to create the bracketed shots that were required to create todays photos.

The first shot is a view from behind the SR-71 Blackbird. Due to the central location of the Blackbird I had to wait about 15 minutes for enough of a clearing to ensure no one would walk through the shot during the 15 seconds required to take all three bracketed shots. I think it was well worth it, as this is a pretty interesting view (and you can even see the upside down plane hanging above visitors as they first enter the complex!).

Behind the Blackbird

The second shot focused solely on the front of the B-29 "Enola Gay". I was intrigued by this shot when I noticed that I could capture the names of the entire crew in one shot, but also was able to get an interesting angle of the cockpit as well as a tradition on most aircraft, the "No Smoking within 100ft" warning. This shot was looking up from the lowest level of the museum, so I did not have to wait for individuals walking by to not block the shot, it was just a matter of securing the Gorillapod and camera, focusing, and capturing the required bracketed shots.

Enola Gay cockpit

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Patterson Park Pagoda

Today's photo is the first shot that I have taken during my current trip to Baltimore. After seeing this awesome photo of the pagoda I went downtown to hopefully take a similar shot. Unfortunately, the pagoda is only open from 12-6 on Sundays so I will try to get a chance to go back this weekend. This photo is of the exterior of the pagoda, looking up toward the sky. I tried to make the shot perfectly centered so both sides of the building are a perfect copy of each other. Upon closer examination you can tell that it is very slightly off-center, although I am not certain if that is because of the building itself or the skew of the lens.

Patterson Park Pagoda

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River Walk Streetcar Station

Today's photo is a scene from the Riverwalk that I must have passed hundreds of times but didn't ever really notice that it had the potential to make an interesting photo until last week. This shot is taken near the elevators that take you from the Riverwalk to street level (just off of Losoya Street). The red object is the Torch of Friendship, which is likely one of the sights that you remember if you have visited San Antonio.

I waited for groups of tourists to pass to acquire the brackets required for the shot so shooting this scene took about 5 minutes, even though the longest the shutter was open was 5 seconds. I know that there are public transit stops (including the "trolleys" at the "station") but I guess a long time ago it was actually a streetcar stop.

I decided that I ultimately liked the black and white look more, but the Torch of Friendship didn't quite look right in black and white so I kept the original coloring while using Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 to convert the shot to black and white.

River Walk Streetcar Station

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San Fernando Cathedral Interior

Today's photos is another shot from the interior of San Fernando Cathedral, but it is the first time that I have processed a shot from there using primarily Nik software products. I think this looks much better than the original version (posted here) for a variety of reasons.

This I believe is the first photo that I took inside the cathedral with an "L" series lens. the 60D is a much better camera than the T1i, and of course the post-processing software that I use is much better now than what I started out with. Another reason that I think this shot looks better is that a lot of my very early images were composed from a single RAW shot, and as I have learned more about photography in general I realized how very important having the camera capture a lot of the shadows and highlights is much more effective than having software do it.

San Fernando Cathedral Interior

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Butterfly Breakfast

Today's photo is yet another macro shot, this one was taken at the San Antonio Zoo's "Butterflies! Caterpillar Flight School" exhibit. I took quite a few shots in the exhibit but this one is by far my favorite, it almost looks like the butterfly is looking right at the camera as I took the shot (although I am pretty sure it wasn't as it was too focused on eating the delicious orange!).

Butterfly Breakfast

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Steel Forest

Today's photo is another shot of a household object, as seen using a combination of the macro lens and flash. While originally probably looking fairly exotic, this is in fact nothing more than an unused grill brush to clean a newly purchased grill.

I processed this shot using Silver Efex Pro 2 more heavily than normal which at first glance ends up giving it a black and white look, although you will notice that it does indeed retain a small bit of coloring upon closer glance. This is a tip that I picked up from the latest issue of Photoshop User magazine which noted that most "black and white" photos displayed in galleries, published online, etc are not actually true black and white, they retain some coloring in order to make the image pop more than a true black and white conversion. I hadn't tried that method previously and I think it makes a HUGE difference.

Steel Forest

Please feel free to leave comments and/or feedback below. Also remember that clicking on the photo lets you view the image in various sizes as well as taking you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug. Thanks for stopping by!