The Awakening

The subject of today's post is a sculpture called "The Awakening" by J. Seward Johnson, Jr, which is located at National Harbor near Washington, D.C. The sculpture was actually the primary reason why we decided to make a trip down to National Harbor on a spur of the moment decision one weekend. The drive is only about 45 minutes or so from my apartment in Baltimore, and we were fortunate to have the weather cooperate with us.

Our weekend trip started at National Harbor, but I decided that I wanted night shots of the sculpture and the Peeps Store, so we spent the afternoon at the International Spy Museum, then went back to National Harbor to get the night shots that I desired.

I cropped this photo quite considerably, the sculpture consists of the three elements in this shot as well as a leg and a foot. The 17-40mm lens had no problem capturing the whole shot, but I felt that cropping the image so you can see just the arm, hand, and face produced a much better photo. I used a heavy amount of desaturation on the background, and colored the sculpture itself to resemble fleshy coloring, which I personally think makes the photo look much better than the true dark grey coloring of the sculpture.

The Awakening

Please feel free to click on the photo to see it in various sizes, which also take you to my online gallery, hosted over at smugmug, where you can see additional photos that I have posted. If you enjoyed viewing this photo, please leave comments or feedback below and please pass the link on to others if you so desire. Thanks for stopping by!!

Foggy Blossoms

Today's photo was taken last Sunday, when we decided to head down to Washington D.C. very early in the morning to try to get some pictures of the cherry blossoms, which are apparently blooming very early this year due to the mild winter. (As this is my first year living up here, I have nothing to compare that to, but like Wikipedia, if enough people say it, it must be true!!)

I took this shot with the 100mm macro lens, purposely focusing more on the blossoms in the foreground and choosing to go with a slightly blurred looking Washington Monument. I have two reasons for composing the shot in this manner, the first being it was pretty foggy early in the morning and the Monument really didn't look good in the fog/haze and the second being choosing to focus closer to the lens actually created some nice background bokeh as a result of the lens itself, which I think helps highlight the cherry blossoms in the shot.

I have a few other photos that I am going to process from the trip eventually, and am looking forward to being able to get outdoors more that the weather is warming up and will hopefully be able to post some new and exciting shots in the coming months!

Foggy Blossoms

Please feel free to click on the photo to see it in various sizes, which also take you to my online gallery, hosted over at smugmug, where you can see additional photos that I have posted. If you enjoyed viewing this photo, please leave comments or feedback below and please pass the link on to others if you so desire. Thanks for stopping by!!

Cherry Blossoms At Night

Today's photo is a shot of some blooming cherry blossoms outside of M&T Bank stadium that I took last night. I am hoping to get down to Washington D.C this weekend to get shots of various areas and the cherry blossoms as well.

I used Silver Efex Pro and Color Efex Pro 4 to take out much of the "orange glow" that the original shot had due to the lighting around the area. After I was happy with that result I added some additional black and white coloring using Silver Efex Pro again, and then merged the photos together to make this shot.

Cherry Blossoms At Night

Please feel free to click on the photo to see it in various sizes, which also take you to my online gallery, hosted over at smugmug, where you can see additional photos that I have posted. If you enjoyed viewing this photo, please leave comments or feedback below and please pass the link on to others if you so desire. Thanks for stopping by!!

Peeps Store!

Today's photo is of the Peeps Store in National Harbor, located just outside of Washington D.C. It is one of three Peeps retail stores located in the entire United States, with the other two located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and the Mall of America, which is located in Minnesota. The National Harbor area is an upscale (and still developing!) area with several dining, hotel, and shopping choices, as well as several residential developments. In my mind there are two primary attractions to National Harbor, a sculpture (which will be the subject of a photo post in the near future) and of course the Peeps store. It is kind of hard to not see the Peeps store and feel like a little kid again, even if you cannot stand the taste of Peeps (like me...but I do love the blue raspberry flavored Mike and Ike's!)

The store sold every type of Peeps one could imagine, as well as several different flavors of Mike and Ike's, Hot Tamales, and other Peeps and Company staples. This photo was taken at night when it was very windy, which is why the flags look nearly parallel to the ground. I ended up using about 4 different combinations of HDR processing as well as a few original photos to combine various aspects together for the final shot. It took several hours to process it, but I am quite pleased with the result!

Peeps Store

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