capitol christmas tree

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Happy 2020! 

My first official blog post of the new year. Hope you all had a great holiday and a happy new year. But now that the holidays are over, I figured this would be the most appropriate image to post. I captured it yesterday during a sunrise walk around the US Capitol with my friend, Andy.

It turned out to be a great sunrise with color in the sky, but I thought this image was something different. The tree had been blocked off all morning so it was cool to see that they were getting ready to take down the holiday decorations. Just in the little time we spent watching them take down the ornaments, it seemed like they had a long road ahead of them. A timelapse would have been cool to capture of it all.

My camera settings for this image are F4 at 1/3200th sec and ISO 800 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom lens.

All photos available for print and licensing >

Merry Christmas and happy holidays! Which ever holiday you celebrate, I hope you got to spend this past weekend with the ones you love the most.

My holiday celebrations started last Friday and has continued everyday since. It was so great to see so many family members and friends. But I’m not going to lie, it was a pretty hectic weekend with a lot of eating. Diet starts tomorrow! …. or January 2nd 🙂 And I can’t get this song out of my head. What is your favorite holiday song?

I took this image one morning earlier this month. I knew I had to have something prepared for this day on the blog and I wanted to photograph the US Capitol Christmas tree since I already had an image of the National Christmas Tree in front of the White House. Somehow I forgot my tripod so this is completely hand held. I was sitting along the edge of the reflecting pool and held my camera as close to the water as I could get without it getting wet. It was pretty nerve wracking given my previous experiences with water and cameras but I’m glad I was able to get it done. Soon after I captured this moment, all the lights turned off and you weren’t able to see the Christmas Tree at all. I am lucky I got this when I did.

The camera settings for this image is F5.6 at 0.4 seconds and ISO 250 with my Sony A7II and 28-70mm. Pretty impressive for a 0.4 second hand held shot, right? I think so! LOL

Again, Happy Holidays to you! Now is the time to relax and just enjoy the winter season. Have you come up with your 2018 goals yet? I have a few in mind…