cloudy

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On the same day that I was looking down at times square, I was also looking up. I took this image about 30 minutes before that other one from the rooftop bar and I was actually on solid ground for this one. HAHA.

I’ve always wanted an image like this from times square. The buildings are just so massive all around you that I knew there was a way. For some reason, I’ve found it really difficult to capture in the past. I guess all I needed were just some dark cloudy skies and birds flying above me all at the right moment. Patiences is obviously key in photography. But I really like this image because it just feels like a big hug from the buildings. Everyone all at once, “awwwww”.

Without my 16-35mm wide angle lens, I would not have been able to capture all of it. But now that I’m looking at the image again, I wish I would have gotten lower to capture it. If I was kneeling down on the ground, I think I would have been able to capture much more of the buildings on the edges and maybe would have been able to fill in some of the spaces in between? Who knows. Either way, I’m happy with the way this one turned out. There was a fair amount of lens correcting that went into this. I also like how the cloudy skies give the buildings a mood of darkness. Usually when you visit times square, all you see are the lights. It’s like a totally different view.

Which makes me think, if I didn’t tell you that this was times square, would you have been able to guess the location?

My camera settings for this image are F/8 at 1/60th of a second ISO 400.

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One of my favorite parts of the trip was taking our dog, Frankie on walks to different places in the city. This was taken on our second to last day. It was extra cloudy with a little bit of wind but so nice and comfortable to be outside. We made our way to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade but we parked our car just above it. What a cute little neighborhood. I’m sorry I don’t know the name but it looked just like the houses did in the Cosby Show. Wasn’t that based in Brooklyn too?

Anyways, it was Andrew and I’s goal to take pictures of Frankie with different landmarks behind him. So obviously, we had to take a picture of him with the Manhattan skyline in the back. He’s balancing on a bike share stand and looks thrilled, doesn’t he? HAHA He’s such a good boy but for some reason, he gets scared to jump off of things. Even when we’re home, he doesn’t like jumping off the couch or bed, so he has to be brought up onto furniture if he wants gets on it. That’s the only way he’s guaranteed a way down.He won’t jump up on his own. So we knew if we put him up on this bike stand, he would not jump. He’d just stand there for as long as we’d let him. LOL.

Whenever I look at this picture, I just smile. I’d love to take him on my trips. Don’t you think he’d look awesome next to the faces at Mount Rushmore. HAHAHA. Crazy dog mom? Maybe… But look at him. He loves it!

My settings for this image was F/5.6 at 1/320th of a second ISO 200. No tripod or anything. Just love.

Have a great weekend everyone! That week was short!

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Oh snap! I can’t believe I still haven’t blogged this image yet. I’ll let you all in on a little secret. I have a folder on my computer desktop called “Haven’t blogged yet” (very creative, I know). It’s the place where I dump all the images that I’ve worked on but haven’t blogged about it yet (hence the name of the folder). Usually all these images have already been on my instagram. It’s just so much easier for me to throw things up on there but when it comes time to blogging, I am a lot more thoughtful and careful with what I’m saying. So I need to keep a folder to make sure all these cool images end up on the blog. When it was time to write today’s blog post, I went back into my trusty folder and found this one!

I took it the day I left for New York. It was the only day of the week that called for cloudy/slightly rainy skies. Those are words are like music to my ears because that usually means colorful sunrises/sunsets and I was right! But the best part of this morning was that the colors lasted for so long. Probably a good 20-30 minutes of amazing color. I was surprised and super grateful to have the extra time to try to come up with different compositions. So in case you were wondering, this was shot close to Netherland Carillon in Arlington, VA. Its one of the only places I know of that you can get all three of these iconic DC monuments all lined up like this. I tried my best to use my “cherry blossom skills” to frame the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument and Capitol building all in one image using the trees around me. I’m pretty happy with the results. What do you think?

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Last Friday was a crazy weather day. It’s been a long time since I’d seen anything like it. All through out the day mother nature switched from cloudy to sunny, rain to snow and even sunny with snow! It was bananas just sitting in front of the window and watching it all happen. Especially since the changes would happen every 10 minutes. So around 4pm I looked out again and saw some amazing clouds. I was really hoping for a great sunset. Usually when we have crazy weather days like this, the skies really light up.

I met up with my friend, Zack, to shoot the sunset from the Tidal Basin. Half sunset shooting, half scouting the cherry blossoms. Unfortunately the skies didn’t light up like I was expecting but I had a great time shooting from a low point of view. When I say low, I mean so low that I wasn’t even able to see what I was shooting. It was really a guessing game but one that worked in my favor. The water in the tidal basin was so choppy, there was no way that I would of been able get a reflection from it. Then we found this amazing puddle. It made me see the skies and the clouds in a totally different way.

Most of the time I’m out shooting by myself. So it’s great to meet up with people who have some of the same interest as I do. I had complimented Zack on a similar picture he took of a puddle and he was kind enough to show me how he did it. It made me think about all the other amazing puddles that I could of gotten a great shot out of but just walked away because I didn’t try it. Oh well. At least now I know.

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Looking forward to today. Today I’m meeting up with my awesome graphic designer, Anelise from Anelise Salvo Design Co. We met through instagram and have been working together for at least half a year now. She’s the lady responsible for my beautiful website, the monthly downloads and more things we’ve got in the works. Love working with her and can’t wait to meet face-to-face 🙂