presidents park

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Walking around the White House area has become one of my new favorite places to photograph in Washington. For some reason, I’ve always dismissed the White House itself because it has always been a difficult landmark to photograph. With the gates, so many tourists and extra police protection, I still consider the White House one of those places that I haven’t gotten a great image of yet. It will happen one day! But in the meantime, I’m enjoying the views of the surrounding areas like Lafayette Square.

This image was taken of the United States Department of the Treasury that’s located right next to the White House but on this particular morning, I noticed how the statues were lining up with the General William Tecumseh Sherman Monument. I think it is so interesting how everything lines up so well with the statues, street lamps, and columns. A view a lot of people may not see or even notice so I’m glad I was able to capture it.

My camera settings for this image are F7.1 at 1/250th sec and ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and my 70-200mm zoom lens.

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The last image I took at this sunset and night workshop was of my friend, Andy. He was smart enough to bring a flashlight with him and this image actually took a couple of tries.

Considering the fact that we were there with about 12 other photographers, everyone at different skill levels, it was hard to capture this image. We were all there trying to take night shots with Jimmy and Waldnilso but we weren’t sure if we were able to take some of our own. So as people were readjusting their focal points and things, Andy would run quickly to the George Washington’s bust and light it up in time for his own self-timer and he was kind enough to make sure I got the shot too.

But with all these attempts, the one at the very end, when everyone else was packing up,  turned out the best. And if you look closely enough, I even captured a shooting star! Which by the way, there were so many shooting stars that night! So fun!

If you want to check out Andy’s version of this image, click here. It’s awesome. He also made a youtube video about our experience that you can watch here.

My camera settings for this image is F4 at 8 seconds and ISO 160 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide-angle zoom.

That guy can stand very still for so long. LOL.

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Ok, enough chit chat. This was my FAVORITE part of the night. It was the “segment” when Waldnilso brought out his drone, attached some lume cubes to the bottom of it and started flying when it was crazy dark outside. This was the first time I’ve ever witnessed anyone flying at night and it was so cool. To be honest, I didn’t even know you could do it.

But the lights were surprisingly bright. The kind of bright that if you stared at them too long, you’ll start seeing stars. Even hovering over a president’s head for a little bit of time was enough to light them up for an exposure and it created some very interesting/creepy images.

But the best was when Waldnilso would circle around the presidents’ heads. At first, he did these circles which were really cool. He told us to hit our shutter when the drone was behind the head and then release it when it came back around for a very clean looking circle. Those images turned out cool but then he suggested spiraling around the heads. OMG! I moved my camera and tripod over to the side so I wouldn’t get a similar-looking image and I love the way that it turned out. I can’t even imagine what it takes to fly a drone at night but it was the coolest thing ever.

PS that light coming from the right-hand side of the image is the moonlight.

My camera settings for this image is F4 at 83 seconds and ISO 160 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide-angle lens.

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So the story behind these heads is that they were originally apart of a Williamsburg attraction called President’s Park. It started in the early 2000s and these busts were in an open-air museum type thing for people to pay to see. Unfortunately, people did not want to pay to see it so in 2010, the park closed and the heads were left to be trashed.

A man named Howard Hankins happened to help build the park but also did not want to see the busts go to waste. He bid and won them at an auction and ended up moving them to his property. I don’t think he had any real plans for them, he just didn’t want to see them destroyed. So they’re basically just sitting on his property and this is what they look like after sitting around for 9 years without any maintenance.

It’s pretty cool to see how decayed they are. I mean the details on some of these heads were incredible. I wanted to add an image here to give you a sense of scale and to sort of see how they are laid out. To the right of the image is my friend, Zack taking pictures of one of the presidents. You can see how an average height person comes to almost the shoulder of the presidents.

Most of them are lined up in rows like this. There were 3 long rows, a few shorter rows and even fewer that just stood out. Please don’t ask me to name all of them because I definitely can’t. LOL. But I was surprised to see President Clinton and both of the Bushs’.

My camera settings for this image is F5 at 1/320th sec and ISO 500 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide-angle lens.

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As mentioned a few weeks ago, I went somewhere that I’ve been wanting to go to for FOREVER! The President Heads in Williamsburg, Virginia! I’ve been seeing images of these busts for years but never had the opportunity to visit.

Actually, I take that back. About 2 years ago, Andrew, Frankie and I actually drove down to Williamsburg for the weekend and tried to look for them. At that time, the address was very vague and every time I tried googling them, the address would lead us to the middle of nowhere. We would drive back and forth on the highway and just around the general vicinity of Croaker, VA but never found it. We ended up giving up and just spent the weekend hanging out. At that point, I was sure I wouldn’t see them.

But it wasn’t until my friend, Jeremy posted images from the President Head last month and said that he was on a photo tour that really sparked my interest in them again. So in case you’re interested in seeing them, click here for the event details. We signed up for the sunset and night tour which I’d highly recommend.

Since I’ll be in Oregon this whole week, I figured I’d post images from this event this entire week. Hope you don’t mind 🙂

My camera settings for this image is F5 at 1/13th sec and ISO 800 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide-angle lens.

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One of the coolest things ever happened last week. I got to attend the National Christmas Tree Lighting. Living in the Washington DC area my whole life, I’ve always wanted to do something like this. The White House hosts some pretty cool events throughout the year and I’ve always admired them from the tv screen. Shout out to my friend, Albert for inviting me to the event. We had great seats and enjoyed all the singing, dancing and obviously the Christmas Tree lighting. My favorite part? Seeing Dean Cain in person. OMG I loved him in Lois and Clark when I was younger. Hottie hasn’t changed one bit 😉

The whole event was being recorded for the Hallmark Channel so it was really cool to witness all the behind the scene productions. One thing I learned, they’re really sensitive about people walking in front of the teleprompter. Long story but a quick tip: go to the bathroom before TV filming begins. HAHAHA. But I loved how there was so much emphasis on preserving all the national parks since it was filmed in President’s Park and remembering those who can’t be with us during the holiday season, specifically those serving our country. The Beach Boys were awesome and a group of young boys called, “Boys II Bowties” were the cutest. I had so much fun!

The Hallmark special airs tonight. So if you see me, LET ME KNOW! We had pretty good seats and I did see the camera pointed in my direction a couple of times. I’m wearing a light grey coat with a green sweater underneath LOL. How cool would it be to see me on TV? (next to Dean Cain)

My camera settings for this image is F5.6 at 1/30th of a second ISO 2500 with my Sony A7II and 28-70mm lens.