Photo of the Week 10/19/09

I captured this shot of the strange path of a lightning bolt on the campus of Georgetown University in Washington, DC earlier this summer. This image was on my mind the following evening when I was photographing from the top of the building in the front left of the image and the skies remained cloudy. This image was made at an aperture of f22.0 and 4 tenths of a second at ISO100 using my Nikor 14-24mm f2.8 lens at a focal length of 14mm.

Photo of the Week 10/12/09

In the summer of 2008, I took an amazing trip to the Philippines lasting several weeks. As I was there primarily for a wedding, I spent time in several small towns traveling and staying with the friends and family of the bride and groom. One morning we went into the market in the town of Tigoen and I noticed a woman hunched over a pile of charcoal she was gathering together and apparently selling. Her face and hands were blackened from the charcoal dust and her ragged clothes barely covered her thin frame.

In order to not draw attention to myself, I shot several frames including this one while holding my camera at my side and talking with my friend. I like the authenticity of this image, her resolute expression and posture and apparent indifference to her clothing's lack of coverage, and the way the whites of her eyes stand out against the her charcoal-stained skin. This exposure was made at 1/160th of a second with an aperture of f6.3 and ISO 400 using my Nikon D300 and Nikor 17-55mm f2.8 DX lens at a focal length of 35mm.

Photo of the Week 10/05/09

Even before I knew its name, I was a big fan of the triangular shaped Flatiron Building in New York City. I got a chance to take a few pictures of the building this week and thought I'd share this one. This 9 exposure HDR image was taken using my Nikor 14-24mm f2.8 lens at 14mm and f22. The high aperture and an ISO of 100 enabled me to use a slow shutter speed range from 1/80th of a second up to 3 seconds for the exposures to blur the moving figures and cars.

Photo of the Week 9/28/09

As the weather gets colder here on Long Island, I was reminded of the time I spent in San Diego, California just before Christmas last year. I made it out to Black's Beach after hearing great things about it. I was surprised to discover numerous parasailers and hangliders as there is a launch area above the beach. Before going for a quick dip in the Pacific, I snapped a few pictures including this one. I made this images at 1/400th of a second at aperture of f5.0.

Photo of the Week 9/21/09

I caught this moment at a recent wedding in Syracuse, NY of a bride being walked down the aisle by her mother. What makes this image special for me are the near identical expressions of the mother and daughter, which convey so well the emotions they are experiencing.

Here is a little on the technical details which enabled me to save the moment the way I did. This image was captured using my Nikon D700 camera using my 70-200mm Nikor f2.8 lens with an exposure of 1/125th of a second at an f2.8 aperture. This exposure was made with ambient light with my camera set to an ISO of 1600. An off camera flash is backlighting the subjects here as well. The clarity of the image is a testament to the newer Nikon CMOS sensors and noise filtering technology. What little noise was present in the image was further reduced using Noise Ninja in post-processing.