Special Events

Special Events is a big portion of the photography jobs I work, and I had two recently: daughter Sara’s graduation from George Washington in DC (above) and a fund raiser for the Pink Ribbon Story Foundation in Crabapple, GA (below).

Ascension the sculpture

Artist Michael Dillon, based in Crabapple, Georgia, is known for architectural ironworks and distinctive sculptures.  He created “Ascension” for the Duluth Gateway Art Project  with the financial support of AGCO, an agriculture industry conglomerate.

The best pictures I saw of “Ascension” were in a gallery by Violet Key, a photographer in Suwanee, GA.  She has some very creative frames taken a few moments before the official presentation of “Ascension” on 4/19/2014.

My idea was to think up new settings or ways to display this piece such as inserting humans into the frame, and twilight and strobist treatments.  This blog is about my first attempts.

Quadcopter aka DRONE flight

The last time I collaborated with Peter we went to a rodeo.  This time I assisted as he made a short flight in a Quadcopter to survey a house from 0’ to 200’ above the street.

There are many un-resolved issues around the topic of remotely controlled flying vehicles (drones, quads, R/C vehicles, nanobots, other classes), and I will not be addressing privacy and legal concerns here.  I will post briefly on one way to capture the bird’s eye view that is so characteristic of this camera position. 

Second Visit with RJ

R J was waking up when we arrived.  For a short time he was groggy and then he woke up completely for the three of us.  

Soon I realized I wasn’t at all ready to work with an 8 week old, and so I decided to watch   R J and make mental notes for an upcoming workshop led by Sandy Puc’ (say Puck), see sandypuc.com and 
sandypucphotography.com

RODEO !

We saw four events in the rodeo billed as the Georgia National Rodeo, a production of Barnes PRCA Rodeos:

aka Saddle or Bareback w/flank strap

NEW BORN SESSION

Fortunately for all of us, Robert James woke up near the end of our session and showed us his deep blue eyes.

I can't always guarantee a smile in a new born session.   


R J performed beautifully for Grandmother Laura.

LOCAL BIRDS

My collection of local birds is about 25 species so far.  They are fun to watch because they display interesting behaviors and sometimes seem to have personalities like this grumpy YELLOW RUMP WARBLER (left).  The names can be pretty funny too.  

This immature is also called the MYRTLE WARBLER.  Or it may be a BAY BREASTED or a BLACKPOLE - these guys are tricky.  If you see a glaring error please make a comment.

On the right is an immature

 PINE WARBLER.  

Professional bird watchers will enjoy learning the fine details of confusing Warblers at 
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/Page.aspx?pid=2622

Fortunately, for the rest of us, many song birds have very distinctive features as seen in the next 6 images.