Week 5 of BetterPhoto was about twilight and nighttime photography.  I decided that I should go to the National Mall for this assignment.

I wondered the mall from before sunset until after it was completely dark.  Walking all the way from the museums up to the Lincoln Memorial and back is quite a long trip.  Along the way I got in some great tourist watching and enjoyed a concert by a military band.

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Sunday was the Photowalk put on by Andy Smith of Visual Realia in Gettysburg, PA. It was a great opportunity to a visit a place I had not been since childhood. Even then we toured the battlefield and didn’t really look in town.

We met in the center of town and walked to the train station. Passing an old theater along the way. I love that so many old theaters are named The Majestic. Once we reached the train station we encountered some of the more interesting old buildings of the walk since right afterward was and old building with a Gettysburg Photo sign. Lots of interest and age. That’s also when we had our first encounter with the fraternity boys. It appears that Sunday was also the end of rush week at Gettysburg College and the crowds were having fun. Lots of running and shouting.

Next on the walk was Gettysburg College itself. Quite the beautiful campus. Lots of older buildings with some artwork scattered around. Even the adirondack chairs were photogenic. This is where we congregated for our group photo.

Heading back into town we encountered the female side of rush week. A group of young ladies dressed in black dresses and acting very properly. Quite different from the men.

We then took a longish walk up to Seminary Ridge. Yes, our first encounter with the actual battle. A long of people decided not to walk up the hill since it was so hot.

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I’m sitting in a small coffee shop in Gettysburg waiting for the Photowalk to start in about an hour.   I haven’t been here since I was a kid and don’t remember ever coming to the town.  After the walk I’m going to drive around the battlefield.  Maybe I’ll visit Little Round Top.

Watch for a blog entry after the walk.

Canon has thrown off my schedule. I was looking ahead to Spring 2009 to upgrade my camera which is when I figured the 50D would be released. But now Canon’s gone and announced it for Photokina.

While I enjoy using the Rebel XTi I feel like it could be faster and more configurable. The 50D appears to deliver. The other difficulty I have with the XTi is that I get concerned using ISO 800 or higher even though I know 800 is very usable. Higher usable ISO means to me that I can have faster shutter speeds delivering similar image quality. Actually better quality since higher speeds means less camera shake.

I’m looking forward to the reviews of the 50D and seeing it in stores.

Well … again I have been remiss in posting.  I would say I will try to be better but I’m probably not going to deliver.   I’m not giving up on my blog but I do need to get on a schedule.

Week 4 of my course was several weeks ago but I still remember the trouble I had.  It was about the classic landscape technique.  In a nutshell the classic technique is a beautiful landscape with a strong foreground subject.  The landscape is the canvas but they tend to be vague without a strong singular subject.

I decided in order to get the pictures for this assignment I would go up to Great Falls, MD.  It’s not the more common VA side and in retrospect that might have been better.  The problem was that there is only a single place to see the falls from MD while lots of places from VA.  This means there was no good foreground subject.  However, the MD side provides more than just the falls.  There are some islands plus the C&O canal.  At the end of the day I ended up with pictures that do not include the falls.

The picture on the left was taken right on one of the waterways below the islands.  I used a polarizer to expose the rocks below the surface but because this uses a very wide lens the polarizer could only work on part of the water.  I really like the combination of visible and mirrored water.  The sky was a different problem since the day was completely overcast.  Great soft light but I had to colorize it in this picture.

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