more tilt-shift: great falls, VA

November 21, 2009 | Filed Under nature, photography | 5 Comments 

promise this is the last tilt-shift-only post!
but, i had a couple of hours to kill before i needed to return the lens to the fantastic folks at penn camera, and it was a beautiful day, and my friend saliha who lives not far from the place wasn’t working and loves hiking too… so we met up around midday at one of my most favorite parks in the world, great falls, on the virginia side of the potomac. with musa along, of course. i took only the 45mm ts-e lens so i could focus on trying it out a little more; found it was less of a struggle the next day, although that might have been because i was taking pictures of trees and a river, instead of people who had to wait for me :) i believe i might have begun to fall in love with this lens… but i still want the canon 35L first! someday!
a note: when i first began taking pictures in high school, i didn’t even like photographing people… it was always the outdoors, in the beginning, trying to capture beautiful landscapes or skyscapes or natural details, and i even hated having people IN the nature shots. so although my preference has changed quite a bit, this kind of exercise was a little bit of a return to myself…

niagara/finger lakes trip

November 8, 2009 | Filed Under family photos, nature, travel | 5 Comments 

here is a selection from the almost 700 images we shot on our four-night trip to niagara falls, toronto and the finger lakes… yeah, that’s why it’s taken me so long to get these up! :)
so, here’s what we did! we drove up through upstate new york on sunday, oct. 18; just hitting peak foliage color, on the way, and it was a gorgeous drive! the first night in niagara falls was very cold, but the weather warmed up for the next few days. monday we started off at the bird & reptile kingdom, for the kid, but then we “did” the falls – walking along the cliff, taking the maid of the mist, going “behind the falls,” etc., underneath such a lovely blue sky with sunlit white clouds… the next day we drove into toronto, saw the city and the CN tower, tried a few different restaurants (specifically, my husband had three different shawarmas for dinner!) then came back to niagara falls; that night we also got some shots along the cliff with the colored floodlights glowing through the mist. the next day we drove downstream to see a little more of what the falls region had to offer – niagara-on-the-lake, etc – then crossed back over the border and drove down to ithaca for the night.
the following day, we spent the morning and early afternoon sightseeing along cayuga lake and seneca lake, with all their wooded banks aflame in autumn colors and the local vineyards laden with grapes… this was our only family vacation this year, and i’m glad to say even the little one quite enjoyed himself, for the most part! we stayed at the skyline inn and we were quite happy with the experience there. but more than anything, it was just a much-needed break, to have the time to ourselves, witness something as awe-inspiring as the falls, and – for me – to take pictures for myself… :)

just in case you’re wondering, this one’s from the bird kingdom’s reptile room…

and this is an actual “java house” with each wall carved painstakingly from a single piece of wood… they have this kind of randomly located in the bird kingdom…

my son, on the maid of the mist…

“behind” the horseshoe falls

here we were by the water in toronto…

and this is one of the views from the CN tower

back in niagara falls, at night…

this is the “whirlpool” in the niagara river, downstream from the falls

ithaca falls, by cornell university…

a park we stopped by near taughannock falls

and, taughannock falls! they said this is three stories higher than niagara falls…

one of the rural, unpaved cross-roads between cayuga and seneca lakes:

a glimpse from my canada trip

November 4, 2009 | Filed Under family photos, nature, travel | 4 Comments 

i already facebooked this image so i assume most people have seen it :) but thought i would share it here as well: my favorite shot from the canada trip (my husband, son and i visited niagara falls and toronto from october 18-22, stopping a night in upstate NY on the way home). here, my husband had dropped me off along the cliffside to take nighttime shots of the colored lights on the falls; after i had taken more than enough, just when i was starting to wonder if he had left me there and gone back to the hotel :) he popped up behind me with our son on his shoulders, to scare me! on our walk back upstream to the car, i got this shot of them with the floodlit falls behind them…

a visit with the NC grandparents

June 18, 2009 | Filed Under family photos, nature | 4 Comments 

so, i haven’t had any shoots for a while, but i did take my camera to raleigh in may and june when we went down for weddings and baby showers and whatnot. so of course i have some pictures of my son and nephew to share… it’s taken me a while to get my act together for a blog post, but here are some images from the personal side of our trips down to NC! the first few shots are from a quick walk in our neighborhood down to silver lake right by our neighborhood, where a resident swan came to see us.
also, i messed up my watermark file and while it would have been simple to recreate it, i thought i would try something a little different…

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