Beauty is Truth » nature

more tilt-shift: great falls, VA

beautyis — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:57:23 +0000

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

beautyis — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 05:50:03 +0000

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

beautyis — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:32:50 +0000

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

beautyis — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 23:56:42 +0000

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…

here, my son fell asleep during a day-long cooking extravaganza i conducted with two friends – pictures of THAT to come in a future post!

and here’s a little series showing the progress of a fight between my son and nephew over the blue car-carrier truck… with my brother completely knocked out on the couch the whole time…

the rest of these images are from pullen park in raleigh… the carousel, the little paddleboat ride, train, etc…

this one’s not technically a very good shot, but i just love the moment too much not to share it:

nova scotia, august 2007

beautyis — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 05:02:05 +0000

so in terms of wedding and portrait photography, things are picking up! shooting portraits of a colleague this weekend, second shooting a wedding of a friend at the end of this month in NC, and will be shooting two weddings in april and july, as of now!

but, until i have some more of those to post, i wanted to go ahead and post some images from some of the trips that i’ve taken with my family. my husband and i LOVE to travel; the following images are from a very long road trip – from maryland to nova scotia – in august of 2007, when our son was only 17 months old. no, it wasn’t easy with a toddler in the car for so long – but it was absolutely worth every minute of whining, and it was also, we believe, an experience that stimulated him into verbal communication, because he really began picking up vocabulary and trying to use it around that time. what a joy it was, on our whale-watching boat trip, to hear him say, “whale!” as one of his first real words!

instead of giving a summary of the trip here, i’m going to give a brief description above each of the photos below – enjoy! we still dream of traveling here again soon…

since this was a road trip, we decided to tour as much of the almost-island province as we could, by staying each night in a different bed-and-breakfast. this was the first of our stops: a quaint B&B run by a wonderful couple named terry and gayle shaw, next to their antique house in port greville. they were SO understanding, despite this having been their first time allowing a young child to stay in the house – and having said child break a glass in the bathroom within an hour of settling in!

terry and gayle recommended to us a visit to cape chignecto provincial park; we didn’t have too much time, as we had to drive all the way to antigonish past the middle of the province, but we did want to see parts of the glooscap trail, one of the province’s eleven scenic travelways. this picture was taken from a lookout over the bay of fundy – i can’t remember what this spot was called!

here are my husband and son on red rocks beach at cape chignecto park:

when we got to antigonish that night, it took some time to find the B&B we had booked: antigonish harbor pat’s bed and breakfast. but when we found it, in pat’s driveway we passed by this incredible view of the near-full moon rising over an inlet of the harbor. so we hastily threw our bags in the room, then brought out some folding chairs and sat out on a green lawn under the night sky, experimenting with the 70-200 zoom lens and the moon:

our drive the following day took us into cape breton island, my absolute favorite part of the trip – not the least because of the island’s celtic influences! here we pulled over on a drive to mabou harbor and beach, just because the green was so green, the blue so blue and the midday light so gorgeous…

at mabou harbor you enter the beach area by a high cliff that gives you a gorgeous view of the curving, hilly shoreline; here the water was clear and warm. it was a perfect beach in so many ways, and one of the first times our son overcame his fear of the water: he got so upset when we had to leave!

one of the most beautiful features of the province at that time of year were the late-summer wildflower fields: everywhere we went along the drive, there were either enchanting views of lush green riverbanks and flowing waters, or wide meadows sprinkled with gold and white and purple…

in cape breton island, we spent two nights near baddeck at the an seanne mhanse B&B, run by a young couple in a sweet old house with a cat. this is the lovely lawn that opens up to the side of the house:

on our way into cape breton island, we stopped in the town of judique to visit the celtic music interpretive centre there; the following day, our full day on the island, we visited the gaelic college of celtic arts and crafts. here is musa running around in one of the musical history displays there…

the rest of that day was devoted to driving up and around the cabot trail, through the cape breton highlands national park. here is a shot from one of the many stops we made along the increasingly rocky, dramatic shoreline:

sometimes the trail took us right along that shoreline; other times it wove up, down and between these sublime green mountains and valleys. so much of this landscape really did remind me of scotland, and it made so much intuitive sense to me that scottish culture rooted itself so deeply in this place…

we made many stops along the way, but the highlight of the day was certainly our boat ride with “fiddlin’ whale tours,” on which the first whale sighting is supposed to be accompanied by local fiddle music. it took almost an hour for that first sighting, but after that they surrounded us for some time… meanwhile, though, our son was impatient with our restriction of his ability to run around the boat as he pleased!

the tail shot above was my pride for the day, but between my husband and i, we took hundreds of pictures of the whales around us, trying to get the best shots we could:

the following day we drove out of cape breton island; this was our first encounter with grey, wet weather on the trip. didn’t make the scenery one whit less lovely:

that was our last full day in nova scotia; after a tour of halifax, we drove to our last B&B, the unique Hammock Inn the Woods, complete with shabby-chic decor, free 7 a.m. yoga classes, two gorgeous, good-natured dogs and a gourmet organicky breakfast. after we left the B&B we drove along the lighthouse route, as it’s known, and stopped at a few waterside overlooks. this shoreline, on the southwest of the province and facing the mainland, is radically different from the atlantic-pounded cape breton island shoreline: mild waters, silver under our cloudy sky, and flat, pebbly beaches looking out to the lighthouses. here are some of the waterworn pebbles!

and with the clouds breaking up, we saw some rainwashed blue as well…

and what kind of trip would this have been without a shot of some of the wild blueberries of regional fame? (this one with the long lens!)

we took the ferry that evening from yarmouth to get back to maine and start the long drive home. chugging westward across the ocean we had a spectacular view (however window-smudged!) of a magnificent sunset: the perfect ending to a very nearly perfect trip…

great falls with musa

beautyis — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 18:13:01 +0000

i first started visiting great falls park in great falls, va regularly in the winter of 2002 – i would go every weekend to hike by myself, and before they put up the fences around the riverside rocks i would go clambering over the rocks to water’s edge, fascinated even in the winter weather by blue snow shelves, clear stalagmites of ice and other things i could only see then and there. in hot, dry weather i used to rock-hop nearly to the middle of the river above the falls and sit with my journal or camera and do what i did best…
so even though it’s a little more of a drive now, i have taken musa out there a couple of times. monday was unseasonably warm, so we met with a friend for a playdate there – unfortunately we got there just as the warmth was waning, and the snowmelt-mud and chilling air made it less fun than it should have been! still, i knocked off a few pictures, and here they are with yet another iteration of my watermark efforts… enjoy!

hiking in the catoctins

beautyis — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 04:32:08 +0000

had a great weekend with the camera jan. 10-11; on saturday we were marching in washington, d.c., and on sunday – despite the cold – we went for a hike up in thurmont, MD, in catoctin mountain national park. it’s a short hike to chimney rock and one i’ve done three or four times now, but this time – it being a very cold sunday – we saw only one other hiker the whole time we were there. the first part of the hike is steep, and at that level we saw ice thinly coating rocks and fallen tree boles, but once we got to the more level part of the trail, higher up, there was ice everywhere – outlining every tree branch and twig, crunching underfoot in the thick blanket of fallen leaves – and if you stood in silence for just a moment you could hear the tremendous, muted music of creaking, cracking ice everywhere around you, in the high waving treetops and the chill stillness closer to ground. it was SO worth the cold – raheela said it felt like walking to hogsmeade :) – and even musa enjoyed himself (particularly since he was being carried 90 percent of the time!).

so here are some of my favorites from the hike! after this post… YES i’m taking the camera to DC for whatever i can catch of the inaugural crowds on tuesday!! i can’t wait!

a (cold) day at the beach!

beautyis — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 05:14:26 +0000

or a weekend, actually… we stayed overnight in ocean city by the graciousness of our host for saturday’s vendor holiday party through my husband’s job. so basically that meant my husband hobnobbed with his colleagues while i chased our son around the hotel… taking pictures of him, of course!
our hotel room on the 15th floor looked partially eastward so i was able to snap some shots of the sunrise, and later on we went out to the city’s near-deserted boardwalk in the bright, biting cold air (“i don’t want to be outside. i want to be inside,” my son said.
everything here is with the 50 mm 1.8, of course (except for the water close-ups; those are from the 70-200 4-5.6 sigma i have)… it’s giving me wonderful practice in shooting in manual exposure mode again, as well as forcing me to be more creative with composition since i can’t zoom in or out. o, how i long for the 28-75 sigma lens i have on my list… oh, and the full-frame 5D that would give me the width i would have loved to have for some of these shots…!
someday, soon…

first snow of the season!

beautyis — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:08:17 +0000

just a quick picture! i couldn’t resist trying out the narrow planes of focus of the 50 mm 1.8 on the snowfall…

new lens! canon 50 mm 1.8

beautyis — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 05:30:32 +0000

you know… i don’t think i’m going to be able to blog all three remaining weddings before i start blogging regularly. i’ve done so many exciting things in the past couple of weeks – the bridal walk in frederick, a fantastic desi formal shoot with one of my best friends and her husband, dressed up in their wedding outfits of five years ago, and today i got to try out my brand new (well, used) lens at my favorite park in the world – Great Falls VA – with my favorite subject – you know who!!
this lens is my settle-for wish-for the 50 mm 1.4 lens, but it still does amazing things at an aperture of 1.8, for someone who normally can’t go under 4.0 or so zoomed up close. here are three of my favorite shots from the day: my son looking at a squirrel in the trees, autumn leaves at the park, and my nephew POSING – he’s hilarious! i’m trying to take a picture of my son, who doesn’t pay me any attention in the least and most certainly does not hold still while i’m trying to focus, and my nephew comes up and says, “me too! me too!” and poses and holds beautifully still for me, looking right into the camera with those gorgeous eyes mashallah…

so, my work on the website is coming along! i’m getting friends to look at it – thank you, if you are one of them! – all my slideshows are up; in fact, i am probably going to cut them down a bit, and i just need to figure out how i’m going to present my contact information and then i’m public, inshallah!
for now, i’ll try to blog the past two bridal shoots as soon as i get a chance. but i really wanted to share these pictures… so excited about the new lens!