Chinese New Year Parade

Every year there is a Chinese New Year Parade in DC’s China town; sadly, the parade is slowly deteriorating and becoming smaller and smaller. Also people are just not being courteous, they move out into the street in front of the parade marchers and the security isn’t keeping the parade watchers on the sidewalk. It is also becoming more and more difficult, to take pictures politely without having people with their phone and iPads jumping in front of me. So I think this was my last year photographing the Chinese New Year Parade.

I did get a few nice shots of the dragon dancers. I shot at ISO 200 at F10 with a 1/160s shutter. You can see all the parade pictures here.

Comments

2024 Year in Review and Looking Forward to 2025

This year felt a little off for me; I think it was because I was in a mental recovery mode. I finished my graduate program in June and immediately went on a week-long vacation to Palm Springs. I do not recommend Palm Springs in June; way too hot. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the graduate program mentally and physically exhausted me, which I think showed in some of my creative work. But being able to work with great people like Natalie Hanrion , Coralinx Cosplay , and Anastasia B kept me motivated. While I didn’t attend as many Cosplay Photo Shoot events as in the past, the ones I did attend were helpful in keeping the creativity flowing. I also took some time this year to reflect on a few things and will be making some changes for 2025. In 2024, I shot 6241 frames, which is a 30-percent decrease from last year. I edited 3187 frames, which is a 40-percent decrease from 2023. I think this year, I started focusing on being very min...

First Session of 2025 - Queen of Hearts

My first official shoot of 2025 was with Lady Cels on January 4 th , to shoot her Queen of Hearts cosplay based off the NoFlutter Design. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix Strobe 1 FJ400 Westcott Strobes 60-inch umbrella with sock 1 rectangular soft box 1 bell reflector grids 2 C-stands 1 Platypod Sandbags Backdrop stand Savage Primary Red Spyder Color Checker Card A-clamps Gold ring wedding altar pieces Playing cards Flowers Styrofoam block Scotch tape The set up The inspiration for this shoot was obviously the Queen of Hearts, but I took my set design cues from the original NoFlutter drawing. I wanted to create something similar to the swirls used in the background of the image, so I started looking at wrought iron garden fences and ended up on gold we...

Snow Session

On January 9 th , Washu Cosplay and I did a slightly impromptu snow session at Great Falls National Park. This was possible because of the passing of the Explorers Act which allows photography in a National Park with a model without a permit. Before you get too excited, the law limits equipment and the size of the party; you are allowed your camera, tripod, and handheld lighting equipment, and the group can be no more than 5 people, which includes the photographer, model, and assistants. So, there are no big lighting setups or big crews; for big shots, you will still need a permit. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 1 speed light 1 light stand The set up For this shoot I was mixing flash and natural light. In most cases, my model was partially backlighted by the sun. Thus, I u...

The Munchkin's Notebook

Search This Blog