The Munchkin's Notebook

I recently had the pleasure of working with J-Doll Cosplay and Nightengale Cosplay on a Hamilton inspired photo shoot.  They had period specific outfits so we needed a period specific location; however, there are very few if any revolutionary war forts still standing in northern Virginia.  My next best option was Fort Ward , which is a Civil War era fort, located in Alexandria, VA.  The fort still has the earthen work structures and replica cannons thus worked well for this shoot. For this shoot I used my standard set up of Canon 70D, 18-200mm lens, two 430EX-IIIRT speed lights (one acted as a trigger), and one light stand. I did not use an umbrella since I had to compete with the sun, even though it was a cloudy overcast day.  I also had my trusty assistant, i.e. my husband, who helped with getting the light into position and spraying the instant atmosphere for the smoke effect in some of the photos.   To get this shot, I had the cosplayers stand...

Photo Stop Map I have been back from Scotland for two weeks now and have finally finished editing all my photos from the trip.  (You can see all the photos here .) Overall, I took 1,748 photos spread across our two week trip, which included 35 photo stops spread amongst the seven towns we stayed in. (see map). Of those 1,748 photos, I edited 736 photos, which is approximately 42 percent.  Now that number could be slightly higher if I did not take/delete duplicates and if I did not take photos to stich into a panorama photo.  Of the 736 photos, I edited my ISO ranged between 100 – 800 ISO with 40 percent taken at 200 ISO.  My aperture varied between F3.5 and F20 with 36 percent of the photos taken at F9.  My shutter speed varied between 1/6 seconds and 1/2000 at the extremes with 12 percent of the photos taken at 1/320 seconds.  However, my shutter speed stayed mostly between 1/100 seconds to 1/800 seconds. Finally, my focal length varied between 18mm a...

We left the B&B around 9:00 AM to make the hour and half drive to Edinburgh to check into our last hotel before our flight home tomorrow.  Since the drive was only an hour and half, we were able to stop at Stirling Castle and the Kelpie sculpture.   The Kelpies (cell phone) Stirling Castle was nice. It was fairly large castle and definitely less crowded than Edinburgh castle. I liked the wood carvings they had and the grounds were nice.  We did not stay for the noon gun firing (large artillery), which was kicking off a D-Day memorial.  From there we headed to one of the things I really wanted to see, the Kelpie sculpture.  The sculpture is of two horse heads coming out of the water.   The horse heads are several stories tall and made of formed silvered metal around an interior scaffolding.  It was easily visible from the M9.  I thought it was an impressive sculpture.   From there it was on the hotel to drop off our bags,...

Sheep at Standing Stones of Stennis Today started out rainy and continued to be rainy the rest of the day.  We got a late start out of the last B&B because breakfast wasn’t served till 8:30 AM.  It was the same basic breakfast we have had at all but two B&Bs, I’m getting really tired of the options of eggs, bacon, sausage, black pudding, tomatoes, toast, and porridge.  I would like some variety, like waffles or pancakes, even though I’m not a big fan of pancakes.  But the trip is almost over, so when I get home I’m having toaster strudel for breakfast.   Originally the tour company wanted us to drive directly from Skye to Edinburgh which is about a six hour drive, we decided against this because the next day we would be spending eight hours on a plane.  So the drive was split up by adding a stop in Trossachs at a B&B along Loch Earn, which was only a 4 hour drive from where we were staying on Skye.  Since it was raining the whole d...