The Munchkin's Notebook

Mount Vernon Yesterday I went to Mount Vernon with my brother and his girlfriend.  It was a beautiful sunny day and they were holding a Colonial Fair on the grounds.  There were several vendors showing traditional handmade crafts and several re-actors roaming the grounds.  We also watched the changing of the guards at George Washington’s tomb, which is done by re-actors.  I got several nice shots of the re-actors, however pictures are not allowed within the mansion.  I shot most of the using an ISO 200 on aperture priority.  You can see all the photos from the day here . 

Living History Live Fire Demonstration Yesterday my husband and I went to Fort Washington National Park , on the Maryland side of the Potomac River.   The original fort was built in the early 18 th century and was part of the overall defense of the area, but was burnt down during the War of 1812.  A new fort was built to protect Washington DC and the east coast after the War of 1812, which is the fort seen today. The fort was used in one form or another from 1872 through its deactivation in 1946 when it was turned over to the National Park system for preservation. This is a very well persevered historical structure and you can see they may upgrades the fort went through during its service life. Plus they do live fire demonstrations once a month in the spring and summer. Old Drawbridge Wheel I like this park, and the fort itself provides several unique photo opportunities, one just has to be willing to explore interesting vantage points.  Though some...

Rubber Duck in Balloon Never start a conversation with your husband with the sentence, “Tomorrow can you please lube up some rubber ducks for me and put them in balloons?” He will give you a very strange look then ask why. To which my response was, “so I can fill the balloons with water then drop them in the bathtub and take pictures of the resulting splash.”   Initial Burst (no rubber duck) I took my lesson learned from the last I did the rubber duck drop photos and improved upon it. This time placed a splash screen in the bathroom to collect and drain the water back into the bathtub.  The splash screen was a clear shower curtain hung slightly below the camera and a couple inches out from the bathtub with the bottom of the shower curtain in the bathtub.  This work very well. There was no big mess in the bathroom and I did not have to wear a bathing suit since it contained all the water.  For this shoot the camera was mounted on a tripod looking down...

The set up What does one do with water balloons, rubber ducks and lubricant? In my case you attempt to make photographic art .  I set up Plexiglas table in my bathtub (the bathroom works great when you don’t have a studio) and dropped water balloons onto it.  The rig consisted of two tripod stands, wood platforms, a piece of Plexiglas attached between the two, tin foil to act as a reflector and white back drop taped to the wall.  To guarantee the balloons would break a thumb tack was taped to the Plexiglas. The camera was pre-focused and set to use burst mode. I used an f/7.5 aperture, 1/650s shutter, and an ISO of 800 with an external flash. I tried using a timer but that didn't work well, the best  results I got were utilizing a shutter release. I hit and held the shutter when I released the balloon and released once the balloon hit.  I got some “ok” shots but I need to refine the setup further.  I used water balloons with and without colored water a...

On Tuesday, July 30, 2013 SmugMug change the underlying code that supports the site. This change included an updated interface, look and feel to all the webpages they support. The change updated the site pages to make them look sleeker and modern similar to what Flicker and 500px did, but way better. (I really blame Apple for this sleek and modern look everyone is going too.) Thankfully they just didn’t do a mass change overnight to everyone’s photo site but gave people time to get used to the changes and update their sites accordingly.  Since Wednesday I have been working with the new interface and bring my site up to date to make it look sleek and modern. It has the same basic feel as the old site it just looks new and shiny.  Today was big unveil day for my site.  It still may need some minor tweaks but it looks good and does what I want for the most part.  So please take a look at the new site (same web address http://munchkinphotos.smugmug.com/ ) and let m...

To shoot lightning you either have to have a whole lot of it or extremely lucky. Last night we had a fair amount of lightning (no thunder) and I must have had luck on my side because I got a decent number of shots.   I shot approximately 95 frames and got 16 good shots, while this isn't a great ratio for normal shots, for lightning it is pretty good.  I was shooting out my window with a Canon T4i with an 18 – 200mm lens mounted on a gorilla pod. The camera was set at an ISO 200 and I alternated between an aperture of f/9 and f/11 with a shutter speed between 5 – 15 seconds. It appeared that the sweet spot was f/9 at 6 seconds.  However there was still a lot of luck involved capturing lightning bolts. 

Every year there are several sunflower fields planted at McKee-Besher Wildlife Management Area , in Poolesville, MD. The reached peak bloom on July 13 and should be at peak for the next two weeks.  So every year photographers and everyone else travels to the area to see around 48 acres of sunflowers.  Since I have been hearing about these field for the past couple years, I decided it was time to go and see them for myself.   So I got up around 6:30 AM to make the hour drive over to Maryland to see the sunflowers. It was pretty easy to find the first set of fields because the parking lot was full, and there were lots of people loading and unloading camera, tri-pods and ladders. They use the ladders to be able to shoot down onto the fields, though the sunflowers are only about 3 – 5 feet tall depending on the field. I passed up this first area and headed further down River Road to Sycamore Landing Road where the other field was located.  I parked at the pa...