The Munchkin's Notebook

On June 25 th, I had a date with a bunch of super heroes and villains down by the Old Town Alexandria waterfront; it was DC Cosplay Photo Shoots meet up.  The theme was super heroes and villains and there was a nice assortment of heroes from the Marvel and DC universes as well as some Sailor Moon characters, and a Power Ranger.  This shoot started at 7:00 AM to beat the heat of the day and have an area mostly devoid of people, since this was outside in a public location.  You could tell as it got later in the morning, especially when the meet up ended around 10:00AM, there were significantly more people, mostly heading out to go to brunch or walk the old town area.  For this shoot, I used my Canon 70D, my trusty 18 -200mm lens, a 430 EX –IIIRT speed light, radio trigger,  and a light stand.   I did have an umbrella with me, but because of the intensity of the sun, I shot without the umbrella so I would not have to push my flash as hard. Plu...

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...

Today we got a packed breakfast to go from the B&B so we could be out the door by 7:00 AM headed towards the “Fairy Pools.” The B&B does breakfast at 8:30 AM to 9:30 AM which would have been too late for us to get to the Fairy Pools and manage to get a parking spot.  Thus we asked the hotel to pack a to-go breakfast, I was surprised it didn’t come with a thermos of hot tea, instead we got juice boxes. The breakfast also included for each person a ham sandwich, a smoked salmon sandwich, yogurt, a piece of fruit, and candy.  It was a decent to-go breakfast. Near End of  Fairy Pool Path (cell phone) On to the fairy pools; we got to the fairy pools around 7:30 AM and hiked to and from the pools before eating our packed breakfast.  The hike is a out and back trail along a mountain highland stream that has several small waterfalls and pools. Once you hit the end of the trail there is a sign that says this is the end of the fairy pool trail, beyond this p...

Today we left Ullapool after a late breakfast, usually we have breakfast earlier than 8:00AM but that was when they started serving breakfast.  That meant I got to sleep in till 7:00AM.  After breakfast we loaded up the car for the three hour drive down to Portree in Skye making a couple photo stops along the way. View of Castle Strome (Cell Phone) We took the more direct route down to Skye, rather than the scenic route so the drive only took about 2 hours. Our first photo stop was along A890 at an overlook that had a view of Castle Strome over Loch Carron.  Our second photo stop was at Eilean Donan castle, where it was raining.  I was glad I had a raincoat and water resistant pants. That castle required tickets to go into but had a visitor center and gift shop that did not require tickets.  We took some photos from the outside and got some items at the gift shop.  I got a large bead charm made from heather (the flower).  From there we crossed...