Syracusian Evening

We joined Syracuse Photographers for a Meetup and wandered around downtown one evening. We wandered from the Delavan center through Armory Square, over to Columbus Circle and back to the Armory Square area.

 

Pretty cool old gate at Armory Square. This made some great portraits of the girls. 

This is the top of the courthouse. The copper roof is already developing a patina. They just put the roof on a few months ago. We topped off the night with coffee from Starbucks and an ice cream cone from our little ice cream shop near home.

DOE NE WAP Conference

I was the official photographer for the Department of Energy North East Weatherization Assistance Program. Clicked off a 1000+ frames on four days! The hotel even wanted them for their marketing! Pretty cool stuff for a part-time photographer.

The picture is Thursday morning sunrise. Unfortunately, there's an exetremely complicated line of ownership on the conference pics. I might be able to post a few more and definitely post a link when we get them on the NYSWDA website.

Shoot for the moon!

My company just bought a new Nikon 90. I got to bring it home over the weekend and on Friday night just an hour before the full moon (12:01 AM Sat) I was out in the back yard with a hand-held D90 and 18-105mm VR kit lens. Here's the result:

Looks pretty good, for winging the settings. Here they are:

What do we know? Some cameras have great high ISO characteristics and we should use them. Shooting the moon is hard, because the exposure is all about the balance of the dark sky and the bright moon. Only 26 more days till the next full moon, so get ready to shoot the moon.

Digicam Portraits

 

Here's a little shot taken outside with no flash. If the shadows under the face are little dark and you lose detail, theirs a quick trick to fix it. Flip the camera upside down and turn on the flash. Here's the result:

It's a little more washed out than I would like, but I brought out the detail hidden in the shadows. This trick is very effective inside with overhead lighting. If I had more time, I would have turned the flash down and reshot it. I had about 5 minutes to get head shots of two people.
There you go, a quick tip to get better pictures.

What is it winners!

Thanks to all who participated in our contest. I hope that you had fun. I leave you with this parting shot. The answer will be at the very end of the post.
I'll be getting the gift certificates out to our winners this coming week. If you made the list 3 times that's one gift certificate.

No one won the grand prize of a portrait session. Here's our winners:

Day	Winner
1	Zach Rall
2	Brenda Courtright
3	Chris Goldman
4	mightyhunter1
5	Wendy Cathcart
6	Brenda Courtright
7	Jeffery Quance
8	WendyCathcart
9	Chris Goldman
10	Brenda Courtright
11	Brenda Courtright
12	Brenda Courtright
13	Brenda Courtright
14	Brenda Courtright
15	Chris Goldman
16	Chris Goldman
17	Chris Goldman
18	Brenda Courtright
19	Wendy Cathcart
20	Chris Goldman
21
22
23
24	Brenda Courtright
25	Kathie Baldwin
26	Brenda Courtright
27	Pete Knodel
28	Kathie Baldwin
29	Goof
30	Brenda Courtright

Brenda won 3 $10 gift certificates, Chris won 2 $10 gift certificates and Wendy rounded out the month for one gift certificate, catching 3 days in a row at the end of the contest.


If you couldn't figure out what our parting shot is, it is a lily stamen.