mbabischkin

Just a slow shutter for the water - and those rapids were moving VERY fast so I didn't need to go too slow....

That's a heck of a lot cheaper than the one from Swift...

BTW - is there a photo club in the DC area? Back in Ohio I joined the Cleveland Photographic Society which got me some incredible access to places I wouldn't normally have been able to shoot at. Is there a similar group here?

It was a challenging shot and I was experimenting with it... I took that shot from a little over 1/4 mile away and cropped it down to tighten the focus on the aircraft. What I had been going for when I took the shot (and converted it) was a newspaperish/photojournalistic look if that makes any sense. As I was playing with the conversions I ended up with this... No HDR there. That was a single exposure. What I did was a bit of masking so I could brighten up and boost the saturation of the rocks only.

Yikes! That's expensive! Cravenspeed and I believe Outmotoring have cheaper options. I've got the Craven one on my Countryman which will probably be at MINI of Montgomery on Saturday if you want to check it out. My experience with the front tag laws is that it depends on the cop... The last time I lived in VA I went 3 years without a front tag with no problems - including picking up a speeding ticket in Centreville from a Fairfax County motor officer who could see clearly that I didn't have a front tag and never mentioned it... My car's registered in OH now, and there I went 4 years without the front tag including parking tail in across the street from a police station weekly without any problems... Two months ago an officer in a neighboring town was looking for reasons to stop people and nabbed me...:banghead:

Sadly it's been a few months since I've picked up my camera, hopefully in the next few days I'll go shooting again... Here's a few from last year... The Whirlpool Rapids on the Niagara River: The Maid of The Mist USMC V-22 Ospreys at Burke Lakefront Airport in Cleveland Mackinaw Island:

All three are gorgeous scenes, but they all seem a bit overexposed to me. I think I would darken them up a bit, possibly just targeting the highlights. To me, picture 3's hot spot in the upper right is big enough to be distracting. I think I'd crop picture #1 down a bit tighter. The girl in the background in the center is out of focus while the branches in the foreground are in focus. The problem is that my eyes keep getting drawn to her... By cropping it in you can move her a bit lower in the frame and possibly not draw the eye to it. What I wouldn't do is sharpen it at all... The softer focus will preserve the ethereal lighting... #2 is crooked... And now that I've posted that, I'll also add that I'm just an untrained enthusiast myself and hardly a great photographer... Those suggestions are what I would do if they were my photos, but it doesn't mean that those changes are right or even would achieve what you were trying to achieve when you took the picture...

It's possible... But right now we just don't know. The jobs that I applied for in VA and Baltimore were all filled. There's a position in DC left - although I didn't apply for that one. All we know for sure right now is that there is no news...

Yeah about that... We're literally waiting for a phone call telling us where we're headed this summer. We've been waiting since New Years and it still hasn't come... The waiting and the lack of information has been difficult on us. In theory we should know something by the end of this month at the latest... Then again in theory Communism is a good idea too...

Since it's doubtful I'll be able to make it to a Breakfast for a while (the 42 hour drive is a killer) could you post the monthly photo contest topic on the forums? Thanks!

What size images are you looking for? I can work on pictures of a Virginia MINI in California... I haven't re-registered the MINI out here (and won't ever do it. CA registration is INSANE!)

Saw a Nightfire Red/Silver Clubman parked on Petaluma Blvd South by Peets this morning... Sadly it didn't belong to anybody from DC...