January 23, 2012
In recognition of Martin Luther King Day last Monday, Aida and I joined the many people visiting the new MLK memorial just off Washington DC’s Tidal Basin. The sharp wind and cold temperatures didn’t seem to hold back the thousands of visitors who now have a place to celebrate his great life and keep his memory alive for countless years ahead.
Reflecting Dr. King’s extraordinary power and inspired by a famous line from his legendary “I Have a Dream” speech (“Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope”), the memorial features a 30-foot statue, two pieces of granite that represent the struggles he endured, and a crescent-shaped marble wall inscribed with quotations from his sermons and addresses. Like the Tidal Basin, the memorial’s perimeter will be lined with cherry blossom trees, with their annual peak blooming period coinciding with the anniversary of King’s assassination, April 4th.
As we tried to keep warm walking past smiling faces bundled in hats and scarves, we were lucky to catch young members of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity from the University of Maryland, performing their signature stepping dance. The MLK Memorial was made possible largely due to the great efforts of the fraternity that Martin Luther King Jr. once belonged to when attending Boston University.
And only the second outing with my new Panasonic GX1 micro four-thirds camera, I once more enjoyed not lugging around the much larger DSLR while still capturing excellent image quality. Like in NYC, I used the mix of Olympus and Panasonic lenses and once again, preferred the Olympus 12mm, notably for its manual focus used during video recording. As the sun peaked through the clouds and started to set, a beautiful warm light illuminated the memorial and created a dreamlike setting in which to shoot. The bouncing highlights and settling shadows on the marble wall were magnificent and the birds circling overhead brought an added sense of life to the towering statue of this larger than life man.
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Tags: cherry blossom, DC, four-thirds, GX1, Martin Luther King, memorial, micro, MLK, Panasonic, stone, Tidal Basin, Washington
Posted in Street, Travel |
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November 7, 2011
Wow, what a beautiful day today! Hope everyone’s enjoying the last days of autumn. It was great fun hiking through our nearby Rock Creek Park this afternoon and the high-noon light surprisingly even treated me right. 
Enjoy some of the photos!
Tags: autumn, color, DC, fall, foliage, national, orange, park, parkway, peak, red, Rock Creek, tree, Washington
Posted in Landscape / Nature |
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September 26, 2011
With great excitement I returned to Darrell Dean’s Antiques in Washington, DC’s Georgetown neighborhood for Fashion Night Out 2011. And while last year saw great success with international designer Tsyndyma Kroujilov, FNO 2011 undoubtedly raised the stakes with its great variety of antique fashion brought in from up & down the east coast. The production team of renaissance man & event coordinator Mike Wong, hairdresser & stylist Mia Jackson & the staff of Blake & Co Hair Spa, numerous local & lovely models*, and Darrell Dean himself, created well composed vignettes for each model taking pose in the shop’s two Wisconsin Street bay windows. The result was stunned and delighted passerby’s in the street on this rainy Thursday evening. Astonished exclamations of “wow, is she real?! noooo, can’t be!” could be heard on a regular basis… a wonderful testament to each model’s dedication to her part.
*Models included: Victoria Chang, Crystal Day, India Franklin, Victoria Kurzweg, Sophia Manthei, Sara Moline, and Jordan Straker
Photographically… the dramatic window lighting and brilliant reflections allowed incorporation of the street audience, creating intriguing multi-layered images within single frames. Post production was limited to minor dodging and burning and b+w conversions.
Many thanks to all involved, it was a pleasure working with you!
For additional images and to purchase prints, please visit our proofing website.
Tags: antique, Darrell Dean, DC, display, fashion, Georgetown, model, night out, Portrait, Washington, window
Posted in Documentary, Fashion, Portrait |
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September 10, 2011
After a week of intense rain came a sky of captivating clouds. One formation was more brilliant than the last and in the blink of an eye, it was reformed as another. Each image is truly a second of time.
Tags: bird, cloud, DC, form, landscape, nature, plane, sky, storm, sunset, Washington
Posted in Landscape / Nature |
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