Man's Best Friend

I was at Fort Reno Park this evening taking photos. I saw a black poodle dog a few feet away. I decided to lean down to see if the dog would approach me. Et voila le chien m'a approché. Pour moi, les Westies seront toujours les chiens les plus mignons dans le monde. Ce chien était quand meme vraiment gentil avec moi. Il n'a pas bougé de place pendant que je le prenais en photo. C'est comme il a su que j'avais un appareil photo et que je voulais le prendre en photo. Je l'ai caressé un peu avant bien sur :). Voici sont quelques photos que j'ai pris de ce chien super sympa.

Farmers Markets : c'est ce que j'aime de l'été

In my last posting, I noted the end of summer and the arrival of fall. One of the aspects that I like most about summer, the weekly farmers markets will end during the fall season. I have gotten a certain pleasure in waking up on a warm summer morning and going to my local farmers market. I will miss buying my fruits and vegetables from my market near me as I have been able to cook some new and different meals with them. I guess this is the first year that I went out of the way buying vegetables that I didn't buy that much before.

This Saturday morning, I decided to bring my camera to the farmers market with me. These photos are from two different farmers markets in my area that I went to yesterday. All these photos were shot with my 50mm

Un stand préféré de moi à f1.2 - Ils sont des bons prix

 

Ah les baguettes - mais les baguettes de la France me manque!

 

Un chien qui attend à ce que son propitiatoire revienne du marché

A Rainy Fall Day

Well today is the first day of fall and its raining in DC. Most of the trees of my neighborhood still have yet to show their fall colors. There is one tree that has though and is probably the first in my neighborhood to do so. The fall color metamorphosis of the tree started around the end of august at the top of tree. Most of the leaves on the tree have changed color now and some are starting to fall off. I passed the tree today on my way to Starbucks (I am looking for work) and saw this leaf on the ground. I usually bring my camera with me (with my 50mm af-d f/1.8 because its light and compact) when I go out just in case I see something that I would like to photograph. So I shot this leaf as today is the first day of fall and it's raining!

Dance Around DC

Dance Around DC, a set on Flickr.

Last Sunday I attended another Millennium Stage concert at the Kennedy Center. The concert, Dance Around DC was presented by Dance/MetroDC. The concert featured performances from DCypher Dance, Brown McCauley Dance, Tehreema Mitha Dance Company and Flamenco. Each of the performances was filled with loads of energy from the dancers! It is this energy that draws me to photograph the dance concerts on Millennium. Freezing this energy is the pleasure that I take out of the photographing experience.

The first performance, Chaseology, preformed by DCypher Dance featured music by Ryan Leslie "Zodiac", Janet Jackson "I Get So Lonely Remix", Angie Stone "Wish I Didn't Miss You", and Toni Braxton "My Ring's Too Heavy".

I shot this performance with my 50mm mostly at f/1.8. The lighting was dim so I increased my ISO valued from 800 to 1600 (the max value of my camera) in order to freeze the fast movement of the dancers. I maintained this value for the rest of the concert.

ReSuitened" the following performance preformed by Brown McCauley Dance featured classical music by J.S. Bach: Allegro from Sonata in C major; BWV 1005 and Prelude from Cello Suite in C Major, BWV 1009. I shot this performance with my 85mm between the f/2.0-2.8 range. There was more ambient light in this performance so I had the opportunity to shoot with a faster shutter speed. The additional ambient light made this performance a little less difficult to shoot IMHO.

The third performance, Tillana Des Malhaar was performed by the Tehreema Mitha Dance Company. The dance of this particular performance known as the Tillana is a Indian classical style dance that has no storyline. I kept my 85mm lens on and shot this performance at mostly f/2.0.

For the forth performance, "Del Amanecer" preformed by Flamenco Apericio, I used both my 50mm and 85mm lenses. The movement of Flamenco style dance is quite fast. I definitely pushed the buffer on my D50 to its limits during this shoot. Of course, it probably didn't help that I was shooting in RAW either.

Like the first performance, the final, "Push Play", was preformed by DCypher Dance. This performance had quite a few participants so I decided to use my 35mm f/2. Like the first performance too, there was little ambient light. As a result, I used the aperture of f/2 for this shoot. At f/2, my 35mm can be a bit soft/ dreamy, (it gets better at f/2.5) but in this case, I wanted make sure that I had fast enough shutter speeds (at least 1/500 sec) to freeze the fast movement of the dancers.