Zoo Lights '13

During the holiday season, the National Zoo organizes the lighting display, Zoo Lights.  I photographed the display previously in 2011 (see posting Zoo Lights '11). Last month, I returned to the National Zoo to recapture event. Like in 2011, my objective was not just to capture the lights themselves. The tools used to make the following exposures include my D7000 (with a variety of lenses), my X100, my SB600 speed light flash and a tripod.

Waiting...

The L2 Metro Bus, Northbound

The L2 Metro Bus, Southbound

Welcome to Zoo Lights!

The Couple (1)

The Couple (2)

The Couple (3)

Welcome to Zoo Lights!

The Directory

Viewing the Directory

Crossing

Making a Penny

Posing with Panda

Pandas For Sale

The Attempt 

Drummers Circle with my FE

Here are a few more shots taken using Kodak Tri-X 400 B&W film with my Nikon FE last Sunday at Drummers Circle. They were taken with 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm lenses. There were hits and misses (difficulty in clearly capturing the "I love Mom" pin in the photo from my previous post for example). Shooting with film does encourage you to think more about the image you want to capture and helps encourage better shot displine.

Mother's Day at Drummers Circle

There is a park in DC where people get together every Sunday during the warm seasons to play drums and dance. I went to this park on Sunday which was Mother's Day in the United States. This photo was shot with my dad's 30 year old Nikon FE that he gave me a few years ago. I rarely shot with film, but I had a role of Kodak Tri-X 400 speed black and white film that I needed to use up. Shooting with the FE can be challenging but fun. It doesn't have those automatic features on modern cameras. You have to manualy advance the film with every shot and of course you have to manual focus. However, the camera does have a larger and brighter viewfinder compared to my modern D7000. As a result. you feel closer to the subject when you shoot with the camera.

I used a 50mm lens to capture this photo. This leads me to mention another aspect that I like about shooting with my FE. A 50mm lens is a 50mm lens and not 75mm lens as it is on my D7000 due to the smaller size of this camera's sensor.

A Warm Winter's Afternoon at Dupont

A few weeks ago I spent my Sunday afternoon at Dupont Circle. The weather was nice for March in DC, in the high 60s (19-20C). I wanted to focus on capturing life as it is. I think the humanistic element is one of the most interesting in photography. I converted most of these photos to black and white using the yellow filter in Lightroom.