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Early Morning Cherry Blossom Photowalk 2010

Time to prove how much you love photography.

Last year local photog Shawn Duffy organized this walk and it turned out to be a great success. This year he’s allowing Photowalk DC to organize it. For some examples of the kind of shots available you can view last year’s event at Shawn’s Early Morning Cherry Blossom Photowalk/ Flickr group and my event wrap-up post.

PhotoWalk Details

Date:	Saturday, April 10, 2010
Time:	5:30am – 9:30am
Location:	1526 Maine Ave, Washington DC

We’ll meet up at 5:30 am in the parking lot of the Tidal Basin Boat House. From there we can find our spots, set up our tripods, share a cup of coffee and some conversation while waiting for sunrise (which happens at 6:25).

From our experience last year the crowds will start appearing around 7:00. After the early morning sun fades we can then break up in smaller groups and take a walk around the Tidal Basin to shoot different perspectives of the cherry trees.

Register

You can register on the Facebook event page or leave a comment here.

Bloom Dates

Bloom Watch released the following information AFTER we set our date.

Average Peak Bloom Date: April 4
2010 Peak Bloom Date Forecast: April 3 through April 8
2010 Blooming Period: March 31 through April 11

We’ve decided to keep our date instead of moving it up one week so that we do not conflict with Easter Sunday.   There should be plenty of blooms left on the branches for our outing.  Who knows, with our crazy weather this year we may see another crazy cold front which may delay the blooms for us.

If you would like to join in a group the previous weekend at the start of peak blooms, the Washington Photography Meetup Group is hosting the Photowalk: Cherry Blossoms @ night on April 3rd.

I’m looking forward to seeing shots from both events.

Tags: cherry blossom, Jefferson Memorial, photowalk, photowalk dc, Potomac River, tidal basin, washington dc

Moonlight over the Potomac

Sherri and I went to see Avatar in 3-d at an IMAX theater in Alexandria only to find that it was sold out until Monday.  We ended up in Old Town playing dominos at Starbucks.  Before we left we braved the frigid temps to take a peek at the waterfront.  This moonlight was coming from this year’s Blue Moon.

This was taken hand held with a 50mm 1.4 lens.  Processed on my new ASUS Eee netbook in Lightroom.  I do not have all my plugins and add-ons loaded yet so there was no noise reduction ran against this image.

Tags: Alexandria, blue moon, boats, moonlight, night, Potomac River, Virginia, water

Great Walk at Great Falls

Over 25 photographers from Gainesville to Baltimore gathered in the early morning hours for a photowalk at the Cheasapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park (aka Great Falls on the Maryland side) Saturday morning. I believe we even had a couple show up on the Virginia side as well (sorry George, next time I’ll do better at getting the proper directions out).

Along with many of the normal cast of characters from the Photowalk DC Facebook group we had a number of new faces  (we even had our first canine photowalker).  Though I’m glad to see everyone at these events I was especially happy to see Rob Jones and Mike Palmer.  Mike probably only showed up to get me off his back, I’ve been hounding him for the past two weeks to come out .

Unfortunately for me I decided to try my hand at the Billy Goat trail to try and catch up with some of our group.  The name is extremely applicable for this trail.  I spent over an hour climbing over and around rocks of all sizes with not a lot of photography to show for it.  I almost had my own great fall off a 40 foot cliff.  Not only that but I never caught up with the group so I spent too much time not being a good walk leader.

Here’s a sampling of some of the shots I took.  Be sure and check out our Photowalk DC Flickr group to see everyone else’s shots.

Tags: good company, good conversation, Great Falls, Maryland, Nature, outdoors, photowalk, photowalk dc, Potomac River

Rosslyn Skyline

This was an attempt to recreate a shot from a photowalk earlier this year.  Using the lessons I learned from that photowalk and since I think this one turned out better.

Tags: hdr, night photography, Potomac River, Rosslyn, Virginia

PaW 2009 Week 15 – Jetskiing the Potomac

Camera specs; Canon EOS Rebel XS fitted with a Canon EF-S 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM lens, f11 @ 1/30 a second, ISO 200 at 56mm, hand held.

Taken during a river cruise on the Potomac River.

Tags: Digital Photography, jetski, PAW 2009, photo a week, photography project, Potomac River, washington dc