SDuffyPhotography.blog

Harper’s Ferry on Columbus Day

My girlfriend and I were both lucky enough to have Columbus Day off this year so we drove out to Harper’s Ferry, WV. I have always heard how beautiful the area was but I had never had the chance to visit. We arrived in Harper’s Ferry around 9:30 or 10am and took the shuttle bus from the visitor’s center into town. From there we walked across the river and hiked up the Maryland Heights trail to the top of the mountain overlooking the town. What a beautiful view! After hanging out up there for a little while, we hiked back down, grabbed a bite, and finished our little tour of the town. If you’re within driving distance of Harper’s Ferry, I would highly recommend a day trip to go see it. Especially this time of year! A few photos below:

Morning in Great Falls

As I mentioned last week, I did some family portraits in Great Falls National Park this weekend. Since the portraits were scheduled for 8:30am, I decided to get there as soon as the park opened at 7am so I could stroll around the trails a bit. It was gorgeous! There is hardly anyone else around and, when you’re walking through the trails, you practically trip over deer. It’s very peaceful… almost as if you’re peeking in on a world you’re not meant to see. A few of my photos below:

A stroll through Great Falls

Next weekend, I am doing a family portrait shoot for an old high school friend and her husband in Great Falls Park in Northern Virginia. Since I haven’t been there in a while, I decided to go check it out yesterday. I normally don’t do HDR photos of nature, particularly when the sky is clear blue. But, when I began processing the photos, I converted a couple single RAW photos to HDR and I was impressed with the results. I still don’t have a neutral density filter (I know, I know… BAD photographer) so, for many of the waterfall shots, I dropped the ISO down to 50 and decreased the aperture down to f/32 on my 70-200mm, f/2.8 lens to get the motion blur of some of the falls. I think it worked out pretty well despite the sun shining brightly. Here are a few of the shots from yesterday:

Saturday in Occoquan

This past Saturday, my father, stepmother, and grandfather came to town to go to the Occoquan Arts Festival. We drove down and met them in the afternoon, though we didn’t stay for very long. Despite that, I still managed to take a few photos…

Pittsburgh: Smart City… and me!

A little over a year ago, Cherbo Publishing contacted me about a photo of mine they had seen on Flickr. They were publishing a book about Pittsburgh, called Pittsburgh: Smart City, and wanted to know if they could use my photo in their book. That photo is below:

Click the image for a larger version…

Down the Mon'

We worked out a licensing deal, I sent them the photo, and they sent me a check. In the ensuing months, I almost totally forgot about the book. Until a few days ago when I decided to look it up. Well, my copy arrived today…

Pittsburgh: Smart City

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Gettysburg Photos up!

I finally finished processing the photos from Sunday’s photowalk in Gettysburg. After the official photowalk, my girlfriend and I stopped by a one of the more tourist-y areas to take a few more photos. A few of my favorites from the day below:

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Last Train to Gettysburg

Last Train to Gettysburg

Just thought I’d give everyone a peek at one of the shots from today’s photowalk in Gettysburg, PA. Thanks to Andy for organizing the event!

I got a late start editing photos this evening due to some other errands I had to do after the walk… I’ll be editing and uploading the rest tomorrow evening. In the meantime, you can see everyone else’s photos from the day here.

Removing ghosts in HDR photos

One of the questions I get most often is:

“How do you get HDR photos with no ghosts in them? Are you making the HDR from a single RAW?”

The answer to the second question is No. 99% of the time, I use multiple exposures for my HDR photos. The problem is, when taking multiple exposures, not everything in the frame is going to stay perfectly still for all three exposures. This usually happens when you’re doing an HDR photo of a scene with people in it. When you merge the three photos together, you’ll often see something like the following:

Click for a larger version…

If you look at the bottom of the photo, you’ll see “ghosts”. I layered three images together, and since people were moving while I was taking the three photos, the images of the people aren’t very pleasing:

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First Worldwide Photowalk in the books!

Most of you know that Saturday was the first Worldwide Photowalk. Over 240 cities around the world participated. Chances are, there was one close to you!

Here in the DC area, we had two, both of which were led by Jeff Revell of PhotoWalkPro. Many thanks to Jeff for organizing such a great day of photography for all of us!

You can read more about the day at PhotoWalkPro, Photo Notes, or ScottKelby.com.

In the meantime, I thought I’d share a few of my images from Saturday:

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Photos from Friday Night’s Photowalk

As many of you know, I participated in two great photowalks this past weekend. I have finally finished processing the photos from Friday night’s photowalk along the National Mall. I’ve included a few of my favorites below:

Overall, more than 50 local photographers showed up. You might recall that this photowalk was organized by Trevor from Photowalking.org who happened to be in town with his wife on vacation.

Thanks for organizing this Trevor! I hope you had a great time in DC!