SDuffyPhotography.blog

A Look Back - Summer 2007

August 13th, 2008 | 2 Comments | Posted in My Photos

One of the purposes of this blog was to help me track my progress in photography and share it with anyone that was interested. I started posting posts that would revisit photos I took one year ago every month, but with all the travel I’ve done lately, I haven’t posted one of these since March.

So, instead of boring you to tears with five posts in a row, I am compiling some of my favorite shots from the summer of 2007 below.

April 2007

April wasn’t much of a photo month for me but I did take a trip to my hometown of Pittsburgh at the end of the month where I took some photos in the wonderful Strip District:

Tags: 2007, a-look-back, ireland, My Photos, pittsburgh, summer

A Look Back: March 2007

March 13th, 2008 | 4 Comments | Posted in Featured, My Photos

It’s that time again… Time for me to reflect on what I was taking photos of last year at this time. How was I doing? Have I improved at all? Can I find any new inspiration? I hope you’ll bear with me as I share some of my favorite photos from March 2007…

During the first weekend of March, I took some night photos down at the Georgetown Waterfront and in Old Town, Alexandria, VA. A couple of them, including the ones below, are still among my favorites:

Click on each image for a larger version…

You can view my other photos from March 3rd here…

The following weekend (March 10th), I decided to head up to the US Air Force Memorial to shoot my favorite monument in the day as opposed to the night shots I already had… Between the majesty of the monument and the clouds that day, I decided it warranted some HDR work:

You can see the rest of this day’s set here…

The next day I went out and took photos in the Ballston area of Arlington, VA. Not many turned out that day that were worth showing… except one. The only one I was allowed to take in Ballston Commons Mall (along with the Flickr caption detailing what happened). I call it “Al Qaeda is in the food court!”:

This was the only shot I was able to get before Ballston Common Mall security informed me that I cannot take photos in the mall… Something about Arlington County and terrorism.

So, please, if you download this photo, do NOT send it to al Qaeda. Apparently they don’t have any photos of Ballston Common Mall yet.

If you’d like to thank the people at Ballston Common for keeping us all safe, you can find their email addresses below:

John Moore
Vice President & General Manager
JohnMoore@forestcity.net

Selina Tolentino
Marketing Director
SelinaTolentino@forestcity.net

Michael Britt
Operations Manager
MichaelBritt@forestcity.net

Michael Webb
Security Director
MichaelWebb@forestcity.net

Leyla Verme
Office Manager
LeylaVerme@forestcity.net

Finally, during the last weekend in March, I traveled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin for the 2007 Amnesty International USA Annual General Meeting. Of course, while I was managed to get some photowalking in:

You can see the rest of the Milwaukee sets here and here.

You can also buy prints of many of these photos as http://photos.sduffyphotography.com.

That’s about it for this month!

Tags: a-look-back, air-force, alexandria, ballston-commons, dc, hdr, kennedy-center, mall, memorial, milwaukee, old-town, virginia, washington, wisconsin

One year ago: February 2007

February 13th, 2008 | 8 Comments | Posted in Featured, My Photos

Once a month, I like to take a look back on photos I took a year ago. It helps me to understand how far (or not far) I’ve come in my quest to improve my photography skills. February 2007 was a decent month for photos. In fact, February was the month I discovered HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography. Because of this, most of the photos you’ll see below are, in fact, HDR shots.

Click on each photo for a larger version…

9 February 2007

On February 9th, a bitterly cold night in DC, I traveled to the National Cathedral again, this time to get some night shots and try out my new HDR skills. Two of my favorites below:

More photos after the jump…

Tags: 2007, a-look-back, baltimore, february, hdr, national-cathedral, pittsburgh

One year ago this month… January 2007

January 31st, 2008 | 2 Comments | Posted in My Photos

Since the primary focus of this site is to help me learn and improve my photography, I thought it might be nice to look back, once a month, to re-evaluate some photos from a year ago. Here then, are some photos and collections from January 2007… About one month after I bought my first SLR. (Click each photo for full-size image):

6 January 2007

On January 6th, I spent the day walking on the mall in Washington, DC and spent the night walking through Arlington, VA. One of my favorite shots of the day was the candid photo you see to the left of a man reading a book on a bench. It was abnormally warm that day for January, and this gentleman decided to take advantage of it.

The main reason I went down to the National Mall that day was because the clouds were laying very low early in the morning and I didn’t want to waste the opportunity. Even though the sun had burned many of the clouds away as the day progressed, there were still some amazing opportunities with what was left, as illustrated to the right.

At night, when I returned to Arlington, I decided to experiment with photographing neon signs in the Clarendon/Courthouse area. It was actually much harder than I had expected. If I’m not mistaken, I had deliberately underexposed the shots so as to make the background and non-neon elements darker, thus highlighting the neon tubes. To the left, you’ll see an example. Not perfect, but getting there.