SDuffyPhotography.blog

Some Deep Creek Portraits

As I mentioned last week, I was in Deep Creek, MD all weekend with my family. The original intent was to offer free family portraits to my family while we were all together. Unfortunately, it ended up raining most of the weekend so we barely left the house. I did manage to do some shooting on Friday but that ended up being before most of the full families were there. A few below…

It was actually getting somewhat dark by the time we did a lot of these shots… All of the shots were done with a single off-camera strobe fired through a white umbrella.

Tags: deep-creek, maryland, portraits

Off to Deep Creek

Tomorrow morning my girlfriend and I are heading up to Deep Creek, MD for our annual vacation (only a 4-day weekend) with my family. It’s not likely that I’ll be blogging while I’m away but I will certainly be taking a lot of photos… In an effort to beef up my portfolio, I offered my whole family free family portraits! It’ll hopefully be a fun but busy weekend!

A photo from last year:

Tags: deep-creek, maryland, vacation

Gone to the dogs!

On Sunday, I went with my mother to a dog show in West Friendship, Maryland. We lost our Doberman about a month ago to cancer (I mentioned him getting cancer a few months ago) so we decided that we really wanted to see the Dobermans and Akitas (my mother owned an Akita a few years ago as well) in the show. Below are some of my favorites from the day:

Tags: akita, doberman, dog-show, dogs, maryland, My Photos

Sunset in Annapolis

Last week, my girlfriend and I drove up to Annapolis for dinner. I brought along all my equipment hoping to get some night photos of the town. I spent a few hours taking shots all around the town and only ended up with one that I was actually pretty happy with.

The following photo was taken on the Compromise St./6th St. bridge in Annapolis as the sun was going down behind a few thick clouds. Map below:

Those of you reading via email may need to visit the site to see the embedded map below…

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I set up my tripod on the bridge sidewalk. I used my new 70-200mm lens fitted with a circular polarizer filter. I wanted a long exposure and small aperture in order to really bring out the rays of sunshine so I decreased the aperture down to f/32 which allowed me to do a 2 second exposure. Here is the result:

Click for larger size…

This print is available for sale in my online portfolio.

Tags: annapolis, maryland, My Photos, sunset

My neighborhood in HDR (and some tutorials!)

Yesterday after work, my girlfriend and I took the dog for a nice walk around the neighborhood… I grabbed my camera mainly because I was excited to edit photos on my new computer and also because I hadn’t gone out shooting in over a week! Unfortunately, it started raining about 20 minutes into our walk but I did manage to get off a few HDR photos…

Also, after images, I’ve included some links to excellent HDR tutorials…

Click on each image for a larger version…

A few HDR tutorials

Since this blog started, I’ve had a number of people ask me for tips on creating HDR images. I considered writing my own small tutorial but, since there is so much good content out there, I decided I’d just point everyone to a few of the best:

• Stuck in Customs - This is the tutorial I used when first learning High Dynamic Range imaging.
• Wikipedia entry on HDR
• Fotohacker HDR Tutorial - Just published a few days ago!
• Vanilla Days HDR Tutorial
• PopPhoto HDR Tutorial

I hope these links come in handy! I look forward to seeing everyone’s HDR images!

Tags: hdr, maryland, neighborhood, tutorial, upper-marlboro

Weekend Photos

As you may (or may not) have noticed, this site was kinda quiet this past weekend. Well, my brother and father came into town last Tuesday night so my brother could interview with a couple area police departments. He graduates from Penn State this summer. So, apart from the massive amounts of food we consumed during the week, we did quite a bit of local traveling.

Friday, I was up in Bethesda and Silver Spring and Saturday we took a drive up to Annapolis and then back to downtown DC for dinner. In addition to my brother and father being in town, two of my cousins (one from Baltimore and one from NYC) came in as well. And, of course, I took my camera with me everywhere we went. A few of my favorites below…

Click on each photo for a larger version…

More photos after the jump…

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Tags: annapolis, family, maryland, silver-spring, washington-dc, weekend

Photowalk Wrap-Up

Woohoo! The Bethesda Photowalk is in the books! We had a great turn-out! I don’t know for sure but it felt like there were about 20-25 photographers who showed up to participate. Many thanks to macmoov for organizing the event! (Check out his Flickr stream, website, and blog.)

I’ve posted a few of my favorite photos from the walk below:

Click each photo for a larger version.

Check out Mark’s group photo here.

More photos and links after the jump…

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Tags: bethesda, feature, flickr, maryland, photowalk, PhotoWalking

Event: Bethesda Photowalk on Saturday!

Just a quick shout out to my fellow DC Metro photographers…

There is an upcoming photowalk in Bethesda, MD on Saturday at 2pm. From Photowalking.org:

“Several photographers in the DC Metro area will be meeting on February 9th at 2:00 PM for a photowalk of Bethesda Maryland. We will meet at the street level plaza of the Bethesda Metro station.

“The route is about 2 miles long. The road along Woodmont offers back ally shooting (in a safe environment) and also some older buildings and store fronts. Wisconsin road is your typical restaurant row with newer modern store fronts that can give you chances for street shooting and neon/light trails in the evening.” (link)

RSVP here. You can also join the discussion in the Photowalking Flickr group.

Photowalk map below:

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Tags: bethesda, dc-metro, event, local, maryland, photowalk, washington-dc

A stroll close to home

It was a pretty lazy day today… We did, however, manage to head to downtown Upper Marlboro to take some photos around a pond. A few below, the rest on Flickr:

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Tags: hdr, maryland, pond, upper-marlboro