Sights and Sounds Seventy-Nine

We just returned home from a week long holiday in Maryland and Washington DC. We drove up to Cobb Island which is in the south west corner of Maryland right on the Potomac River. It took us about 8 hours to get there but we left at 5:30AM so it didn't seem so bad plus our car is so comfortable the trip was a breeze.
What greeted us was this view where we would be spending the next six days.

It was very hot for the first few days including the Annan family reunion day. This reunion actually included three family names that all descended from my father in-laws dad and siblings. It was held a Greenwell State Park in Maryland and was about an hour from where we were staying. I knew some of the family but others i met for the first time. It was a fun day with food and stories in abundance.

The rest of our week was spent relaxing. I got a couple of rounds of golf in with Steve which was fun although my golf was pretty bad. We really enjoyed sitting in the back yard watching the wildlife including a large umber of Ospreys. I tried to take pics of them but i don't think i had an adequate lens. You can see the one below has a fish in his claws.

On Thursday we drove to Washington DC for two nights. We met up with Dusti's cousins Lisa and Courtney. We spent the first day at the US National History Museum and the Holocaust Museum. We also walked checked out the Washington Memorial. It was extremely hot outside so being in the museums was a welcome break. The holocaust Museum was pretty amazing. They has one room filled with the shoes of victims of the Nazis it was this exhibit was the one that really struck me. The smell of the leather just made it so real compared to all the photos and video which i of course had seen over the years on TV etc. There was just something about those shoes. It was very sad.
DC was a very cool city. I was amazed on how clean it was. The only drawback was they were renovating the Mall and the reflecting pool was drained which hurt my photo ops.

On the Friday morning Dusti, Lisa and i took a cab to the Lincoln Memorial to catch the sunrise. I knew this was going to be special. We got some terrific shots of the light coming through the memorial on the statue of Lincoln. There were very few tourists around this early. A few joggers but that was it. We managed to shoot the Vietnam Memorial and and Korean War Memorial also.

After taking a short nap we spent the rest of the day at the Museum of Natural History. This was the highlight of the holiday for Dusti. She loved it. We saw all kinds if fossils, dinosaur bones, precious gems including the Hope Diamond which is apparently was formed 1.1 billion years ago and is worth 280 million dollars. It was really impressive and along with all the other museums we went to it was free.

After our long day we met up with my former high school friend Andy and his friend Emily at the Elephant and the Castle for a few pints of Guinness. It was a great way to round off our holiday. The next morning we left DC at 5AM and got back to our hour exactly 8 hours later!

Sights and Sounds Seventy-Eight

As promised here's a video of our weekend in the mountains. I kind of did a rushed job and in hindsight i can see shot i could have done better but overall for a quickie i am pretty happy with the results. The music is by a Swedish band called First Aid Kit. They are obviously heavily influenced by old time country music. They remind me a little of Neko Case. The song "Emmylou"which i used was chosen before we even went away and even though it refers to more winter type weather i still think it fits the footage. All the footage was shot by Dusti and myself with our two Canons the T2i and the T4i.
Enjoy.

Sights and Sounds Seventy-Seven

We just got back from a long weekend in the mountains. We stayed with my brother and Mike for the first two days and then stayed at the Pisgah Inn on top of the Blue Ridge Parkway. On the drive up we stopped at Table Rock Mountain for a picnic. We were going to go on a walk but the heat was blistering so we decided to head on to Brevard. We did a little shopping in Brevard then went to Simons. We ate out that night at a small restaurant in downtown Brevard called Falls Landing. It was pretty decent. When we got back to Simons we were both pretty tired and were in bed by 9!

Perhaps the best part of the weekend was the two walks we went on. On Saturday we went to Triple Falls waterfall with Mike and Simon. It was a pretty small walk but it was nice nonetheless. Below are a couple of shot of the waterfalls.

Yesterday we did a little more of a hike than just a walk. After driving up on to the Blue Ridge Parkway we found a decent trail that would take us to the top on a mountain. It was a really cool walk. After parking we walked through some woods which opened out into a meadow. It was full of flowers, butterflies and bees. In the picture below you can see Dusti walking towards the meadow. It's right above her head in the distance. The mountain to her right was what we ended up climbing and after about an hour we reached the top and that is where i took the panoramic shot of Dusti. It was a pretty awesome view.

After getting back to the parking lot about 2 hours after we started we downed some water then headed to Waynesville for lunch. We ate at Clydes which was like old Alex's that used to be in Charleston (decent food cheap but nothing to  special).  After a little window shopping we then headed back up to the Parkway and to the Pisgah Inn.  Here's a couple of panoramic shot this morning at sunrise.

I filmed a lot of the trip and will compile a short video later in the week so stay tuned!  Oh here's a couple of bunnies and a chipmunk for good measure! These little guys greeted us outside our balcony this morning.

Sights and Sounds Seventy-Six

It was July 4th yesterday and Dusti and I decided to get in to the spirit and watch the fireworks at Patriots Point in Mount Pleasant. We rode our bikes armed with our two cameras and two tripods and headed to the old bridge that used to connect Sullivan's Island with Mount Pleasant. We figured this vantage point would be good for a panoramic view of all the firework displays from Folly Beach, Downtown, Mount Pleasant, Sullivan's and Isle of Palms.
I experimented with a couple of panoramic shots  in which I combined several photos together using the photomerge option in Adobe Photoshop. I watched a couple of really good tutorials by Richard Harrington on how to do this. I was pretty pleased with the results. Below are two shots one of the sunset which combined five photos and a firework shot which combined three shots. You can click on the image to see a larger version.

Here are some other firework shots.

Sights and Sounds Seventy-Five

So I couldn't wait to post this. I just received a new piece of equipment for my camera. It's a Glideshot Crane jib. These things a re usually pretty pricey but thanks to some of the blogs i keep up with such as Olivia Tech and CheesyCam I found this one for cheap. I got to play with it for about 20 minutes tonight and here's a little glimpse of what it lets me do.

Sights and Sounds Seventy-Four

With my new learned skill of time lapse i decided to shoot one from my office window today. Since i could leave the camera and go about my work i was able to get three hours worth of images totaling 2,386 shots. I made a quick video of it and used Magic Bullets tilt shift effect to give it the feeling of a model.
Check it out.

Sights and Sounds Seventy-Three

I recently returned from the NAB Show in Las Vegas. I spent 6 days there most of which were spent learning about videogrpaphy and photography. One day we went out on a DSLR field trip with Richard Harrington, a pro photographer and educator. We learned the ins and outs of panoramic and time lapse photography. It was an awesome week.

Sights and Sounds Seventy-Two

This is a story/poem my brother Simon wrote and animated. He asked me to make it into a video for him. He sent me the narration and the images and i put it together for him adding sound effects and music. I think it's pretty awesome.

Kylie: The Most Talented Bell Ringing Parakeet in the World from Simon C on Vimeo.