Flowers in January?

This past weekend I got a chance to hang out with a TON of other photographers. On Saturday I was with 50 other wedding and portrait photogs as it was time for our monthly get-together (check the archived posts). There's a ton of photos from that on Facebook so I'm not going to post them here. On Sunday I met up with a small group of enthusiasts that met up through DPReview, with whom I've gotten a chance to hang out with last summer at the Dulles Air and Space Museum. This time around we went to the Botanical Gardens in DC right next to the Capital Building. I wanted to share some of my favorites from the day. Also you'll be happy to know I found an excellent use for my Rayflash: as a macro ringlight! So on top of using it as a great fill-light for portraits, I'm now addicted to using it for flowers and other small details (wedding bouquets, shoes, rings, ect.). Now time for the quiz, can you guess what lenses these images were taken with? Some of these images might surprise you if I told you what lens I used, because only one of the lenses I used was designed as a macro. The answer is down at the bottom. Also the gallery with quite a few more from the day are on noahhayes.net (link)!

The two lenses used today were the 105 VR f/2.8 macro (obvious though...) and the 14-24 f/2.8!!!! That's right That lens focuses so close! The images I used the ultra-wide on were #3 and #5!

Hail to the Chief

This past Tuesday I was there. Yes, I was in the the most crowded place in the world that day, Washington, DC. It was the 56th Presidential Inauguration Ceremony and I was asked to be the person to document an event sponsored by Best Buy at Constitution Hall. This event was offered as a free service to the community: seating for 3700 people to stay out of the cold as they watched the very memorable day on a 60 foot screen (and two smaller side displays). Geek Squad had a booth to burn people's photos onto DVD so they could free up their memory cards and make room for all the photos they wanted to take. Also Best Buy Mobile, Best Buy for Business, HP, Slingbox, Jawbone and Verizon had booths to do everything from hands-on demos of their products, to give away free souvineers to taking photos of guests with a cardboard cutout of Obama and printing it out on a HP printer. Best Buy also set up a charging station so people could charge their phones and cameras if they were running low on juice. All this completely gratis, with no sales pitch... pretty cool!

I was amazed by the huge crowds, you hear a number like 1.4 million and it doesn't mean much to you until you see it and are a part of it. Constitution Hall was packed wall to wall with people trying to get out of the 18 degree weather and avoid standing on their feet without access to restrooms for hours on end. It was simply non-stop all day. It would have been nice to be one of the official photogs for the inauguration itself, but there's always 2013! The full gallery is on noahhayes.net, but here's a little slice of history for you:

This girl was waiting for us to open up the doors at 8AM...

I dare you to count them...there's 3700, def..def...definitely 3700 (a little Rainmain impression if you didn't get that one...)

Mark "Voice of the Washington Redskins" Kessler was the MC for the event...

Slingbox and Jawbone representatives demoing their products (cool stuff too!)

I let Jon hold my D3 for this one...scary thought...LOL

Starbucks' new "grime the planet" campaign...seriously, can't DC keep it's streets clean?

Camera of the Year

Hope everyone had a great holiday and a happy New Year! I've been absent from updating my presence here on the internet for a LONG time. The past month or so has been total madness, I literally worked every day from the 11th of December until the 30th with the only exception being Christmas, and sometimes Christmas with the family sometimes feels like work, LOL. So I'm realizing the 3 or so posts I started working on about stuff over the past month will probably not get done so I'm starting fresh with this one. I just happened upon this hot camera today and just had to have it, so I took it(no I didn't steal it)... it had been ABANDONED! Thrown away! This will be the camera I use at all of my weddings and events in 2009 (the lens is a little wide for portraits, so I'm just going to have to suck it up and use the D3 for those I guess...) Without further ado, I present the Apple QuickTake 200...

The what? That's right you read it right, the camera no one had ever heard of is now in my poessesion. Apple apparently made three digital camera models over a decade ago in 1994-1997 (the product line was killed when Steve Jobs returned). The one now in my possession is the third model the QuickTake 200 which sports a rockin' .3MP (thats right point-three mega pixels...you know, for those 1/2" by 1/4" prints) and a beautiful 1.5" LCD display. Please don't be jealous, I know you other photogs just bought your 5D Mark II's and D3X's and are now kicking yourselves. LOL! (please note: I'm not seriously going to use this thing...it only takes upto 32 photos with the largest memory card it will support, this will be a new paperweight for me)

Anyway, I didn't get around to doing a proper product shot of these, just a quick shot with my TV as a light source and a lens cloth as a backdrop..maybe if I have some time off this week I'll get around to doing a better shot for your viewing pleasure. In addition I hope to finally go out and field test my customized Flip Mino HD this week and share comparison clips between the Flip and a "real" video camera.