Knoll Showroom Opening

This past week I shot the grand opening of the brand new Knoll Showroom in DC, with the help of Armin and Paul. The place was packed with smiling faces and the atmosphere was electrifying! Their new showroom is absolutely stunning and I had a blast documenting the event for them. I wanted to share a little taste of the evening:

I don't drink on the job, but I heard these "Knolltini's" were fantastic

There were people all over enjoying the inviting spaces in the various workstation areas...

There were definitely a lot of funny photos from the "photobooth", especially later into the evening...

Armin snagged this great shot of Paul through the cutout for the photobooth

Update: just posted the slideshow, check it out!

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?

Trespassing in Georgetown (Aly and Dustin's E-Shoot)

So we have a [unspoken] trespassing rule in photography... "It's better [read "easier"] to ask for forgiveness than to go and seek out permission..." this rule pertains to trespassing on people's property in areas like Alexandria, DC, Georgetown, Leesburg, well pretty much anywhere in which private property has WAY more character and 'cool-factor' than public places. This past weekend Erin and I had our engagement shoot for Alison and Dustin in Georgetown (therefor the tip-toe trespassing law holds true). We walked all over town on a near-cloudless Sunday afternoon/evening and found some great little alleys and doorsteps to intrude on (even a classic VW Beatle to use as a prop). I'm looking forward to their wedding that Erin and I are shooting for Armin Defiesta Photography in May, it sounds like it will be a blast! Check out Erin's post too! Here are some of my favorites from the day:






...more trespassing, unfortunately the gate had some pretty fresh paint on it...








...had to wait at those stairs for like 5 minutes waiting for people to stop getting in our shot...


...Alison grabbed a camera and chased after the celebrity [Dustin] outside Papa-Razi


...threw in some off-camera flash for a little fill as the Sun was dipping behind the buildings...