Barry and Justyna have been together for nearly seven years, but they delight in each other's company and it shows.

We met in downtown Washington, D.C., with the intention of utilizing the monuments as background. Originally, Justyna thought of the Jefferson Monument, but eventually we stayed in the National Mall area because Jefferson is "way way WAY over there."

The first photo above was taken while sitting in a black wrought iron park bench outside the Smithsonian Castle. It's an honest to goodness castle made out of red brick, and has a fantastic garden with winding paths and droopy trees, which make great backgrounds!

The idea was to make sure the photos didn't "look like vacation shots," which I took to mean not taking those types of photos where you smile for the camera whilst standing in front of a landmark. Sure, no problem :)

This particular photo is probably one of my favorites. I was standing at the back of the World War II Memorial, in front of a waterfall, and they went to the upper level where the waterfall was pouring from.

Voila! Barry and Justyna in front of the Lincoln Monument, with the Reflecting Pool behind them, and the waterfall pool in front of them.

There were actually a million and one tourists at this location, and I stood in my place for about ten minutes, camera ready, and went 'click' every time the space was clear.

They just kept cuddling, or kissing each other on the head, and dancing around in general.

Directly to the right of them was a very large, very fat pug. It watched them the entire time.

Quite a few people noticed the pose they were doing and as soon as we vacated our spot, a whole bunch of tourists ran over to that same spot and started posing themselves!

Fortunately the day was not too hot, not cold, not too sunny, and was actually overcast (perfect!). We were going to do it the weekend before, but it was raining. We could have done something different (such as indoors) but we really wanted this to be outside with those uber famous landmarks in the photos looking cool.

Speaking of cool, you find the most interesting things in DC.

While we were walking from the Smithsonian Castle gardens to the Reflecting Pool, we walked by a building that was shut down. There was a great big sign on the door, saying "building closed" and a large, ornate, wrought iron fence in the entry way.

I noticed it wasn't locked or chained, and so I pushed it near the decorative bricks, and Justyna grabbed a hold of it and gave Barry her best "you can't get me back here" expression. Barry laughed at her- the best expression you can get :)

They kept smiling and laughing the entire time, enjoying every moment, goofing off together as they teased each other about being a model. The best part of a photo moment is when everyone is having such a fantastic time, true laughter erupts and it just can't helped... and then they'll beam at each other and you've got photo magic!

Need: photo of people working together.

Me: THAT'S REALLY BORING.

Soo.... how about if the photo is of someone, working with THEMSELVES?! It's way cooler. In preparation for someone else's special effects photo, I decided to use myself as a guinea pig. Yup, that's me in the picture.

This is called "Cloning." It's not exactly... photoshopping... which would be taking a bunch of pictures, and then plucking the person out and then sticking them all back in the same photo. (It's very fake looking and you can tell it's been done.) PetaPixel did a totally fantastic job of describing the process. It's sort of like layering and then scraping. That's the best description I've got :)

I dragged my shelves, chairs, and the dining room table out of the room and positioned my camera on the far side of the living room, so that I could still see the half-wall by my front door. I brought an extra lamp over and set it up, but I didn't use any studio lights (mistake number one).

I then tethered my Canon 20D to my MacBook, and fired up Aperture so that I could fire off shots without touching my camera, which is very important. I left my camera in AV, which is how I usually have it (mistake number two).

Since I didn't want it to take forever, I put on layers of clothes so that I could just change the top part, and put my hair up and down really fast. Shot one was of me sitting in the chair:

I figured that my hands were likely to be out too far for when I was standing behind myself, but I wanted to work with an overlap on purpose, so that I could see how difficult it would be. It's way hard- actually, it's so hard, I'd rather not do that again. I'll avoid overlaps from now on.

My assistant dutifully took about ten shots of me in this position, as I tried to get my feet in the right spot. You can't actually see what the camera sees until AFTER you take the shot, so, trial and error.

I then took the two side shots:

Last, I hopped up on the wall and dangled my legs in various positions to get the best angle. The most difficult part in the three "assistant" photos was trying to figure out where my eyes were supposed to be looking at. I'd say, this last one was actually my favorite, since "ponytail" is my favorite look.

Then I layered each of the photos on top of this one. The one of me in the chair was last, since it was the one that was going to overlap. I realized, because I was wearing black, if I'd had my assistant holding up something black behind my hands, I would have been able to make a perfect overlap, on one side at least. Oh well, that's why this was a test shoot.

I learned that not having my studio lights out is detrimental to my shots (even in a test shoot) because of the shadow factor. Shadows are evil. Having my camera in AV mode meant that the shutter speed was different, and, my exposure was slightly different. Plus, even though I had my lens on manual focus, I don't think my face was crisp enough- I could have tightened it up quite a bit.

However, I like the way it came out! Now, since I've used myself as a guinea pig, I have figured out what works and what doesn't, so that when I do the real photo shoot it'll come out perfect!

What's better than a smiling baby? A baby that coos, smiles, laughs, and is adorable for two hours straight, that's what!

On a perfect Saturday in July, I set all my gear out and plopped on the ground to take pictures of a highly agreeable ten month old. She didn't mind changing her clothes four times, she didn't mind her mother and father jingling toys at her the entire time, she danced to the baby music when we played it, and she didn't try to eat the grass outside. What more can you ask for?

Well for one thing, you can ask for a cheery baby that crawls towards you and thinks the flash going off in her face is hilarious!

Some babies are not so thrilled when a stranger shows up and points a loud clicking weird thing in their face that doesn't look like their mom's camera. With a big lens on it, my camera doesn't look like what an average camera does.

I was using my 28-70mm f/2.8L lens with a great big hood on it, and a Gary Fong puffer on my flash. Therefore, it looks weird, and it's heavy.

I was completely flat on the floor, and I had two small bowl type lamps with diffusers on them so as not to nuke out the lights. I deliberately backlit the photo and cranked my two diffused lights up all the way.

For variety of location, I took one of her fuzzy blankets and tucked it up next to the window. We opened the main shades, leaving the filmy ones, and gave her a fat pillow to bang on.

The result was pretty funny. Mostly, she was laughing, but she would put her hands in front of her face. Then at one point - voila - she clapped her hands a few times, put them next to her cheek, and did what I call "the angel pose." Seriously? That's cute!

Of course, babies are notorious for causing problems. This little girl didn't, actually... no crying, no fussing, generally looking at me or one of her parents (her dad, apparently, does great 'faces' and she kept yelling da-da at him).

But of course, there is the usual "trying to escape"... the"looking INTO the cookie container"...  and "staring at the flower instead of beaming a smile"shots.....

The weather outside was PERFECT. A nice, slightly overcast day, and she was happy as a clam to plop on the blanket and stare at us. I got nifty grass stains on my jeans but I don't really care, since the outside shots were definitely my favorite!

Overall, I took four hundred and forty photos in about two hours. I deleted a few for blurriness, movement, or eyes closed, and ended up with 416 that I poked through to pick out these as the best ones. At least, these are MY favorites!  Personally, this last one looks like one that I'd blow up to 20x30 and hang on the wall :)

There is really nothing more beautiful than Washington DC at night. The plentiful monuments, memorials, and just the architecture of the average buildings there make it quite a sight even in the daytime.

Once a month I join a group to "walk DC at night." In January, I'm going to point out that's not really all that fun: it was 7* last January and I was constantly fogging up my lens. This night, too, on a balmy June, I was still fogging up the lens because at about ten p.m. it started to rain.

The above picture is taken near the "Pennsylvania" column at the World War II Memorial. The Washington Monument is clearly visible, but the Capitol is obscured by another column. Having a slower shutter speed allowed for a nifty misty quality of the fountain. In reality it's quite a big splashy thing.

Night photography has weird challenges, and I strive to meet them like a purist: I don't alter my photos much. I rarely even crop my photos, and the one above is just how it came out of my camera. All my photos from this walk are unaltered. I love looking at HDR, certainly, but I'm not going to do it myself. HDR is a combination process, where the photographer takes three identical photos at the same time (set at different exposure levels) and then uses a program such as PhotoMatix to merge them together (my photo program is Aperture 2, iffin yer curious).

I, personally, am quite more pleased with myself when I look at a photo I've taken and I think to myself, 'hey- I took that GREAT picture'... not.... 'I took a picture made it look great later on my computer'. I admire many HDR shots of course, but since I know how they work, I can usually spot them instantly. Ever seen a wonderful photo of a skyline taken at night.... and it's huge and long and looks amazingly perfect? Well, there ya go. Not my cup o' tea, that. I tend to not mess with nature- I try to capture it just as it is.

I'm a photoshop snob :)

So, all in all I only put up twenty photos I liked best from the shoot. I would have more, except it started to rain and my lens decided it would fog all up. However, I'd made it all the way up to the top of the Lincoln Monument by that point.

You're not allowed to set up a tripod once you get to the top of the stairs there, and trust me, I'm not embarrassed at all to plop on the ground, which is what I did. There were a couple hundred tourists milling about, but I sat right at the feet of Lincoln's statue (right next to the fuzzy ropes) and turned myself into a tripod. That entailed sort of propping my elbows across my knees, so that I could hold really, really still. That was necessary because I didn't want to take a flash shot and have poor Lincoln's statue looking like it was in a bleached spotlight, and the slow shutterspeed would make my every wiggle really obvious. I got a pretty good one, I think. Unfortunately it's hard to get a good frame of reference so you can't tell how monstrously huge the statue is.

My last effort of the night before the camera fogged all up was to lie down next to a column and trip all the tourists. Actually, I was lying on the ground because I put my camera on the ground and I couldn't see otherwise. Once again, I needed my camera to be stabilized but couldn't use a tripod, so, I used the ground. I was sprawled out for a good ten minutes, focusing on the long reflecting pool and the Washington Monument, and in order to really make sure I didn't mess up the photo, I was using my timer. It was kind of funny- I would focus, press the shutter, listen to the beeping for ten seconds, and then sit there for another thirty while I waited for my camera to finish up its shot. It was worth it though, because I got this:

You'll notice that people seem to be ghostly, or blurry. That's because they are moving, of course, and the shot is pretty long. During the day, if you take a long exposure, the people are in the frame for only a split second... and so they disappear entirely. Pretty cool!