Honor photos from February Competition

Another eagle photo won 2nd place in last week's February competition in the St. Mary's County Camera Club.  I get so excited when I see more than one eagle out on the osprey nest!    I feel so lucky to be able to see them in the wild nearby.  Amazing!  I suppose my next challenge will be to catch both Mom, Dad and baby eagle in one photo.  The osprey will be showing up in a few weeks, so it gets less likely by the day.

I also won two honorable mentions one for Advanced and one for theme competition (long exposures).

St. Clement's Pier was taken on a gray day after a fair amount of rain.  We had planned to take the shuttle launch to the island to photograph the osprey, but it wasn't running due to the inclement weather.  I asked Jim to walk out on the pier to add a subject to the photo.  I liked the subtle light in the image.

My honorable mention for a long exposure was taken right after the Calvert Marine museum closed.  It is actually a composite of two photos.  The Cupola of the lighthouse needed a long exposure to show up in the darkness, but the moon was too bright and overexposed in the photo.  I took several moon photos with correct exposures at the time, hoping I could add them together.  We went to the museum hoping to photograph the lighthouse with the moon rising near it, but the two subjects were too far apart.  More advanced planning on our part would have told us where the moon would be.  The Photographer's Ephemeris or a similar app or program would have given us the information we needed in advance.  Live and learn!

Happy Valentine's Day!

I tried some long exposures last night only lit by two tiny portable spotlights.  I turned off the room lights and "sprayed" the subjects with light.  The dozen roses were placed on a piece of black velvet.  I also used the velvet to cover part of our keyboard to remove the words written on the plastic to simplify the image.  The velvet was used under the guitar also.