Seattle, WA | Travel Photographer

With all of the travel that I am fortunate to be able to do for my job, I try to post my travel photography here relatively soon after it occurs. However, sometimes certain photos slip through the cracks, and it turns out that these from Seattle are on that list! I took these just over 2 years ago, and only recently had the chance to finish editing them and posting them here. Despite the time delay, I still wanted to share as it was nice for me to go back and see them again after so long! Also, even though I think I have grown as a photographer in the past 2 years, these didn't come out too badly - and Seattle is a very pretty city.

Savannah, GA | Travel Photographer

Here is the final installment of the travel photography that I've done so far for 2015 - a day trip that my husband and I took to Savannah, GA in June 2015. It was one of the hottest days I've ever experienced - nearly 100 degrees with 100% humidity, but the city was absolutely beautiful. We took an open-air, guided trolley ride around the city to learn its history and see some of the famous sites. I was able to get some very lovely photos of the buildings through the window.

Georgetown, Washington DC | Photography Lesson

As anyone with a craft/passion should do, it's important to periodically take classes to improve one's skills in that area. I really enjoy taking photography lessons, whether it be informally with fellow photographers, sharing tips, or in a class that I have paid for. While a lot of my lessons recently have focused on photographing people, which is really what I've focused on, I have taken other lessons in other areas. A while back, I took a class in Washington, DC where we walked through Georgetown at dusk. The class focused primarily on how to adjust things like white balance in camera, not in post editing, to get different "emotions" in the photos, as well as some tricks for evening/low light photography. It was definitely fun to work on adjusting the mood of the photo while shooting, instead of during editing as I usually do! For all of the comparison shots below, I did not do any editing in post; it was all done on camera.

Victoria, BC | Travel Photographer

At the beginning of June I had the opportunity to go to Victoria, British Columbia for a conference for work. It's an absolutely beautiful town, and I had a wonderful time walking around photographing the beautiful buildings (these are my hotel and the capital building).

 

Cherry Blossoms 2015 Part 1| Nature Photographer

I absolutely love photographing the cherry blossoms around the Tidal Basin in Washington DC. This year, peak dates were delayed due to the cold weather, so I was able to get there during that time (first weekend in April) to take some sunrise photos. I went again with my good friend Kathy; she and I had gone two years ago and photographed the trees at sunset, so we thought we'd mix it up this year and hit sunrise instead. This meant bundling up against the cold, finding a parking spot not too far from the Tidal Basin (which was easier than we thought it would be), and finding just the right spot to get started.

Cape Cod Lighthouse | Travel Photographer

At the end of March, I ventured out to the very cold Cape Cod with my family. We didn't really have a destination in mind (sometimes those kinds of trips end up being the best!); we just wanted to see somewhere we had never seen before. We ended up venturing down to Woods Hole, and thanks to Google maps I saw that the Nabsko lighthouse was just outside of town. We were the lone car headed out to the lighthouse, and I am so glad we did. Despite the chill, it was beautiful in the sun, with the ocean wind blowing at us!

Leesburg, VA| Architecture Photography

This month I am participating in a new 30 day photo challenge. I'm not going to post every single  photo throughout the month (I'm planning on a summary at the end of the month instead), but I do want to post my favorites that result from any shoot that I do. Day 4's topic was "Architecture" and I had the idea to take some nighttime photos in downtown Leesburg. Here are my favorite few from the shoot.

Day and night in the Magic Kingdom: Part 2

On our second day at Disney in October, we spent a full day at the Magic Kingdom, which meant we got to spend a lot more time covering all areas of the park. Here are some of the highlights of what we saw throughout. We once again started at the front of the park; while we were waiting to meet Minnie Mouse, I grabbed this photo of some of the Halloween scarecrows. How gorgeous are these colors?!

Day and night in the Magic Kingdom: Part 1

At the beginning of October we spent 3.5 days at Disney, with the first 1.5 days in the Magic Kingdom. I went through my photos from the first day we spent there and pulled out a few of my favorites, highlighting my favorite shots taken during the afternoon (with quite cloudy skies, and some sun later on), as well as later that night.

 

Wall Street, NYC

About a month ago I spent about 24 hours in NYC for work. I was with a coworker who hadn't really spent a lot of time in NYC before, so we wandered about quite a bit of the city after arrival. I wanted to head down to the financial district to see my old building on Wall Street, and ended up with these few images of these lovely high rises. 

First one: Deutsche Bank headquarters, across from the building I lived in. Love that reflection in the glass windows!

En Wageningen

In my previous post, I mentioned that two months ago I went to the Netherlands for work. After our two days in Brussels, we took the train up to Wageningen, NL where my company's home office is located. When I visited there in the fall of 2012, I posted photos of the beautiful forest outside of Wageningen, where our hotel was located, but none of the town itself. This time, we were given a couple of very nice tours of the town by a few of our Dutch colleagues, so I was able to capture and share photos of the beautiful location!

En Brussels

Two months ago I went to The Netherlands for work. My colleagues and I spent the weekend before our work trip in Brussels: despite two of them having been there before, we all agreed due to the many things to see and the city's proximity to The Netherlands, it was the ideal location for us to spend two days.

Upon our arrival, we began walking around the city center. We started in the Grand Place (Palace), where there was some sort of ceremony taking place (we never did find out exactly what was going on). The buildings and grandeur of the ceremony were simply beautiful.

Pittsburgh in the snow

In February I spent a couple of days in Pittsburgh for work. I knew the city was going to be covered in snow, so I brought my camera with me in the hopes I might be able to grab some photos. I was lucky that my last appointment before heading home ended early, so I was able to grab my camera bag out of my car and wander about the main Pitt campus for a bit. With the setting sun, the light was absolutely stunning and I was able to capture some interesting play between light and shadow. And to play with backlighting, which is always fun.

 

Autumn in Vermont: Part 3

For the final part of my photo excursion in Vermont, I headed into the local town of Waitsfield. The (nearly) duplicate photos I took there begged for different edits, evoking different feels for the same view.

 

Philadelphia at night

Last month I went to Philadelphia for work. I only had one evening there, but I brought my camera in hopes that I might be able to take some photos. I was really tired after dinner, but my hotel was just down the street from the beautiful city hall, so I grabbed the camera and headed out to try some night photography.

Paris: Notre Dame

Continuing from my previous post...

We made our way to Notre Dame, as it's one of the places Evan was very excited to see (again).

Black and white NYC

On Memorial Day weekend, my family spent a day in NYC. As I mentioned in my previous post, I had taken a number of black & white photos that weekend due to that being the subject of my weekly photo project on Facebook. When I got home and went through the photos, I realized how many B&W photos I truly had taken! As I think it makes for a unique way of looking at modern Manhattan, I thought I'd add put my favorites here.

Toronto at night

Can I say how nice it is to have a camera that can take photographs at night without a flash? I love it so much! It's really letting me take advantage of situations where I would not have been able to get good photos before. Case in point: about 3 weeks ago I went to Toronto for a conference for work. I already posted a number of photos from my trip on my family blog, but I wanted to highlight my night time photography here.

Paxton Barn

Across the street from us is the Paxton Campus, which hosts the Arc of Loudoun. This campus was donated to the town of Leesburg by the Paxton family to primarily serve those with disabilities, whether they be intellectual or physical. There's a very nice preschool located in one of the buildings on the campus - we were about to enroll Natalie there when we got the spot at our top choice (Ida Lee); I'm very happy with our decision to enroll her at Ida Lee but I know she would've done great there as well!

On the campus is an old, run down barn. On my excursion around town two weeks ago, I thought the barn might make a nice photography subject.