Lincoln Park Zoo | Animal Photographer

In November 2015, I took a trip through the midwest for work, finishing in Chicago. I had the chance to spend a couple of hours walking around the Lincoln Park Zoo, which I had heard wonderful things about. While it wasn't the top zoo I have ever been to, it was definitely a good one! I think part of it was the weather - it was such a beautiful cold, clear day.

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.

Butchart Gardens | Travel Photographer

More travel photography! It's nice to finally have the time to show off the places that I have been this year. This one was possibly the most beautiful of them all...while in Victoria, BC in June I took an afternoon trip out to Butchart Gardens. It's billed as the oldest botanical gardens in Canada, and is definitely one of the most stunning that I have ever seen.

Beautiful wide landscape shots, right? I feel like I'm forgetting something...oh, that's right: flower close ups! I would be remiss if I didn't show you those. There were stunning flowers everywhere, and I had a lot of fun in editing them afterwards.

Sunset in South Carolina | Travel Photographer

In June I spent a few days near Hilton Head, SC with my family, visiting my in-laws. They live on a golf course community, and as promised by my mother-in-law, the sunsets over the golf course are pretty spectacular. Despite the heat and humidity, and therefore the need to adapt my equipment to the elements before I could take any photos, the end result was worth it!

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).

 

St. Louis Zoo | Animal Photographer

I absolutely adore taking photos of animals. So when I spent two days at the St. Louis Zoo for work, I could not pass up the opportunity to explore the zoo and capture the animals there. It was difficult to weed out my favorite animal photos here, and not post too many of the elephants, sea lions, and penguins (all of which I took many photos of!), but I did my best.

 I was so excited to find out that they have a red panda, as those are my absolute favorite zoo animals!

Bar Harbor, ME | Travel Photographer

In my previous post I highlighted my favorite photos from a day spent in Portland, ME. The next day I found myself 3.5 hours north on the tiny island of Bar Harbor. 

Portland, Maine | Travel Photographer

My last post (lighthouse on Cape Cod) was a hit, so I thought I would follow that up with more photos from lovely New England. Last summer while in Maine for work, I had the chance to photograph two different locations: the area around Portland, and then the island of Bar Harbor. Both of these locations were two of the most beautiful that I've had the chance to visit for work. I will start here with Portland, where I had a few hours to kill while waiting for a colleague. I headed to the water front and enjoyed walking around the town (including eating some delicious food!).

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!

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.

 

Ocean City, NJ | Travel Photography

At the end of July I had the chance to meet up with a photographer friend in Ocean City, NJ. She lives near there, and it was convenient for me to get to from my last appointment of the day, plus I had never been to that part of the Jersey shore, so it worked out perfectly! I hadn't actually met her in person before, and she is as lovely as she seemed over Facebook. We went to her favorite place at the beach, near a mostly washed-out pier, and had some fun discussing photography while we snapped away.

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!

Palm Beach Florida

Just before Memorial Day I had the opportunity to travel to Palm Beach, Florida for work. We were staying about 6 miles from the ocean, so we drove out to Singer Island (still a part of Palm Beach), parked, and walked on the beach for a bit. Despite being on the Atlantic Ocean, and facing away from the sunset, the light was still stunning.

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.

 

San Diego Zoo

In November 2013 I went to San Diego for a conference. I took one additional day there, after the conference was over, to spend at the San Diego Zoo, as I had repeatedly heard it is one of the top zoos in the world. My friends were not wrong: it was amazing, and I would go back again in a heartbeat. I took well over 200 photos there, so it was hard to select just a few favorites to post here, but I did my best!

Many of the photos I took were of the beautiful flamingos. They, along with many of the other animals I saw, were practically posing for me! 

 

San Francisco

At the end of October I had the opportunity to travel for the first time to the San Francisco bay area with a colleague. I didn't have time to take too many photos, as we had at least 4-5 client visits scheduled every day of the trip. Since we started with visits early on Monday, we arrived on Sunday, which allowed us to get some sight-seeing done in the city prior to heading north to Sacramento.

We walked around a good part of the city, near a section of the Golden Gate Park. We passed beautiful row homes, interesting trees, had some dim sum (delicious!), and walked a few miles around.

I snagged these photos of my colleague without him realizing - I love the mood in them!