I haven't been too active in taking photos around D.C. since I have been job hunting and recently started a new job. Today I had some time after shopping for a new wardrobe and thought I'd take some pictures of some of the alley shots near our apartment that have caught my eye over the last few days.

Click on the thumbnails to see the larger images.

Labels: photography

Tired of your old stagnant wallpaper? Tired of having to right-click on the desktop, find the appropriate settings and changing the image you want to display on your desktop?

Today I found a random wallpaper changer that allows you to set the images (must be in one folder) and time of randomization. It is a small program, easy to download, install and barely is noticeable in your system tray.

You can read more about it [here]. You can also download if from their site, or if you are trusting click to download.

It works with all versions of Windows, including Vista (sorry MACkers). And yes, folks, it's FREEWARE!!!

Labels: computers, photography

This afternoon I met Valerie for lunch at Cosi and then I took the camera to the Washington Marina where there is a world-class fish market.

After snapping a few pictures and talking to a vendor from the Dominican Republic about baseball (very nice guy), I bought a 1/4 slice of a watermelon for $2 and came home to beat the heat and edit my new photos.

Recently I was ripped off at B. Dalton books [a division of Barnes & Noble] but I was okay with the price of the photography magazine I purchased. It's titled 'Practical Photography' and the $9.75 issue, published in the U.K., was an excellent source for editing photos in Camera Raw programs such as Adobe Photoshop CS3.

So I came home and opened and edited four images that I took down at The Wharf.









Larger sizes can be found on flickr.

Labels: photography

Recently Valerie and I were able to spend some time with her brother's family in Alexandria. It is wonderful to have family so close that we can hang out with. It would be nice to live around cousins once our little boy is born (I can't quite bring myself to say 'our son' yet for some reason - it just seems too odd).

I was able to take a few shots of the twins playing in the backyard - unfortunately I was not able to get too many good shots of Korbin but here are two good shots of Shannon. The kids love jumping on their trampoline and Shannon absolutely loves the Fisher-Price tree swing. It's so cute to see them bounce endlessly - they are so full of energy.

Labels: family, photography

I dug this image out of my flickr account a few minutes ago. It was taken of Thun lake in Interlaken, Switzerland back in the fall of 2006 on a personal trip with the wife.

I wanted to keep the forground (water and rocks) as is since they have a good shade but darken up those trees a bit.

So I just quickly added a layer mask for the trees and tinkered a bit with the branches hanging out over the water and presto:

BEFORE:


AFTER:


View the other sizes on Flickr.

Labels: photography

Here is my second attempt at using Scott Kelby's 7-point System for editing photos in Photoshop CS3:

BEFORE:




AFTER:



View the uploaded photo (and other sizes) here.

Labels: photography

I recently went to a brother's wedding in St. Louis. I also have started looking at into touching up my images with Photoshop. Tonight I attempted my first image and so without any further ado:

BEFORE:


AFTER:


Hopefully I'll get better at it and make my photos "pop" off the page.

Labels: photography

... especially in the LDS church.

From 1998-2000 I was on a church mission in the northern third of Ohio. I know, exotic huh? In November 1998 I got to Ohio and was assigned to my first area, Painesville. Nearby was a city called Perry, Ohio - not much there. But there was a family there I became really fond of: the Corbetts.

At the time, they had an 11 year old girl named Dani (on the left) who plays into this picture.

10 years later I am married and living in Washington, DC and Dani is 22 and living in Utah. In 2006 I briefly worked at Policy Impact Communications, Inc. in midtown DC. There I met a friend named Rylie Martin. We still keep in contact even though I am in Florida and she and her husband are in Michigan.

Recently Rylie and her husband Chris attended the wedding of Chris' brother Curt out in Utah.

To my surprise today, I found out that Dani Corbett (who is now Dani Christensen) was the photographer of Curt's wedding! Evidently when Dani moved out to Utah in 2000 or so, her neighbor was Julie, Curt's new wife.

It's just a small world and you never know how you are linked in many circles.

Labels: friends, photography