… and boy are my arms tired

Autumn is my favorite travel and photography season and this year has been no exception. I enjoy travelling this time of the year rather than in the summer because: (1) the weather is still nice, (2) children are (or should be) in school, (3) there are no lines on rides or at popular tourist sites, (4) hotel rates and flights are cheaper, and (5) depending where I travel it is end-of-season and I can get great deals on jewelry, leather goods, and other hand-made items.

In September, as previously blogged, I travelled to Las Vegas for my first Photoshop World convention. I came back home with all sorts of ideas swirling in my head but then life (or my real job) came back to bite me in the end with two consecutive weekend web-application deployments.

Happily, October was filled up with ME-ME-ME time.

The first weekend, was Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photowalk where I walked in both Fredericksburg and Occoquan, Virginia. I won “best image” for the Occoquan Photowalk and have just yesterday received Kelby’s latest masterpiece, the “Light It, Shoot It, Retouch It” book as a reward.

The second weekend, I travelled to Montego Bay, Jamaica with my book club (Sisters of the Yam) where we rented two luxurious villas, shopped, played a little golf, ate a lot of excellent Jamaican fare, and discussed the book “Getting To Happy” by Terry McMillan.

Jamaica Villas

The extended weekend, though sometimes rainy, was fun-filled but I disliked the book.

The third weekend was a Halloween shoot at a local photographer’s home. The model (Cori) did her own makeup, brought her own costumes, and was just as enchanting as anyone that I’ve ever worked with. This was my first time intently capturing a person in infrared and I think it worked out great.

Scary portrait of a model made-up for Halloween as a zombie - infrared.

Image above made with a Nikon D200 IR-converted camera and Nikon 18-200 VR lens

The fourth weekend, I travelled to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania again to meet up with some of my NikonCafe.com group members for a mini-Fall shoot. We went back to Graffiti Underground and Chanticleer Gardens but we also went to some new sites for us like Valley Forge National Park and Boathouse Row at night. I even got the chance to do portraits of some of my friends.

Philadelphia Fall Shoot - friends

The last weekend was Halloween and I spent my time driving around my area shooting the trees and trying to process some images from the month. I hope you enjoyed the few within this post.

It’s now the first weekend of November and, boy, are my arms tired! October was a very busy month but now I believe that a well-deserved rest is in order.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 6th, 2011 at 4:27 pm. It is filed under photography, ramblings, travel and tagged with autumn, book club, Chanticleer Gardens, costume, danilew-flickr photos, danilew.com photos, fisheye, friends, Graffiti Underground, Halloween, infrared photography, Jamaica, makeup, Montego Bay, Nikon 10.5 fisheye, Nikon 18-200 VR, Nikon D200, Nikon D300, NikonCafe.com, October, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, photographers, photowalk, portraiture, Stafford, travel photography, Valley Forge National Park, villas, Virginia, zombie. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.