I took my son to Arisia 2019 for one day. In between talking with friends, purchasing art and walking around, I took some photos of cosplayers. Light was poor so most are photographed at f/1.8.
Arisia 2019 Cosplayers
Category Archives: Photography
Photo Friday: Blood Moon
My son and I photographed the blood moon on the 21st in the freezing cold. This was the best one. Used a 1 second exposure that also captured some of the stars in the sky, though it shows up better in the actual Flickr image.
Expect I will try creating more sky photographs from the backyard when the weather gets warmer.
Warship Wednesday: USS Monsoor
Back in August I visited Bath with my eldest to see the ships Bath Iron Works was creating. This included the Zumwalt-class destroyers USS Michael Monsoor and USS Lyndon B. Johnson, as well as the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, USS Hudner and USS Daniel Inouye.
The best way to photograph the ship yard was to take the Maine Maritime Museum‘s hour long Shipyards & Lighthouses boat tour.
The tour turns away from the ship yard and travels down the Kennebec River before returning, sailing past the ship yard to the Sasanoa River, turning around and traveling past Bath Iron Works to the museum.
I started the voyage with my 55-300mm lens. I got some photos of the various buildings along the river as well as some pictures of the ships under construction.
As we approached the ship yard, I switched to my 18-105mm lens. Unfortunately, I realized too late that the 2nd lens was set to manual mode with vibration reduction turned off. Ooops! Reminder to self: recheck that the camera and lenses are setup the way they should be before leaving.
Later in the day, we surveyed various vantage points across from the ship yard. After parking at the Dairy Queen near Sasanoa Point, I walked along the Sagadahoc bridge (Route 1) over the Kennebec. While very few people walked over the bridge while I was there, there wasn’t much space for a tripod, so I shot handheld. With the late afternoon sun high in the sky and the air over the river hazy from the August sun, very few of the pictures came out well.
On a return trip to see the LBJ, now that it is in the water, I’ll aim to arrive before sunrise and try using a tripod since that helped with the USS Hudner pictures. The rest of the pictures are at my Bath Iron Works photo album.
Photo Friday: Boston Harbor Birds
While photographing the USS Hudner, I also caught some pictures of birds in Boston Harbor. Double-crested Cormorants and seagulls mostly. They are also at my shore bird Flickr album.
USS Hudner
The USS Hudner, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, was in Boston for its commissioning ceremony. My son and I saw this ship in August when we travelled to Bath, Maine to photograph the Zumwalt destroyer, USS Monsoor. However, many of the photographs of the Hudner came out poorly due to distance or an error on my part.
While it was in Boston, I was able to go on a public tour of the Hudner. Most of the photographs are from that outing.
The following Saturday, I planned to take pictures when the sun came up. I woke up early, but decided I wanted to sleep more and tried to get back to sleep. After 30 minutes of failing to get back to sleep, I got up, threw the previous day’s clothes on, gathered my camera equipment (except for my remote trigger) and drove to a spot across the Reserve channel, which I probably should not have.
I drove to the lobster boat pier, found a sign that said not to enter, and doubled back to another spot. I parked, gathered my equipment, walked near the waters edge and found a large barge in the way. I decided to try the lobster pier again and found that the do not enter sign applied to a different fenced area, so I drove in. After asking if it was ok to photograph in the area and getting an ok, I grabbed my gear, setup my tripod and took a bunch of photos.
I watched as a Massachusetts Environmental Police boat appeared, came to the waters edge and dropped a Massachusetts Environmental Police officer off. We talked courteously and he went on his way.
Just then the light peaked through the clouds and lit up the Hudner.
I got a few more shots of the ship and the surrounding seagulls and decided to drive home. I saw another spot outside the port on the drive home, but ignored it. Since this was likely the last time I would get a chance to photograph any Burke-class destroyer, I turned around and got a few more photos of the ship and a number of birds from a little park.
However, the light was higher and much more harsh, so the pictures aren’t nearly as good, unfortunately. You can find all of the pictures I posted at my Flickr album:
PAX East 2018 Photographs
I uploaded some of the photographs I took at PAX East 2018 months ago and am finally getting around to posting them here. Mostly they are photographs of cosplayers, though I got some of the the We’re All Frauds! – Succeeding Through Self-Doubt talk.
You can look through the whole album:
2018 Honk! Parade Photos
On October 7th, I attended the Honk! Parade with some photographers from the Boston Area Photography Group meetup.
I used my 35mm lens for the photographs during setup, but switched to the 18-105mm lens once the parade started since the telephoto lens worked better with moving subjects. I set my camera to aperture priority mode, set it to f/8 and experimented with shifting my focus point. The Tony Northrup how-to video for my camera helped in ways the camera manual does not and I recommended it to one of my fellow photographers.
Here are a few of the pictures:
Of the 304 photographs I took, I selected 12 to clean up and post to this flickr album:
Pictures from the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center National Air and Space Museum
I visited the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center National Air and Space Museum in 2017 on a family visit. Here are several picture albums organized into different categories.
Space:
Cold War and Later Aircraft
World War 2 and Earlier Aircraft
SR-71 Blackbird
Concorde
Pictures of Arisia 2018 Cosplayers
I didn’t take many pictures of cosplayers at Arisia, but here are the better ones:
You can find more pictures of cosplayers at my cosplayer album:
Pictures from the Smithsonian National Zoo
I posted more pictures from my trip to Virginia and Washington DC in August. This time, they are of the Smithsonian National Zoo.
