The weather was overcast today but a cold front moved in breaking up the cloud cover. I thought it might be a good opportunity to capture a nice red sky at sunset so I raced over to Huntley Meadows park but the weather front ended up chasing all of the clouds away.  The sky was cloudless at sunset. I took a few shots as the sun dipped below the horizon, bracketing 5 exposures and processed the shot above using Photomatix Pro.

Joining the close to 2 million other folks who traveled to Washington, D.C. for this day, I stood on the National Mall to watch the Inauguration. There had to be at least 2 million cameras there as well, all capturing the history being made. While I was obviously not physically close enough to the swearing-in ceremonies to get a picture of the participants, it didn’t matter.  I also took some video of the crowd reaction immediately after the ceremony which you can watch above.

Took a drive to Huntley Meadows today. It’s one of the great birding locations in Northern Virginia and only about a 30 minute drive for me, which are two good reasons I spend a lot of time there, and always with a camera. The wetlands were frozen over and besides a handful of mallards that were hunkered down on the ice, the place was temporary home to a couple hundred Canada Geese. In the woods surrounding the wetlands, there were a fairly large number of flickers in the trees and some Red Bellied and Downy woodpeckers along with the usual cardinals, mockingbirds, and sparrows. I carried my 200-400mm lens in with me but never put it on the camera. Instead I spent my time there using a 24-70mm lens taking shots of the landscape (and some flying geese).

The thermometer said 7 degrees outside when I woke up this morning. There was frost on most of the windows of the house. I considered taking a drive to Shenandoah National Park today or perhaps Great Falls, but after doing the Saturday house chores, I decided a quicker (and warmer) course of action was called for if I was going to get any photography in today. I grabbed my D300, a tripod and a 105 macro lens and aimed it at some of the windows that had not yet had the frost burned off by the sun. I hadn’t tried this before but I really like the results. Some cropping and touching up in Lightroom was employed to finish the image.

You know…. photography. Have you searched for photography-related blogs? It makes me wonder if I am the last person on earth to start one. Many current blogs are actually very informative and provide outstanding instruction and then there are some which are not quite as valuable.  I have a feeling this one will be more in the latter category but I hope I can offer some value from time to time… so here goes…even though I’m very late into the game and well behind the pack (and hoping not to lose my head) yet another photography blog is born.  This one in particular will chronicle my photography excursions and attempts to capture…what’s out there.  By the way, my friends on the beach here were visiting  Sarasota, FL.