Christmas Moon

The neighbor across the street from me, Mr. Farmer, has always decorated his house for Christmas. He's expanded to other holidays too—he has inflatables for pretty much every occasion. Halloween is almost bigger than Christmas in his yard. His displays draw crowds each year, and he welcomes visitors to walk across his lawn and onto his front porch to take in everything. Candy canes dangle from the branches overhead and Christmas lights cover everything. A few years ago, when I walked across the street to take in the spectacle through my camera, I looked up and saw the moon shining through the branches, surrounded by colored lights. It inspired me to capture this very different take on the standard moon photo.

Raku

During elementary school, I began taking ceramics classes at The Art League in Alexandria, VA because watching potters throw pieces on the wheel had always fascinated me. I loved it, and continued taking classes through high school. To maintain my skills, I took an advanced ceramics course my freshman year of college, and one of the students was a 70-year-old man who basically had his own ceramics studio and kilns in his basement and backyard. He invited the rest of the class over to help him do a raku firing, which involves taking the still-glowing pieces out of the kiln, throwing leaves or other organic material at them, and then smothering them under a metal pail on a sawdust bed. This dramatic technique yields dramatic colors, and this close-up of one of the pieces I helped him fire shows the textures and sheen that result from raku.

Steam Vents

Night photography thrills me, but my equipment consists of nothing more than a tripod, so I am always looking for alternative sources of light that will provide an atmosphere suitable for long exposures. On the night I took this photo, the sunken gardens at the College of William and Mary were draped in fog. I had to go out and shoot because I knew the fog would beautifully diffuse the light from the lamps lining the walks; as it turned out, the steam vents in the ground provided another diffuser as well as an interesting focus. At the College, students pass down legends about secret tunnels accessed by these steam vents, so with this photo, I tried to convey both the ethereal quality of the night and the enigmatic nature of these tales.

Fortuitous Test

During the first month of my freshman year at William and Mary, I went on a field trip with the geology department. We camped next to the James River and then canoed down it the next morning, stopping to look at geologic features along the way. It was great, and a significant factor in my decision to major in geology. However, there were unadvertised class 2 rapids, and my canoe flipped, dumping me, but more importantly, my camera, into the James. It was completely immersed for at least 10 seconds, so I took no more photos that trip. I let it dry out for an entire stressful day and took it out to the sunken gardens the next night to test it out. A product of that tentative shoot, this photo thankfully confirmed that there didn't seem to be any water stains inside the lens.

Chomping at the Bit

Meadowlark Gardens Regional Park sells food pellets for visitors to feed the koi in their pond. However, snapping turtles also apparently have a taste for koi food, sometimes viciously chomping at the pellets and living up to their name. After realizing that I had a steady supply of food with me, this one got lazy. This is one of the first photos I took, when aggressively snapping at the food still seemed necessary. By the time I was down to the last pellet, it merely opened its mouth and waited for the food to flow in. I hope I didn't dull its instincts!

Block The Trail

Here I am, already back to a photo from Huntley Meadows. The park has two entrances; the front has a visitor center, and the back has a service road to maintenance buildings. There is also a path through the woods to an overlook at the back entrance, and a few smaller side paths peel off from that. Some are very very infrequently used and there, nature has begun to reclaim its property. As I wandered through the woods on one of them, I came across these tiny flowers in the middle of the trail. I wanted to convey their tiny size while showing the rest of the forest growing around them, and I think taking the photo at a low angle accomplished that well.

Within Reach

This is the arm of "The Awakening," a famous statue of a buried giant that appears to be struggling to the surface. The statue was bought a few years ago and moved to National Harbor, just across the Potomac river from its old home on Haines Point. When my family went to visit it before the move, I took advantage of the clear blue sky and afternoon sun and experimented with the placement of the sun in the fingers. This one was my favorite, for it appears as though the giant is about to snatch the sun right out of the sky.

Rough Day

I suppose I discovered my love of photography at Huntley Meadows park. I've taken hundreds upon hundreds of photos there over the years. One day about six years ago, I went on a photography expedition to the park to take a photo worthy of entering in the park's photo contest. This sad-looking dragonfly was perched on the railing of the boardwalk that day. As I crept closer and closer, trying to get the perfect shot, I realized that it must have been simply too tired to fly away from me. Most dragonflies are quick to leave their perch when approached, but the lens of my camera was about 6 inches from the dragonfly when I took this photo. It ended up with an honorable mention in the contest—something which may have further spurred me to pursue photography.