Explore the Flickr Photoset:
Snowfall in Arlington, Virginia
Month: February 2007
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Photos: Snowfall in Arlington
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photos: fort foote
Explore the Flickr Photoset:
Fort Foote National Park, Maryland -
photos: Fort Washington
Explore the Flickr Photoset:
Fort Washington National Park, Maryland -
Photos: There and Back Again
As I have complained before, it’s been a little cold for photography … and it’s even snowed several times in the last two weeks (which almost scandalous for Washington, DC).While I am enough of a New Englander to not complain about 4 inches of snow, I am enough of a DC’er to allow the snow to suck out my will to leave the house.
I have spent the last couple of weeks playing around with the camera in my cell phone (an LG-VX8300) which is somewhat shocking in that it has the same resolution as my three year old Canon PowerShot A60.
Over the space of about 8 days, I took some snaps documenting the way to and from work, and below are a sample of what it produced.
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Wedding: Photographer (Done!)
Photo Courtesy of
Voisin PhotographyWell, we have signed a contract with Sarah Voisin of Voisin Photography. We just loved her work (The Lady Sparkler literally the first time she saw them) and the only “remorse” we had heard from any of our friends was “we wish we had spent more for our photographer.” So we kinda splurged and got the one we really wanted.
We also got full rights to all the images, as soon as they are available … so we will be able to share them with everyone almost immediately after the wedding.
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Website: Flickr API
It’s too cold to take pictures where I am (blustery Washington DC) so I integrated the Flickr API into my site over the weekend, and used the new tools (and momentum that came with them) to plow through a whole list of things I had been pushing off.The front page is now a fully functioning part of the blog, which is good because it provides about 80% of the updated content on the site. Also, all pages on the [Random Musings] blog now pull their wrapper images dynamically from my “favorites” photo set on Flickr, which means I can stop rotating them by hand.
Finally, the [Photography] section now has — GASP! — photographs, including a run down of my most recent photoblog posts, my most recent Flickr sets, and a few more images pulled from my “favorites” photo set on Flickr.
Oh, and I did a bunch of design work on the blog too. New headers, new formatting. Everything (should) look much cleaner now.
FWIW, I highly recommend the Flickr API, though integrating it into your site is probably not for the weak of heart. I did most of the work through phpFlickr, but even that needed a lot of customization to get it to do what I wanted.
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Photos: U.S. Botanic Garden & the Taft Carillion
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U.S. Botanic Garden, Washington, DC -
Wedding: Selecting a Photographer
Photo Courtesy of
Voisin Photography
Photo Courtesy of
Sandi Foraci PhotographyThis week we met with our two finalists for wedding photographer, and I am not sure they could be more different. Fortunately, both are uniquely exceptional, but making a decision between the two is going to be difficult.
On Sunday, we met with Sarah Voisin of Voisin Photography. In the last decade, the term “photojournalist” has been hijacked by people who like taking pictures of other people’s feet, which has caused the word’s origin (a journalist who uses photography) to be kind of lost. Voisin is the consummate photojouralist under the proper, original definition.
Voisin works full time for the Washington Post, and it shows. Her attention to “the moment” is very strong, and the quality of her photography is just better than anyone else I have seen in the business. My one hesitation is that her personality is more reserved, and she might have problems corralling our family and friends into some of the more “required” pictures that don’t just occur naturally.
On the other hand, tonight we met with Marylinn Spindler of Sandi Foraci Photography and she was clearly the consummate professional. She was well prepared, thorough, with an absolute knowledge of weddings and what can, might, and should happen on the big day.
Her photography was great, but I believe her strength was in the bridal and wedding management areas. She was very helpful in mapping out our thinking, extremely accommodating to our desires (and sincerely, it didn’t seem forced) and seemed like she would be in complete control of any situation. The Lady Sparkler immediately took to her, and the two of them seemed to really click.
So, in the end I think we would be extremely happy with either of our two finalists. We are just not sure what is most important … Do we want A++ in photo quality and a B+ in wedding management, or an A- in photo quality and an A+ in wedding management. It really is going to be a tough call.
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Wedding: The Sultans of Swing
Photo Courtesy of
American Music CaravanWe have got a LOT moving forward now.
After (literally) months of searching, we are getting ready to settle on a band. At various times, we thought about jazz, big band, swing, dixieland, bluegrass … really, pretty much anything that didn’t have a vocalist. Finally, we seem to have settled on the idea of a “little” big band, one can do a mix of just about all of the above.
Fortunately, there appears to be a band that is willing/able to do that … the Sultans of Swing (they also trade up instruments to become the Sheiks of Dixie, but my family is from New England … and nothing with the word Dixie is particularly well received).
We are still in the contract phase, but are pretty optimistic. If you want to listen a little, there are sound clips of the both bands, as well as play lists for each (Sultans, Sheiks).
