Past Photos: California Wildfires (October 2007)
Published on 30 June 2008

This past October, Southern California experienced a slew of wildfires that tore through most of San Diego County. On the first night of the fires, we were pretty sure that our house was far from danger. With the exception of extremely strong winds and a couple of power outages, the night was mostly uneventful. Halfway through the next day, however, the fires started coming close to where we live. The air got thicker, and ash began to fall. To be entirely honest, I love it when this happens. It actually brings some excitement to the somewhat dull mega-sprawl existence. By nightfall, we were evacuated to a relative's house near Mount Helix, east of downtown San Diego.

I stayed up most of that second night to photograph the fires coming up over Mount Miguel to the south of us. Stationed on the house's balcony, my main objective was to fight the winds that rocked my old cheap tripod.

As the night progressed, one could follow the path of the fire as it crept north over Mount Miguel. Though I had some difficulty at first getting a sharp shot of the night with the wind, the stars in the night sky really added to the mood of the situation.

The fire really demonstrated its full potential as it made its way over the ridge and into the valley below. Here you can see just how powerful the flames were. Though they may seem small in this photograph, closer inspection reveals that many of these flames were easily the size of a house, if not larger.

The following day, the fire was still burning at full force, though the situation seemed to be getting much better. The photograph above demonstrates just how saturated the sky was with smoke from the fires. Later on in the day, we returned home, though many neighborhoods near us were still smoldering from the flames the night before.

More photographs from this experience can be found in the flickr photoset.

Past Photos: Washington DC (April 2008)
Published on 28 June 2008

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to spend a few days in Washington D.C. Loaded with all my camera gear (which fortunately also included a new Tamrac case), I took to the city. Aside from a protest I got the chance to cover (I'll save that for a later post), it was a pretty uneventful trip.

I found that, at times, the most interesting things to photograph were the people in the city. Millions of tourists had already taken billions of photographs of the city's famous landmarks. Why did I need to add to the stockpile? Above is a police officer from the previously mentioned protest.

One tool I had at my disposal was a cheap (~$35) old Pentax lens I found on eBay. Going down to f2.0 (at 50mm), the lens allowed me to photograph some fairly low-light situations. Coupled with a high ISO in my camera, which unfortunately does not yield fantastic results, I was able to take quite a few interesting shots. The photograph above was taken in the capital building, and highlights some of the flags they had on display.

This photograph, one of my "lucky shots" from the trip, was taken at the Arlington Cemetery metro stop. I had just come up the stairs at the station, and turned to see a man with a cowboy hat walking towards where I was standing. I quickly held up my camera, focused it as best I could, and took the photograph.

Speaking of Arlington Cemetery, I must say that it had the most impact on me out of everything in the city. Though it was raining that day, my camera (Pentax K10D) was weather resistant. Because of this, I was able to shoot some dramatic images of the cemetery. The wet pavement gave me great reflections to work with, and the gloom in the skies only added to the mood of the experience. More images from this trip can be found on flickr.