I just got back from Alaska, and it was cold!  It was -48 when we stepped off the plane.  I had lots of plans for the trip.  They didn’t pan out.

Why would anyone go to Fairbanks in January?  I really wanted to get some shots of the aurora borealis.  I’ve seen the northern lights many times when we lived in Alaska, but I never had a camera with me in those days.  You need a nice clear night, a night without ice fog.  I hoped  to get lucky while we were there.

The ice fog obliterated the sky for five of our seven nights; the other two, the lights weren’t out.  Yes, I’m quite aware that a big solar storm lit up the night sky right after we left.  Like I said, my plans didn’t pan out.  Here is the ice fog thinning out at 3:30 pm one day.  Notice how low the sun is?  We got less than five hours of daylight each day.

The real reason to travel north in the middle of winter was the arrival of our most recent grandchild.  We scheduled our trip two weeks after the due date, but he decided to come a couple of days after we arrived.  We just hung around the house and waited with the dogs.

When he finally arrived home, I just took a few snapshots and held the boy (when I could get him away from my wife).  It was a wonderful, relaxing week with the family, which just grew by one more.  Doesn’t get better than that.

The boy goes by the nickname of Dodge.  I may sprinkle some shots of him into the blog now and then.  We sure were glad to see him.

Our plans to get home didn’t pan out, either.  But the re-routed flights and misplaced bags came with a silver lining – airline dollars to return in the spring when the weather will be warmer and the boy crawling.  Anyone want to travel north in May?  It’ll be fun….

The beginning of the trip was for family history purposes.  My mother wanted some photos of places she lived when she left Wisconsin.  New London, CT, had changed quite a bit, but we found a couple of the houses, including the one I spent my first months in.  It isn’t a special image, but, since the genealogy programs of today allow you to import photos, it will find a purpose.

The photo theme of the trip became buildings.

As you can tell from the image, the clouds were gray and low.  If you get into this situation, you want to minimize the amounts of sky included in the photo.  This can be a good time to focus on parts of the building you find interesting.

We moved up the coast to Cape Cod for a couple of days.  The Cape has lots of scenery to keep a camera busy and mine was.  I enjoyed both sunrises and sunsets, and the good thing about Cape Cod is you catch both with beautiful water scenes.  We found one of the famous beach houses facing due East towards Martha’s Vineyard.  A small spit of land allowed me to catch a shot without getting wet.

One evening, I was out by Yarmouth as the sun was setting.  There are lots of small inlets that shelter the boats.  The warm light from the golden hour gave the scene a great look.  The photo may seem cliché to some, but I really like this one since it captured the light the way I saw it.

Of course, when we got up to Boston, my buildings theme got more difficult.  Those are some big buildings!  How do you capture those?  Skylines are always nice.  You can take vertical panoramas, like the church I posted in Tuesday’s blog.  Or just shoot part of the building….how about a photo of a building, reflected in another building?

All in all, it was a good workout for me.  We had a great time, and I got lots of buildings.  Of course, that isn’t the only subject my camera found.  I ended up with hundreds of photos that weren’t buildings, including this cute, little girl having fun on her trike.  You need to get out there, too.

My whole life I was moving because my father was in the Navy, and I was in the Army, so I don’t have a photo of a favorite place that I can get to easily.  I decided to create a composite image from more current photos.  You can do the same.

I started with a picture of the house.  It was just a little too colorful, so I lowered the saturation a bit in the final composite.  I quickly realized that I needed to crop the image or the photograph in my hand would be too small when I aligned it with the background image.  The best crop also dictated a change from landscape format to portrait format.

I originally had my hand in the house photo, but I didn’t like the image as much as the one with my hand as the focal point.  That meant I had another photo to work into the final image.

And, finally, I needed a photo of some very cute children.  Where would I find that?  Well, Mark says I’m not happy unless I throw in a shot of a family member into the blog every couple of months, so I grabbed a shot of the grandchildren just to allow him to be proven right. 

I have the shots; now we need to open up Photoshop and get to work.

Since the house photo would be the background and the largest portion of the finished image, that was my base image.  I reduced the saturation of the layer, dulling the colors to make it look older and so they wouldn’t be as bright as the photo in my hand.

I opened the image of the hand as a layer on top of the base layer.  I only needed the hand, so I masked out the rest of the photo.

The final layer was the photo of the kids.  I used the Free Transform tool to shrink the image to appear like it was a photo in my hand.  I made sure that layer was fully saturated.  I aligned the photo to the bushes and the porch pole as you see being done in the other dearphotograph images.  I also put a white border around the kids’ “photo” to make it stand out better from the background.  When I put the kids in place (top layer) where it needed to be, it obscured part of my thumb and fingers.  I masked part of the kids’ photo, so the thumb underneath came through and created the illusion that I was holding the photo.  And the image was done.

All that is required is a sentimental caption to finish it off.

"The day is brighter and more colorful when grandchildren visit."

It was a fun little project.  If you have Photoshop, Elements, or a similar program, you can do this without too much fuss.  Keep having fun with your photography.

As Mark blogged last time, it’s summer!  Everybody loves the summer and the memories of summers past.  Think of your own summers and the fun times you had.  People are always out doing fun things that get ignored during the cooler weather.  This is your chance to capture some fun images and memories.  Grab a camera, and get out there!

Don’t be dissuaded by the harsh, mid-day light.  You can work around the light if you choose scenes where your viewer would expect the strong light.  Find a place where people are having fun.  Maybe kids playing in a fountain on a hot day….

We all know where to find these places.  Even if you don’t participate in the specific activities, you can get photographs you’ll be happy with.  Pay attention to what is happening and try to capture the peak of the action.  Since there is plenty of light, you can set your shutter speed at settings that are fast enough to freeze the action.  If you want to capture some motion, the bright light will give you plenty of options.

In my Fourth of July images, I wanted to capture the joy the girls had with the giant sparkler.  The light from the twilight and the sparkler put a beautiful glow on their faces.  Then as the fire burned out, they turned and gave me that look that said, “I can’t believe we got to do this.”  Mission accomplished.

Keep your camera with you when you take off to your excursions this summer.  You can’t capture the fun if you leave your camera in the closet.

So, how do you avoid this label when there is a big event like a college graduation or a wedding, and you are asked (or want) to bring your camera?  If you find yourself in this situation, think how you’d feel as the paid photographer.  They have a job to do, and they don’t want any distractions.  I’ve had the same feelings when an Uncle Harry came to one of my events.  Last weekend, my daughter and her boyfriend graduated from Eastern Virginia Medical School, and I was asked (and wanted) to capture the moment.  But I didn’t want to be that guy.

You can diffuse the situation if you recognize it and act as professionally as the paid photographer.  I’ve found the easiest way to avoid this situation is to arrive early and seek out the photographer.  If you explain the situation and assure her that you won’t interfere with her job, you’ll usually get a wary, suspicious “We’ll see.”

I arrived at Norfolk Scope 90 minutes early and found the set up.  The new doctors would walk off the stage, and pose in front of an EVMS banner for a quick snap with their diplomas, before making their way back to their seats.

The photographer and her assistant had prepared well: they had a location away from the central stage; taped out a posing position to ensure quick positioning; and were testing their flash pack when I arrived.  I told her who I was and what I wanted to do.  I promised that I would tell her before I shot and that I would only shoot (with my resulting flash) after she had.  I told her I wasn’t an Uncle Harry.  Once her role and seniority were established, she relaxed a bit.  By the end of graduation, we were exchanging business cards.

Dr. Christopher Stallwood

After the ceremony, I had the privilege and fun of being the primary photographer for the families and at the graduation party in Virginia Beach.

Dr. Rebecca Dallman

Allow me a few lines to congratulate my daughter who declared, at the age of five, that she was going to be a doctor.  She never wavered and has been in school for 24 years following her plan.  Our family is proud of, but not surprised by, her success.