Category Archives: candids

I should have known when I was greeted at the door by two little boys who immediately introduced themselves (with their full names)…and then grabbed my hand to lead me on a tour of  their home…that Sunday morning was going to be great.  We played Memory, built a home inside the home with couch cushions, went deer-watching, dressed up for Halloween, and danced in a deluge (ok, they danced while I took pictures).  Even the pouring rain was just another play thing for these two beautiful kids.  Very special thanks to Jon and Dayna for inviting me into their home to capture some images of their boys.

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Hooray!  I got my first image published this spring.  A UK-based digital photography magazine called Digital Camera Essentials ran it in a recent feature of reader images.   Pretty exciting.   For all the looking I did in bookstores on both coasts, I never found a paper copy.  Of course, I receive two of DCE’s sister magazines in the mail each month, but have never subscribed to DCE.   iPad to the rescue!  Now DCE has an app…that lets you download back issues…so I downloaded it at 2:30am PDT today.   The actual image can be found in the opening slideshow of my main site,  Dana’s Eye.  Now all I have to do is prove that it wasn’t a mountain of luck by making it happen again!

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This image of a woman lit by votives was taken in Stephansdom, a cathedral in Vienna, Austria. Although I was a bit conflicted about disrupting her moment of reflection and invading her privacy, it clearly wasn’t much of a deterrent. I took this image about 18 months ago but didn’t really think much of it until I was doing some image library housekeeping (which is never-ending) this weekend. Yet another example of something that really appeals to me now but not so much back then. Or maybe I’m just rationalizing the fact that I’m horrible at deleting images that clearly won’t ever see the light of day.

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This weekend I visited family back home in Maryland.  Jordan, my niece (age 8), performed in the Cherry Blossom Parade in Washington, D.C.   Unfortunately its not pictured here…I missed her performance by 5 minutes.  But I was able to spend a lot of time with the kids (part of which included Serene and I chasing them around the yard with a camera and an umbrella-mounted flash), my sister Nicole, and my brother-in-law Troy.  It’s also a real shame that I didn’t capture the faces of the losing team after a NameBurst showdown.  The ladies (Mom, Nicole, Serene, and Jordan) suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the guys (Karl, Troy, Joshua, and me).  It wasn’t pretty.

 

 

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  • Slewis

    I love the split images centered around the tree.

  • Dana! I love these shots! Youve done an excellent job capturing the personality of these kids- I feel like I am there with you. Keep up the great work

I know I should delete more photos.  I know it.  Dealing with too many at once slows down my machine, I can’t tag them all before filing them away, and literally 95 out of 100 never get seen more than once.  But every deletion party has its rediscoveries.  Moment’s when I wonder what I was thinking to have passed over a certain shot the first time around.  Maybe I thought another in the series was better.  Or it wasn’t what I thought the client might like.  Or maybe I’m just in a different mood.  While deleting 1200+ images last night, as each called out to be spared for the chance at a future moment of fickle fondness, I was stopped in my tracks by this portrait.  The wall’s textures, the dramatic shadows, the highlights in Lisa’s hair…I love it all.  For some reason, I moved right past it the first time around.  It didn’t even make it to the second round.  Totally unconsidered.  Oh well.  Today, its a winner.  I can’t say that my mood always impacts what I like to look at, but what I just described happens often enough for me to know that it definitely plays a part.  And that’s one of the things that I love about photography…one of its most powerful little secrets.   Like any language, you can learn as much or more about the person behind the camera as the subject if you “talk” to their photos long enough.

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  • Akintayo Adewole

    Excellent save.