Annapolis...

Yesterday Annette and I made the trip to St.Mary's City to receive my award for the images I submitted last year for the Governor's Cup Photo competition. We decided to make it a day and photo ramble; one of my favorite things to do. We left Baltimore at 8:00 am. Since we knew it was going to be a long day, there was no need to really push it and get out any earlier. Our first stop came to mind as we were heading down Rt.97, "let's hit Annapolis," I said and Annette was game. I wanted to explore the other side of the creek a little and we crossed over Spa Creek and discovered Sarles Boatyard and Marina the oldest boatyard in Annapolis. We walked into the boatyard area and looked around. The sun was to our back from this area and we had a wonderful old boat house in front of us, reflecting into the creek. It was a clear blue sky day so I suggested we get our cameras and make some images here. There was no one around, we checked the office door and it was locked, so we just set up our tripods and began to work. I enjoyed the collection of decorative buoys that were hanging on the side of the old boat house. Thinking they might make a fun composition with the bow of the yellow kayak that was resting at the bottom of the boat house I started to photograph.  I made a bracketed set of images for processing in Photomatix later on (which I then ran through snapart2 for the posted image here). Then I saw the reverse image reflected below in Spa Creek. I enjoy how the fluid motion of quiet waters distorts reflections into Salvador Dali like images, such as the Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory.

This final image Mirror, Mirror, was created by using the mirroring technique in Photoshop. I simply shot a reflection abstract then went to work on mirroring it twice; once horizontal and once vertical. I enjoy the completely balance image a mirror makes and water reflections lend themselves to this technique, creating a unique patterned image.

This is a single shot from a different area in the boatyard, with crazy fluid lines, reflecting the lines on the sailboat boom and dock line. I enjoyed the fanciful look of this image, like French Marbleized Paper.  After shooting at Sarles, we decided to head to Starbucks, grab a coffee and get refreshed and head toward Solomons Island. We drove around the little spit of land, and decided to get some lunch while the bridge over the Patuxent was backed up due to a scheduled inspection by the State Roads. The crab cakes at Stoneys were pretty good and we enjoyed our lunch there. By the time we left  the bridge was flowing and we headed down to St.Mary's City. That's about it for now...more to follow on the photo ramble in the next blog entry......