Flowering Dogwoods and Wild Mustard – Carroll County

Mid-April is the time for flowering dogwoods and vast expanses of wild mustard growing in the fields all over Carroll County… later in the year, these fields will be planted with Soya beans or Corn, but for now, they are just a golden mass of flowers, gently swaying in the slightest breeze. The dogwoods are something to look forward to, as they appear just as the Cherry Blossoms and Magnolias are fading, and they are much more durable blossoms. April is also the time of heavy rainfall here in Maryland, and delicate blossoms like the cherry don’t hold up well. Here are some of the pictures I took in Gaithersburg, and along Rte 27 north of Mount Airy, on the road to Westminster, MD. Mostly flowering dogwoods and fields of mustard blossoms – and a few redbuds.

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Dogwood and Mustard	Dogwood and Mustard
Dogwood and Mustard	Dogwood and Mustard
Dogwood and Mustard	Dogwood and Mustard
Redbud	Redbud
Redbud	Dogwood and Mustard
Dogwood and Mustard	Dogwood and Mustard
Pin Oak flower	Birch flower

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Dogwood and Mustard

Dogwood and Mustard

Dogwood and Mustard

Dogwood and Mustard

Dogwood and Mustard

Dogwood and Mustard

Dogwood and Mustard

Dogwood and Mustard

Dogwood and Mustard

Dogwood and Mustard

Dogwood and Mustard

Dogwood and Mustard

Redbud

Dogwood and Mustard

Dogwood and Mustard

Thistle

Dogwood and Mustard

Dogwood and Mustard

Dogwood and Mustard

Dogwood and Mustard

Dogwood and Mustard

Dogwood and Mustard

Dogwood and Mustard

Dogwood and Mustard

Dogwood and Mustard

Dogwood and Mustard

Dogwood and Mustard

Photographed with a Sony Alpha 700 and Sony 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 Zoom lens. I used a Polarizer. Close-up of Pink dogwood photographed with a Sigma 50mm f/2.8 Macro 1:1 lens with Tiffen 812 warming filter

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olympus/zuiko by Ajoy Muralidhar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
text and images © 2008 ajoy muralidhar. all names, websites, brands and technical data referenced are the copyright or trademark of their respective owners. thank you for visiting olympus/zuiko.

 

Virginia Beaches: Historic Colonial Beach, VA

Colonial Beach is a little town on the Virginia side of the Potomac River, about 60 miles south of DC… it’s the second longest beach in Virginia (Virginia Beach is the longest). The town was founded in 1892, and served as get away for the residents of DC in the early years of the 20th century, especially in the years before the Great Depression. It was a favorite holiday spot, and it grew and thrived until the coming of automobiles and other transportation – vistors preferred to come on day trips, rather than leisurely vacations as before, and this led to the waterfront hotels closing down.

The town limped along, losing population and businesses until the 2000’s. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, Hurricane Isabel pretty much destroyed the little waterfront town in 2003. The residents are a resilient bunch – they picked up the pieces and rebuilt again. The housing boom brought some prosperity, with developers taking interest in the town. However with the current bust in housing, the city may see some hard times again, but I hope it will recover easily.

The beach is a great place for a family visit.. it’s clean, and with good amenities – parking, restrooms, restaurants, beach shops etc are all located very conveniently, and there is even a Days Inn located right on the beach for overnight and weekend stays. Nancy’s Ice Cream is closeby, and I recommend the Chocolate Ice Cream soft cones.

This past Saturday 4/19 was beautiful, bright and warm in the 80’s so we drove down to Fredericksburg on I-95 and then east on Rte 3 until we got to Rte 205. We followed Rte 205 all the way to Colonial Beach, it’s easy to follow the signs. My daughter Sunayana had been asking to go to the beach since it started turning warmer, and we could not have asked for a better day to be at the waterfront.

I took the Sony Alpha 700, and after some deliberation, I took the Sony 18-200mm lens as it’s the perfect all-occasion lens, and fitted with a Tiffen Polarizer, perfect for beach and water photography. I took along some other AF and manual lenses, and never got around to using them. We got there in the late afternoon, and found parking under a large Willow oak just a hundred feet from the water.

The Sony 18-200mm SAL18200 is a pretty versatile lens, especially when you want to travel light and are reasonably sure of good light levels. It’s equivalent to 27-300mm in the 35mm format, and the huge zoom ration it affords pretty much covers any situation. The lens is a bit slow at the fully extended part of its zoom range (It ranges from f/3.5 at the wide end and f6.3 at the 200mm focal length), but on a bright day, it doesnt matter at all, since we’re generally shooting at much smaller apertures (f11 to f13) with polarizer.

Colonial Beach, VA	Colonial Beach, VA
Colonial Beach, VA	Colonial Beach, VA
Colonial Beach, VA	Colonial Beach, VA
Colonial Beach, VA	Colonial Beach, VA
Colonial Beach, VA	Colonial Beach, VA
Colonial Beach, VA	Colonial Beach, VA
Colonial Beach, VA	Colonial Beach, VA

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Colonial Beach, VA

Colonial Beach, VA

Colonial Beach, VA

Colonial Beach, VA

Colonial Beach, VA

Colonial Beach, VA

Colonial Beach, VA

Colonial Beach, VA

Colonial Beach, VA

Colonial Beach, VA

Colonial Beach, VA

Colonial Beach, VA

Colonial Beach, VA

Colonial Beach, VA

Colonial Beach, VA

Colonial Beach, VA

Colonial Beach, VA

Colonial Beach, VA

Colonial Beach, VA

Colonial Beach, VA

Colonial Beach, VA

Colonial Beach, VA

Colonial Beach, VA

Colonial Beach, VA

Photographed with a Sony Alpha 700 DSLR and a Sony 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 lens and Circular Polarizer. I used the landscape setting and Auto ISO, with Sunny White Balance.

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olympus/zuiko by Ajoy Muralidhar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
text and images © 2008 ajoy muralidhar. all names, websites, brands and technical data referenced are the copyright or trademark of their respective owners. thank you for visiting olympus/zuiko.

 

Ft. Armistead Park, Baltimore MD – Sony A700 with Sony 18-200mm

Ft. Armistead Park is a little out of the way location on the Chesapeake, quite close to the Francis Scott key Bridge. It has a great little boat ramp, and a brand new pier, and it’s hardly every frequented.

Getting to it is a breeze – From 95 to 695 south and then Exit 1 to Rte 173. Once off the ramp, a quick right and a left (watch for the jug handle) and a left again near Cookies Cityline Diner will put you right on the road to the park – no where else to go, really. By the way, if the mid-morning hungries hit, the Diner serves a great tuna half-sandwich and soup of the day with if you’re feeling like a light lunch, just enough to keep up the flagging energy levels.

This is a great location to photograph the FSK bridge… I spent a little over an hour there in the morning, between 9.30 and 11 am, and the lighting was great. I had the Sony Alpha 700 and the Sony 18-200mm lens with a polarizer to cut the glare.

There’s no beach, really, just a strip of sand by the pier, where flotsam and jetsam from the Bay has accumulated over time. I even found an old Computer Monitor washed up on the rocks. The driftwood was interesting, though. The ubiquitous broken glass was everywhere, too, but work smooth by the action of the waves and sand, making them beautiful too. The views of the bridge are spectacular, and there’s plenty of waterfowl – ducks, gulls etc.

The pier has been rebuilt anew, since the old one was lost during Hurricane Isabel a few years ago.

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Ft. Armistead Park	Ft. Armistead Park
Ft. Armistead Park	Ft. Armistead Park
Ft. Armistead Park	Ft. Armistead Park
Ft. Armistead Park	Ft. Armistead Park
Ft. Armistead Park	Ft. Armistead Park
Ft. Armistead Park	Ft. Armistead Park

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Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

Ft. Armistead Park

And by the way, here are some pictures from Cookies Cityline Diner. The food is is great, prices reasonable and the service excellent.

Cookies Diner	Cookies Diner
Cookies Diner	Cookies Diner

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Cookies Cityline Diner

Photographed with a Sony Alpha 700 DSLR, Sony 18-200 f/3.5-f/6.3 lens and Circular polarizer.

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olympus/zuiko by Ajoy Muralidhar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
text and images © 2008 ajoy muralidhar. all names, websites, brands and technical data referenced are the copyright or trademark of their respective owners. thank you for visiting olympus/zuiko.

 

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival, Washington DC

Ever since the first signs of Spring, I’ve been out with my cameras, not wishing to lose any of the magic of the Great Annual Awakening of Nature. Maryland’s topography is so varied that even though it is such a small state, Spring arrives early in the southern part of the State, especially around Chesapeake Bay and the lower Potomac – almost a full month before it arrives at the Northern regions – near the Pennsylvania border. The rolling hills and valleys of Carroll county are decidedly cooler than DC and the annual cherry flowering takes place almost a week after the Tidal basin flowering

This year (2008) the the Cherry Blossom Festival kicked off on Saturday, March 29 – the flowers began blooming a couple of days before that, and on the 29th, it was close to approaching the peak – and it was 50 degree weather the next few days are likely to be cold and rainy, and we’ll lose a lot of the blossoms. I’m hoping that the flowers last until next weekend. The Festival itself runs until April 13th – but I’m afraid the flowers may be all gone by then. Here are the flowers.. as usual, it was a family trip, but we got separated looking for parking, and never caught up with the other car (which, incidentally, had our picnic lunch). My group ended up snacking at the refreshment stall behind the Jefferson Monument. I was able to walk around a bit under the trees, and here are the pictures. The crowd was very heavy on Saturday.

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2008 Cherry Blossom Festival	2008 Cherry Blossom Festival
2008 Cherry Blossom Festival	2008 Cherry Blossom Festival
2008 Cherry Blossom Festival	2008 Cherry Blossom Festival
2008 Cherry Blossom Festival	2008 Cherry Blossom Festival
2008 Cherry Blossom Festival	2008 Cherry Blossom Festival
2008 Cherry Blossom Festival	2008 Cherry Blossom Festival
2008 Cherry Blossom Festival	2008 Cherry Blossom Festival
2008 Cherry Blossom Festival	2008 Cherry Blossom Festival
2008 Cherry Blossom Festival	2008 Cherry Blossom Festival
2008 Cherry Blossom Festival	2008 Cherry Blossom Festival
2008 Cherry Blossom Festival	2008 Cherry Blossom Festival
2008 Cherry Blossom Festival	2008 Cherry Blossom Festival
2008 Cherry Blossom Festival	2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

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2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

Photographed with a Sony Alpha 700, Sony 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 SAL18200 lens at Landscape setting and Auto ISO. I used a polarizer. The Shutter speeds ranged from 1/320 second in the Sun down to 1/50 second in the shade Here are the rest of the pictures.

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olympus/zuiko by Ajoy Muralidhar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
text and images © 2008 ajoy muralidhar. all names, websites, brands and technical data referenced are the copyright or trademark of their respective owners. thank you for visiting olympus/zuiko.

 

View from Lady Bird Johnson Park, GW Parkway

Earlier this summer, I as testing my Toyo 500mm lens, happened to stop by at the Lady Bird Johnson Park off GW Parkway. The Navy memorial is located at one end of the park. Park affords a great view of the Washington Memorial and the Jefferson Memorials across the Potomac river. The other lenses I had that day were the Zuiko 200mm f/4 and the Zuiko 35-70mm f/4 and the reliable old Olympus OM-2. I figured it would be a great to be able to compare the lenses, so busily switched lenses for these shots – the early summer evening ensured that there was lots of light on the Memorial buildlngs, but most of the Potomac river was in shadow. It was a challenge to handhold the Toyo Fivestar 500mm lens for the shot of the Washington Memorial. Next time I’ll remember to lug a tripod along.

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Zuiko 35-70mm f/4 at 35mm

Zuiko 35-70mm f/4 at 70mm

Zuiko 200mm f/4

Zuiko 200mm f/4

Toyo 500mm f/8 at f/11

Toyo 500mm f/8 at f/11

Zuiko 35-70mm f/4 at 70mm

Zuiko 200mm f/4

Toyo 500mm f/8 at f/11

Photographed with an OM-2, Zuiko 35-70mm f/4, Zuiko 200mm f/4, Toyo Five Star 500mm f/8. Film was Fuji Superia 400, and exposure was calculated with the Sunny 16 rule. Exposure for all 3 lenses was 1/500 at f/11, using a Polarizer.

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text and images © 2007 ajoy muralidhar. all names, websites, brands and technical data referenced are the copyright or trademark of their respective owners.

 

Old Farmhouse on Sullivan Road

This old farmhouse and barn sits just outside of Westminster, a couple of miles north of the town. I usually drive that route when I want to take a more scenic way into the town, instead of taking MD Rte 97 south from work. This is a very accessible site, just off the road, with easy parking… there aren’t many vehicles around that road (except on Mondays, when a nearby auction house is holding their occasional outdoor and barn auction). I’ve photographed this barn many times over the past year. The pond, well and barn always stop me dead in my tracks., and I pull over for a couple of minutes just savoring the view.

OM-2, Vivitar 24mm 1/500 at f/16, Fuji 400

OM-2, Vivitar 24mm, 1/500 at f/16, Fuji 400

OM-2, Sigma 35-105mm f/1.8, 35mm 1/500 at f/16, Fuji 400

OM-2, Zuiko 50mm, 1/500 at f/16, Fuji 400

OM-1, 50mm f/1.8, Fuji 200

Ricoh 500G, 1/250 at f/16 Fuji 200

Ricoh 500G, 1/250 at f/16, Fuji 200

Photographed with an OM-2, (Vivitar 24mm, Sigma 35-105mm, Zuiko 50mm f/1.8) OM-1 (50mm f/1.8) and Ricoh 500G

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text and images © 2007 ajoy muralidhar. all names, websites, brands and technical data referenced are the copyright or trademark of their respective owners.