Boston, MA (HDR from 5 bracketed exposures)

I recently attended a 4-day GI, liver, and pancreatic pathology course in Boston. I made my way down to the harbor during my first evening in town to get this shot of the Financial District just after sunset.

The National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. (HDR from a single RAW)

Admittedly, the food court makes for an awkward backdrop. The abundant glass windows at this end of the building allow a lot of natural light to hit the exhibit. This enabled me to get a nice indoor single RAW HDR without a tripod.

Excerpt from the museum’s website:
This is an actual lunar module, one of 12 built for Project Apollo. It was meant to be used in low Earth orbit to test the techniques of separation, rendezvous, and docking with the command and service module. The second of two such test vehicles, its mission was canceled because of the complete success of the first flight.

Great Falls Park in Northern Virginia (HDR from 5 bracketed exposures)

According to a nearby sign, you are looking at the ruins of “the first of 5 locks on the Great Falls portion of the Patowmack Canal. Used from 1802 to 1828, they lifted or lowered riverboats the 75 feet that the river drops in going over the falls.”

I recently stayed with family in Great Falls to attend the USCAP 2010 Annual Meeting. During a break from conference activities, I found myself exploring the Great Falls Park. Walking beside the Potomac River and the falls was a nice, relaxing break from everyday life. For instance, today I spent the late morning doing an autopsy on someone with blunt force injuries of the head and multiple gunshot wounds. Immediately upon completion of that autopsy, I walked a short distance to the scene of a suicide. It was just another day at the office.

I have been unable to work on my photography very much lately. I have a lot of things going on. I’m winding down my forensic pathology fellowship, I’ve got a clinical faculty position in GI pathology and cytopathology coming up very soon, my house is currently on the market, and I’m in the process of building a new home. Things are crazy, as they often seem to be. And, when things get crazy, my photography suffers.

The Washington Monument and Washington Monument Lodge in Washington, D.C. (HDR from a single RAW)

I was recently in the District for a work related conference. The weather for most of the week was downright dreadful. But, I made the most of it. In this photo, the Washington Monument in the background towers above the Washington Monument Lodge.

The girls were able to come up and spend a couple of days with me. It was their first time in D.C. We visited a couple of museums and did a lot of walking on the National Mall. We miscalculated the weather and decided it would be safe to walk all the way to the Lincoln Memorial, which put us about 1.2 miles from the Smithsonian Metro station. Just as we started to walk back, we got hit with a deluge. The kind that renders umbrellas useless. The wetness, combined with being pummeled by stuff getting knocked out of trees, made for a pretty rotten commute back to where we were staying.

Piney Wood Park is a small city park in Durham. There are a couple of these unusual buildings with locked blue doors, which I assume are some sort of storage facility.

As part of my forensic pathology fellowship, I get to spend a week rotating through the various parts of the SBI Crime Lab in Raleigh, NC. Here are some of the things I’ve learned:

- The only thing dumber than committing a felony is bragging to your “buddies” about committing said felony (audio analysis).
- “State of the art” video security systems are often equipped with low end cameras (video analysis).
- The ever expanding capacity of hard drives is essentially there to accommodate large porn collections (computer analysis).
- Proprietors of clandestine labs who emboss their product with an original logo get an A for effort (drug chemistry).

Work on my HDR tutorial is progressing nicely. I hope to have it published by the end of the weekend.

The Rotunda on The Lawn at UVA (Charlottesville, VA)

This photo was taken back in September of 2008. We took a day trip up to Charlottesville to show Kate where she was born and where she spent the first year of her life. She didn’t remember any of it, but she had a good time.

We caught a lucky break with the weather. After it rained nearly the entire drive up to Charlottesville, the weather improved when we arrived. In fact, we were greeted by some really nice clouds.

Charlottesville is a neat town. Graduating from medical school on The Lawn is something I will always remember.

Pullen Park in Raleigh, NC

I have a half marathon coming up soon. I originally intended to start training 12 weeks out. Then, 12 weeks became 10 weeks. Then, 10 weeks became 8 weeks. I finally forced myself to go for a run this morning. It was nothing to brag about (2.5 miles), but I have to start somewhere.

The Sailboat Pond at the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science in Durham.

We make it out to the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science on a pretty regular basis. The ‘Catch the Wind’ exhibit features a neat little concrete enclosed pond where visitors can captain radio controlled sailboats. In this photo, I was fortunate enough to capture three of the sailboats in a staggered formation. The boat reflections turned out well and are enhanced by the gentle ripples on the pond’s surface.

I’m working on an HDR tutorial which I will debut in the next week or two. I also have several exciting photography opportunities coming up over the next couple of months, if I can break away from doing autopsies on moldy exhumed bodies long enough to take advantage of them!

Animal Kingdom Park in Walt Disney World

While making our way from the Asia portion of the park to the Africa portion, we ran into DiVine at the beginning of one of her performances. Performing on stilts in front of a crowd takes some impressive talent. At one point, she paused to pose for pictures which allowed me to get this photo.

Cinderella Castle at the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World

Up until this point in the trip, I had not had much luck with the clouds. There were either no clouds, or the entire sky was gray, or the clouds were puny and blowing by too fast. I happened to be at the right place at the right time to get this shot.

One of the benefits of having the Nikkor 12-24 mm lens, is that I can walk right past everyone and get photos without people in them. I’m sure I’m in the foreground of a lot of people’s vacation photos.