RadiantView PhotoBlog

Natural History Museum Butterfly Pavilion

I took my family down to D.C today and we visited the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.   We basically went for two reasons, 1) to see the Butterfly Pavilion and 2) to see the Nature’s Best Photography 2009 Exhibit.  I was extremely impressed with both.

The Butterfly Pavilion is maybe 500 sq feet filled with plants, flowers and butterflies.  The butterflies are obviously very used to people strolling through and are not shy about posing for photographers.  Unfortunately, no tripods are allowed.  However, I was still able to come out with some pretty sharp images since the pavilion is very well lit and you are allowed to use flash.  If you go to the pavilion during the winter, be sure to make sure your camera and lens are nice and warm or have a lens cloth handy — the temperature and humidity in the pavilion will quickly condense on the front of your lens.

Natural history Museum Butterfly Pavilion

The Natures Best Photography 2009 exhibit was amazing.  This is the 2nd year we have visited the exhibit and I always come away inspired and humbled by the amazing talent and dedication that it took to create those images.  If you go, and I encourage you to go, be sure to check out the Youth Photographer of the Year winner, Alex Mody, from nearby Vienna Virginia.  His image of a Barred owl is amazing.

Natural history Museum Butterfly Pavilion

Natural history Museum Butterfly Pavilion

Natural history Museum Butterfly Pavilion

Natural history Museum Butterfly Pavilion

Natural history Museum Butterfly Pavilion

Natural history Museum Butterfly Pavilion

Natural History Museum Butterfly Pavilion

I acquired a Canon 5D Mark II during December and have been slowly trying it out. I am quite amazed with the image quality and the advances in the features over my older 20D.  I debated long and hard between the new Canon 7D and the 5D Mark II.  Both seem to be excellent cameras and each have their advantages.  In the end, I decided I wanted the higher image quality and the extra image width offered by the full frame 5D Mark II over the higher frames/second offered by the 7D.  Canon didn’t make the choice easy.

Douthat State Park

Douthat State Park

Shortly after Christmas, we had the opportunity to visit some good friends in Lexington, Virginia. While there, I made a short predawn drive to Douthat State Park, arriving about an hour before sunrise. As this first image shows, it was cold, with a good bit of ice on the lake.   The extra image width of the full frame camera helped me to capture the full vista of the frozen lake with my 24mm lens — something that would have been much more difficult with the crop sensor on the 20D.  Below is another view of the lake taken about 40 minutes later.

Douthat State Park

The ability to “go wide” really shows itself when you get close to an object in the foreground, as I did in this image below of a stream at Douthat State Park. In reality, the stone in the foreground was pretty small, but the wide angle lens makes it appear much larger in the image.

Douthat State Park

Virginia Military Institute

My first morning in Lexington, I got up early to take predawn pictures.  I was hoping for a foggy morning and was not dissapointed.  The image below of a Civil War era Cannon at the Virginia Military Institute has an entirely different feel on a foggy morning than it would on a nice clear day.  Unlike the images at Douthat State Park that were taken at the wide end of my 24-105 lens, here I zoomed all the way out to the longest focal length (105mm), which compresses the fog and enhances the feeling of loneliness.

Cannon in the morning fog at Virginia Military Institute

Another image I captured that morning was of the four training cannons known as “Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.”  Noticed how much the fog had lifted in the 30 minutes since I captured the previous image.  The feeling of loneliness is gone.

Cannons at Virginia Military Institute

Early Morning Frost

The last image I’ll share in this post really highlights the great image quality I’ve seen from the 5D Mark II.  It’s an image of early morning frost on some grass by the pond at Claude Moore Park.  Even in this small web version, the clarity of the frost crystals on the grass is amazing.

Early Morning Frost at Claude Moore Park

A couple notes.  You can find more of my recent images on my flickr page.  Also, taking pictures in the cold carries with it some extra concerns for both yourself and your camera equipment.   So dress warmly and make sure you have a large plastic bag with you.  Before going back inside, wrap your camera in a plastic bag, then place it inside it’s camera bag.  Let it warm up slowly for several hours before removing it once you get back into your warm house.  You can read more tips at this Digital Photography School link.