Showing posts with label zoo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zoo. Show all posts

Saturday, January 5, 2008

Photos make great Christmas gifts

It's been a while since I've posted something photography related. I did get the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS Image Stabilizer USM lens, but the weather has been so bad/cold here that I haven't had a chance to get out and use it yet. Monday and Tuesday are supposed to be sunny and around 65 F, so I am taking those days off from work to get out and enjoy the warmer weather and make use of this monster.

For Christmas, I usually do something photography related for my family. I usually create a calendar for my parents and sister. Last year the calendar was all photos that I had taken over the course of the year.

This year, I decided to do something different with the calendar. I have been teaching myself photo restoration and have made a project of restoring several boxes of my mother's old photos. For this year's calendar, I chose my sister and I as the theme. I sifted through 38 years of photos and picked out about 24 of my favorites to restore for the calendar. It was quite a time intensive project, but it turned out very nice and my sister and parents loved it!

I also chose to restore a 37 year old portrait of my grandparents (who are no longer with us) to give to my mother, her sisters (my aunts), and each of the grandchildren (my sister and cousins). I think that this really moved them. They had this picture already, but it was old and faded. I was glad that I could bring them so much joy and memories. This was a tough project because of the state of the photo, but I think my hard work on it paid off.

I used an Epson Perfection V700 Photo scanner, VueScan scanning software, Adobe Lightroom, and Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended for all photo restoration work.

Hopefully I will have some photos to share on Monday or Tuesday. I will probably hit the National Zoo and the Smithsonian area in Washington D.C.. I may even head out to Arlington National Cemetery. I haven't been out there in a few months.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Mid-week random stuff

This Saturday, I am going to attend the Autumn Conservation Festival at the National Zoo's Conservation and Research Center (CRC) in Front Royal, Virginia. The CRC is normally closed to the public, but it opens for one weekend a year for FONZ members who have made contributions to the CRC. This is my first year going, so I don't know what to expect but it should be a lot of fun!

I had agreed to help out with the FONZ Photo Club table at the CRC on Sunday, but unfortunately we were told that we could not set up a table to sell photos (of which the money goes directly to zoo programs). I don't understand why, but that's how it goes sometimes.

It's a pretty long drive, so I'm kind of glad to have Sunday to myself. I will post some pictures from Saturday's trip to the CRC this weekend.