The battle that saved Washington D.C.

We took some time out to visit the historic Monocacy battlefeild in Frederick county, Maryland. Monocacy is famously known as the battle that saved Washington D.C. During the civil war General Lee devised a plan to send 15,000 Confederate soldiers up the Shenandoah Valley to Monocacy Junction and then move east to attack the Union captital. This would alleviate the pressure on General Lee's march on Gettysburg. The Union troops were eventually defeated in Monacacy and forced to retreat. Although the battle was a military victory for the Conferates and their only victory in the north, it was also a defeat, because the time spent fighting the battle cost the Confederates a crucial day of marching and provided the Union time to send reinforcements to Washington D.C. The battlefeild now lies quiet and peaceful with rolling hills and wild flowers. We were lucky enough to to catch some civil war re-enactors at the visitors center to give us a signal corps demonstration on how the soldiers communicated during battle.

Niagara Falls flower show

The trilliums have begun to bloom on Goat Island this week. Along with numerous other wild flower varieties the trilliums stand out as one of Niagara's greatest assets. Located on the paths just east of the parking area, one can easily accesss the area. The trilliums are an endangered flower so be careful not to tramp on any. I highly recommend you take the time to go enjoy these flowers now, because they only last about 3-4 weeks.

Big News

We have a new grand baby in our family. Alexander James Burger. He is now one month old and cute as a button. We went to Maryland over the weekend to see the new baby. His parents, Adam and Amy are so happy. Congratulations to them on the birth of their son. We took a few pictures of the baby while we were there.

Get your Dog on

My daughter Lisa and her husband Jeff invited us over for dinner last night. They have two of the sweetest dogs. I took the opportunity to take a doggie portrait for them. Oscar and Nittany don't like to sit still much so we used their bed to kind of contain them in to one small area to get a nice shot of them. I bounced 3 speedlights off left and right walls and one off the ceiling to light my subects.

The Crystal Lake Sychronized Swim Team

I had the pleasure of photographing the senior womens synchronized swimming team of Crystal Lake in Avon Park, Florida last week. They train all winter and do a final proformance for the residents of the park in March. Don't let their ages fool you, these ladies know how to put on a show. They perform an amazing variety of swim techniques all choreographed with music. These women are definately talented and obviously in good shape. Here are a few images from their show. Click on any image to enlarge.

Denton Lake

We took a trip to Florida last week. This is one of the places we stayed at in Avon Park. Denton lake is a spring fed lake and one of the deepest in Florida. A great place for scenic pictures.

Street Scene

Here is a redo of a street scene in Carlisle. We were walking around town at dusk waiting for Chelsea to get out of work so I took few clicks. You can read more about Carlisle here. This image was processed in ACR and Photomatix to give details to the shadows with an hdr technique I am learning from Trey Ratcliff. I find when planning an hdr image it works better if I under expose the images a bit more than usual. This seems to work best for me. Because of the moving objects in this image I did a single image hdr to avoid getting blur in my image.