Mountains and Clouds

January 10, 2011 • Leave a Comment

Inside the atrium of the Hart Senate Office Building, you will find the last sculpture and mobile by the famous American sculptor Alexander Calder (1898-1976).

I've often admired this work of art. It reminds me some of the Big Sail, another Calder sculpture located at my alma mater MIT, so perhaps it also makes me feel a bit nostalgic.

Alexander Calder designed Mountains and Clouds specifically for the Hart Building, which opened in 1982. Unfortunately, Calder died before the building and the sculpture could be completed. The sculpture was built from his designs, but it was painted black because it's unclear what color he would have liked it painted. Most of his mobiles are painted in bright colors.

Another interesting fact about Mountains and Clouds is that it is the only installation by Calder in which he combined both a free-standing sculpture and a mobile.

Incidentally, from a photographic sense, I haven't been able to photograph the sculpture until now because I didn't have any lenses that were wide enough to capture the entire thing. As a Christmas present, I obtained a new ultra-wide angle lens, a Nikon AF-S DX Zoom-NIKKOR 12-24mm f/4G IF-ED. I figured the best way to test it out would be to visit the Senate and take a photo of my favorite sculpture.

In the photo, you will notice there is some keystone (parallax) issues. This is because I wasn't able to frame the photo without pointing my camera slightly downwards. I really wanted the top of the front-most potted tree in the photo.

I'm happy with the performance of the Nikkor 12-24mm, but I'm probably going to return it to get the Nikkor 10-24. The 10-24 is wider and probably a bit better for landscape photography; it will probably suite me better.

New site

January 07, 2011 • Leave a Comment

Yep, I've changed hosts and created a new website. The new host gives me some new capabilities for the blog and I'm excited about the new features and layout. I'm slowly moving over some of the old content. I hope you like the new site. -- JB

Happy Holidays

December 20, 2010 • Leave a Comment

We’re having a white Christmas here in Washington, DC. It snowed last Thursday. While nothing like the major blizzard that we had shortly before Christmas last year, I wanted to take advantage of this snowfall as well. I really like the photos of the Capitol that I got last year, but none of them depict the Capitol Christmas Tree lit up brightly. So, on Friday, I managed to get out of the office to shoot the Capitol Christmas Tree.

Fine art photo by John Baggaley of the annual Capitol Christmas Tree in front of the US Capitol. Christmas at the Capitol (landscape) The annual Capitol Christmas Tree is a tradition that started in 1964. This year, the tree is a 67-foot Englemann spruce brought all the way from Wyoming’s Bridger-Teton National Forest. It is decorated with approximately 5,000 ornaments crafted by the people from across the State of Wyoming that reflect the theme of this year’s tree: “Wyoming: Forever West”. (Yes, I actually did some research before I took the photo—although primarily because I wanted to find out what time they turn the lights on and off, which incidentally is dusk till 11pm.) The tree is lit up with approximately 8,000 to 10,000 LED lights, which have an extremely long life span and are environmentally friendly.

Autumn at Great Falls

November 07, 2010 • Leave a Comment

Fall in Virginia and around DC is very beautiful, but the window of opportunity to shoot autumn landscapes is very short. I’ve been trying to think about how best to take advantage of that window and so naturally I’ve turned to some of the locations that I’ve already shot. One of my favorite locations in the area is Great Falls, Virginia.

A couple of weeks ago, I got up early and drove out to the park to shoot the falls at sunrise. For the following photo, I stood on the railing of an overlook to get just the right angle. Notice the blurred waterfall and the kayakers.

Fine art photo by John Baggaley of an autumn sunrise at Great Falls, Virginia. Autumn sunrise at Great Falls I shot using a 16mm focal length (24mm equivalent on a traditional 32mm camera) using an aperture of f/11. The small aperture and the use of a circular polarizer allowed me to get a slow shutter speed of 1/6 second, which created the silky look of the falls.

Sunrise on Old Rag Mountain

October 17, 2010 • Leave a Comment

Last week I got up at 2:00 am and drove to Old Rag Mountain in Shenandoah National Park. This was my 3rd trip to Old Rag Mountain. I went a few weeks ago to scout out locations for this shoot. My goal for this shoot was to capture the fall colors at sunrise, which is why I had to set out so early. I begin climbing the mountain at 4:15 am in the dark. It was a brutal climb.

Getting up at that insane hour and the strenuous climb were well worth it. I caught this beautiful sunrise.

Exposure was very challenging. Using auto settings I either blew out the sky, giving me great detail in the rocks but a washed out sky, or I captured the highlights around the sun but lost all the details in the rocks. However, here I used spot metering (a few degrees to the right of the sun) and then used the highlight and shadow recovery tools in Aperture. I’m very happy with the results.

Sunrise atop Old Rag Mountain The obvious place to take photos at Old Rag is from the peak. However, the place I picked was about 2/3 up to the peak. I think the location I found had better color and a nicer vista.

I really love the color and composition of the following photo.

Fall colors atop Old Rag Mountain I would have liked to get the farm to stand out a bit more. I tried hiking another half hour or so to the peak, hoping the higher angle would bring out the farm better, but it just didn’t work out. One of the problems with this kind of landscape photography is that once you make a decision, you can’t go back on it easily. By the time I got to the peak and turned around to get back to my original location, the sun would have risen too much and the lighting would have changed.

I had been planning this shoot for weeks, following the leaf pics and color news for Virginia and the fall color reports for Shenandoah National Park. I had timed my shoot based upon the peak season estimate, which was supposed to be Columbus Day, October 11. Unfortunately, estimates aren’t perfectly accurate. A few days before my shoot, they changed the estimate. We had a very dry summer, which is affecting our fall colors. The latest estimate is that peak season in the mountains will be today. Go figure. Nonetheless, despite the presence of a lot of green, I think I was able to capture some really wonderful color.

A patchwork of fall colors in Shenandoah National Park

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Mountains and Clouds

New site

Happy Holidays

Autumn at Great Falls

Sunrise on Old Rag Mountain