Category: Still Life

I really love wandering around with my camera and just shooting whatever looks interesting….no tripod, no bracketing for HDR, no serious time spent on any one photo.  Just shooting for fun!  Today I did just that at the Kutztown Folk Festival.  I took one lens – my Canon 135mm with soft focus – and photographed whatever caught my fancy!  If you have never been to the Kutztown Folk Festival in Kutztown, Pa., it’s worth a visit.  I love seeing the Pa. Dutch craftspeople demonstrating their art … they are SO talented.  I bought a pretty copper bracelet and the man who crafted it was right there to resize it for me and polish it to a bright shine.  The blog image is a photo of one of his tools and a bracelet that he was working on today.  I have a whole bunch of cool images from the festival that I will be posting over the next few days…come on back to see more!  🙂

The weekend of the Civil War Reenactment was hot and humid.  The reenactors camped out in tents and cooked all of their meals over camp fires.  Many were cooking as I walked around the site on Saturday.  Wow – it had to be 90 degrees with 90% humidity and then add camp fires to that mx!  HOT isn’t the word!   Plus, the reenactors were wearing long sleeves, hoop skirts, and heavy military clothing with hats!   They are real troopers….pun intended!  🙂  Here is a link to some of my favorite images from the day:  http://www.betsydallasphoto.com/Camp%20Geiger%202010.html

The Civil War reenactors were sleeping under the stars in tents and rain and thunderstorms were threatening.  Since they were doing all of their cooking by fire, they needed to keep their matches dry…otherwise they would be rubbing 2 sticks together.  This was a good solution, plus a fun “still life” to photograph.  I applied the Spicify Topaz Adjust filter and a few other tweaks here and there in Photoshop to end up with this final image.