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Washington D.C.

Posted June 12, 2018 by Mike Piatek-Jimenez

Here are my photos taken in Washington D.C. in the spring of 2018. Click any thumbnail to open into a full size slide show.

DC 1/ A few weeks ago, we took a trip to Washington D.C. The first morning we went out to see the monuments. The Lincoln Memorial was first, but when we got there, I turned to see the Washington Monument rising into the fog. I almost waited until after visiting the Lincoln Memorial before taking a picture of this, but if I’ve learned anything over the years of landscape photography, I know that when the sky conditions are right you don’t wait. I pulled my camera out of my backpack, and just when I was about to take a picture cropping out people in the foreground, I see these 4 women checking out the same view I was appreciating. I recomposed to include them in the frame and snapped this photo. Oh, and when we finished with our visit to the Lincoln Memorial, the fog had lifted and this view was gone…

DC 2/ The Lincoln Memorial is my favorite stop in D.C., probably because Lincoln is one of my favorite presidents. He stood for something that he believed in, but was able to be diplomatic when interacting with others who didn’t agree with him. Many people will take the head-on shot of Lincoln when visiting the Memorial, but there were a lot of other good angles that I enjoyed exploring. I had a few good ones showing a side profile, but I liked this quarter view better because you could see more of his face, while also including the columns that are such a big part of the landmark.

DC 3/ Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech is one of the more notable events that has happened outside the Lincoln Memorial. While Dr. King has his own memorial nearby, he is remembered here with this engraving on the stone floor.

DC 4/ One last shot of the Lincoln Memorial. This one was taken a few days later, on a weekend day when it is much more crowded. Even though the original had a nice blue sky, I decided to process this one in black and white because I liked the extra contrast of the bright monument to its surroundings.

DC 5/ Sometimes a rainy mess of a day can still present you with plenty of good photo opportunities. Here at the Korean War Veterans Memorial, the rain just added to the tone of the memorial.

DC 6/ The FDR Memorial was fantastic. It was broken up into multiple sections, each one focusing on a different theme of his presidency. This shot shows the area representing his New Deal.

DC 7/ Another area of the FDR Memorial represented his time as president during WW II. What I found interesting is that this area felt so peaceful while we were there.

DC 8/ The Jefferson Memorial is off the beaten path a bit. However it’s a favorite of many. I actually had to return a second time to grab this shot. The first day we were walking along the Tidal Basin and I saw this photo, but didn’t have my telephoto lens. A few days later I brought my 100-400 out with me and returned to this spot to capture the image above. It was almost overcast, but there were a few spots of blue sky. I waited about 10 minutes for the sky to shed some sunlight onto the monument.

DC 9/ Arlington National Cemetery is a powerful place to visit. The sheer enormity of it can be overwhelming. JFK is buried there, as well as President Taft, among hundreds of thousands of others.

DC 10/ Ford’s Theater. We spent several hours touring the place where Lincoln was shot. It’s interesting to note that the theater is actually a recreation of the original site. The original theater didn’t survive financially after the event that makes it famous, so the building became several other things through the years before the National Park Service decided to use photos to restore it to its original state. The presidential booth is decorated with a picture of Washington, which I found to be strange. It’s my understanding that the picture of Washington originally marked it as the presidential booth (the White House is about a half mile away), so they kept it the way it was.

DC 11/ Good artists copy; great artists steal. This quote kept coming to mind as I captured this photo of the National Museum of African American History and Culture with the Washington Monument in the background. The hotel we were staying at had a travel magazine with a similar shot on the cover, and I decided I had to try and recreate it on my own. I figured out the best location to photograph it from, then decided the best time to photograph it would be in the morning while the sun was in the right position. I’m happy with the result. We would have loved to have visited the museum itself, but we couldn’t get tickets. Every day at 6:30am they offer a certain number of tickets on their website. We woke up early to pick up a couple of them, but they were gone within minutes. Next time…

DC 12/ One of my favorite buildings in the DC area is the Supreme Court building. It was just so pristine with marble everywhere, and the masonry was fantastic. We toured inside the next day, but the afternoon I took this photo was after it had already closed to visitors.

DC 13/ Nine chairs for the folks who keep Congress in check. I took this photo from just outside the courtroom looking in. I was happy to get the shot, but it was unfortunate that cameras weren’t allowed inside the courtroom itself. The ceiling was adorned with several statues and decorations around the room, and it would have been great to capture it as well.

DC 14/ The spiral staircase in the Supreme Court building. I’m a sucker for repetition in photos, so when I saw this spiral staircase, I had to grab a shot. The stonework was beautiful.

DC 15/ Right next door to the Supreme Court building is the Capitol. This photo was taken in the Statuary Hall. Just outside the frame are several statues that are commissioned by different states. The statues were great, but with hundreds of people touring the room at the same time, I decided to focus on capturing the ceiling instead.

DC 16/ Inside the main Capitol dome. I was thankful to have my 16-35 while visiting, because there’s just no way to capture the expanse of this room otherwise. There were paintings on the ceiling, as shown here, but there were also paintings on all the walls as well. It almost reminded me of a room of creative works at a museum like the Louvre.

DC 17/ When packing for a trip like this, I almost never bring a long telephoto lens. Most of the time I prefer to travel light and use either a 16-35 or a 24-105. However, I had one shot in my mind before leaving, and that is the shot shown above. I wanted a shot during the blue hour right after sunset, showing the detail of the Capitol dome from a long distance. I thought about bringing the 70-200, but wasn’t sure 200mm would be long enough. I tossed the 100-400 in my bag instead, and I’m glad I did because I’m out closer to 400mm in this capture. I did save a little bit of weight, packing a monopod instead of a tripod, and relying on image stabilization in the lens and the high ISO capability of the 5D Mark IV. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I’m thinking about printing it (along with a few other images from the trip).

DC 18/ Usually long exposure captures need to be planned to make sure you have a tripod, the right vantage point, etc. this one wasn’t planned at all. I was out on an evening walk with my wife and came across this overpass. We stopped for only a minute to grab this photo, using the railing as a tripod.

DC 19/ The inside of the Library of Congress was nothing short of spectacular. Even though there were tons of tourists wandering the halls, the place was big enough to capture photos without any distractions. I was fortunate to have the 16-35 with me that day to capture some ultra-wides like the shot above.

DC 20/ We were wandering the halls of the Library of Congress, and we ended up down a hallway that we later found out was staff-only. It was definitely a quieter part of the building, and this would have been a perfect spot to sit and rest for awhile after being immersed in the hustle-and-bustle of the rest of D.C.

DC 21/ The Library of Congress Reading Room. I was just awestruck by this view; the room was fantastic. This photo was taken through glass on an observation deck, but fortunately you’d never know it from seeing the resulting image. This is just about the entire frame of the 30 megapixel image from my 5D Mark IV. I’m planning to make a big print of this one to really be able to appreciate all the detail captured.

DC 22/ The final stop I made on the trip to D.C. was to the National Cathedral the morning before leaving. I had read the architecture was similar to Notre Dame in Paris. Even though the cathedral was built within the last 100 years, it was designed in a gothic style similar to many cathedrals in Europe.

DC 23/ The baptismal font in the National Cathedral. While the venue attempts to host a wide variety of Christian denominations (and doesn’t restrict anyone who asks to use it), the church is actually Episcopal.

DC 24/ While at the National Cathedral, I was fortunate to catch a demonstration of the organ. The organ is pretty amazing in it’s own right, consisting of more than 10,000 pipes. Here’s a shot of the musician’s console.

DC 25/ The basement of the National Cathedral is split up into several chapels such as this one. Each one was decorated differently. Also of note in this photo are the massive pillars on either side of the image. I’m not talking about the smaller pillars about the third of the way in to each side of the photo. Instead notice how these “small” pillars are each part of a larger circular pillar that makes up a corner of the room. The Cathedral is so tall, that by the time the pillars get to the basement level, they are about 40 ft in diameter.

DC 26/ Just before leaving the National Cathedral (and returning home to Michigan), I wandered into this chapel in the basement. The entire chapel was decorated with the most amazing tile mosaics. This one was my favorite. Thanks for following me on my D.C. adventure!

Photo Walk at Deerfield

Posted April 2, 2016 by Mike Piatek-Jimenez

I thought it might be fun to create a video of a photo walk. I was out at a local nature park on a winter morning (okay, it was spring, but Michigan doesn’t always behave like the season suggests). In the video, I offer some tips for photographing in the winter, and more specifically in an area like Central Michigan. I also talk a little bit about composition.

Check it out and let me know what you think…

Brookfield Zoo

Posted December 4, 2015 by Mike Piatek-Jimenez

I’m finally finding time to edit the photos I took over the summer (Michigan winters provide a good opportunity to catch up with things indoors). I was pleasantly surprised to look back at the photos I made during a family day at the Brookfield Zoo just outside of Chicago.

I don’t add zoo photos to my portfolio, because I don’t like that the animal is forced to be there. I feel like you don’t really earn a photo of an animal unless it is truly wild. Regardless, I still wanted to share the photos so I uploaded them to an album on the Radiant Photography Facebook page. Check them out at the link below, and be sure to “Like” the page while you’re there.

Brookfield Zoo Album

Summer Desktop

Posted July 22, 2015 by Mike Piatek-Jimenez

If you’re looking for a new summer-themed desktop background, here’s a photo I took at Pokagon State Park in Indiana a few weeks ago.

Summer Desktop — Click to download the full resolution photograph.

Brian Vander Ark

Posted May 12, 2015 by Mike Piatek-Jimenez

Autumn Road

Posted May 6, 2015 by Mike Piatek-Jimenez

Michiganâ€™s Upper Peninsula is gorgeous in the autumn. This photo combines two of my favorite things: autumn and road trips.

Frankfort Sunset

Posted May 6, 2015 by Mike Piatek-Jimenez

This photo was taken in the small town of Frankfort, MI. The storms earlier in the day left some beautiful clouds in the sky at sunset. In the background you can see the Frankfort lighthouse and jetty.

Mountain Goat

Posted September 26, 2014 by Mike Piatek-Jimenez

It’s not too often that I dabble in black and white photography, but when I saw this photo I thought it would be a perfect opportunity.

Mountain Goat

You have to have a different mindset when taking black and white photos. You almost have to train your mind to see in black and white. Black and white obviously can’t show vivid eye-popping colors, so you have to make use of what can be portrayed in a black and white image: textures, contrast, shapes, and composition. In the photo above, the goat stands out because the texture of his fur is different from the background. The goat also has some stronger shadows on his face, which helps with contrast.

I also cropped the photo so the goat was looking into the frame and isn’t the center of attention. The goat looking to the left is an advantage too. Your eyes kind of follow the goat’s gaze to the left side of the photo, and then “read” from left to right back to the goat. It kind of makes viewers dwell on the photo longer than just a passing glance.

I had to crop this photo quite a bit to get this composition (and this was taken with a strong zoom lens), so it’s not a high enough resolution to print, but I wanted to share the story.

Lens Rundown

Posted October 14, 2013 by Mike Piatek-Jimenez

This video is helpful at showing the creative possibilities available while using different camera lenses.

http://wistia.com/learning/get-creative-with-lenses (Image credit: wistia.com)

My Advice
With a limited budget, I always advocate spending more money on lenses as opposed to cameras. Cameras are just like any other technology purchase, as they get older, new ones come out with more features and the old ones just lose value over time. Lenses are different though. They hold their value over time, and in some cases their value increases as manufacturers raise prices to match inflation. When you buy a lens, you can reasonably expect to be using it for the next 20 years, even with new cameras as they come out.

It doesn’t just make good financial sense to spend more money on lenses though. A good lens on an inexpensive camera will offer much better image quality than a cheap lens in an expensive camera. These days, DSLR cameras are so good, that even the lower-end models can take beautiful photographs if you have the right lens.

What’s in my bag?
I currently use three different lenses on my DSLR. Most of the time I use a 24-105mm f4L IS. This is a really nice walk-around lens because it covers images from wide-angle to short telephoto zoom. It also has image stabilization, so I can still get pretty sharp shots even if I don’t have a tripod with me. The primary drawback of this lens is weight, it’s definitely heavier than a lot of other lenses in this focal range. Also, while it’s not as costly as the highest quality lenses in this range, it’s not an inexpensive lens by any means.

For a regular telephoto zoom, I use the 70-200mm f4L. For a telephoto, it’s not too heavy, and it produces very sharp images. It doesn’t have image stabilization, which can be a drawback because a stronger zoom will amplify any camera shake from holding it. I use it mostly outdoors in brighter light, or on a monopod indoors when I need to. It’s also one of the least expensive lenses in Canon’s professional L series.

The last lens I have is a 50mm f1.8 prime lens. Prime lenses don’t zoom, which throws some people who aren’t familiar with primes. I’ve had people borrow my camera with this lens mounted, and turn the ring on the lens and be surprised to find that it will change focus but not zoom. Prime lenses are great in low-light situations. This 50mm lens gathers over 4 times more light than either of my other two lenses, which makes it perfect for indoor shots at night. It’s also very small, very light, and inexpensive. If you have a DSLR with just a kit lens, there is no better way to improve your photography than to spend $100 on a nifty 50.

Next stepsâ€¦
My next lens will most likely be a stronger telephoto, somewhere in the 300mm or 400mm range. It would open up a lot more wildlife shots for me. While the 70-200mm will be great for wildlife you are close to (in a zoo, for example), 200mm is still a little short if you are further away from an animal as in the wild.

After watching this video, an ultra-wide angle 16-35mm f2.8L (or the less-insanely-priced 17-40mm f4L) would really provide a lot of creative possibilities. Someday maybe I’ll try one out.