Ravens Pep rally at Bateman's

So here it is a week past the event, But! For Monday night football the Ravens managed to pull the rabbit out of the hat and win it. (closer to pulling the hat out of the rabbits a**) Okay so the pep rally was held at Bill Bateman's Bistro II in Glen Burnie. What a wicked time to be had. Even though it was crowded I still managed to get off some good photos again.
Here (below) we have Captain Dee-fense autographing a fans arm. Funny before he did that he asked if the parents knew it was a permanent marker. Such as it is for fan-hood, right?!

Here are some more hardcore fans of the Ravens (Raven nest #33) with Poe and Captain Dee-Fense.


During the rally, inside Bateman's, a whole lot of raffle tickets, calendars, and what not, were being given away and signed. Also a few good looking Jim Beam reps were working the crowd to try the smooth bourbon whiskey. They we doing a great job of it. (below)



And of course in the photo below is what most came to see and interact with.


It was my pleasure to photograph all these lovely women and if you would like to see more of the photos that I took, head over to my website and look under events and the BTS folder to find the rally pics.

Until next time, peace!
Brian

Relay For Life

American Cancer Society Relay For life

Just one of the many events that had taken place for the American Cancer Society, this one in Linthicum, MD and the very first, and definitely not the last for Penny Z. founder of Breast Savers and survivor. She and many others that have been touched by cancer showed up to help the American Cancer Society find a cure. Many small groups were formed from Nurses stations in hospitals, schools, larger organizations like Sandy Spring Bank, to even the "Police Against Cancer". (BTW, great pit ham guys)


Every time going around the track I kept smelling this awesome food and I could not help my self any longer and had to get the pit ham Sandwich.

I wasn't able to be at the beginning of this event because my beautiful daughter had a dance recital in which I felt I should not miss. From what I was told there were whites doves released at the beginning of the event.


I was with the Baltimore Tailgater Society who dubbed themselves "the Crawling Gators" (photo above) for this event. Sporting water guns to keep cool during this warm, muggy day, they lapped the track many times. Constantly through-out the day people were taking their walk to support the cause. Some were even running or jogging. But they never stopped even with the threat of rainstorms looming overhead. One group even held a dance to help with donations.


Luminaries were bought in remembrance of loved ones and for those who are survivors and laid them out along the inside rim of the track. Jewelry, snacks, raffles, and other items were sold to help benefit the American Cancer Society and for the cure. Rita's and Bruster's Ice Cream among a few other vendors donating as well.
Toward the end of the day, not to be confused with the end of the relay, the luminaries were lit. Once lit everyone stood near their luminaries while Amazing Grace was played on bagpipe. (below) then took another lap around the track. The relay ended around 7 am the following morning.

Hundreds of luminaries were set out along the track and some luminaries were put on the bleachers to spell out the word hope.

Me, I bought a luminary in remembrance of my first wife, Susan, who passed away at the young age of 28 from an extremely rare ovarian cancer. I think I will be doing this every year. However I will take different photos though..LOL

I hope everyone has enjoyed my blog so far.
There is more to come because life just keeps bringing it on, nonstop.

Peace
B

Roof Top Views

I had always wondered what it would be like to view parts of Washington DC from the air. But the views from a roof top is a bit more down to earth and shows a little more detail. Here, I am in North West DC specifically in the Mount Pleasant community.In the photo below are their roof tops with skylights, chimneys, and painted over copper standing seam roofs.
The fronts of these homes are quite beautiful and elegant but no one ever really gets see the rest. The masses are normally looking from the street side and not the ally side. Not that I would dare to go alley side anyhow. But from up here the view of the other side of the alley was somewhat unexpected. I was surprised to see the beauty in such an historic place where crime usually takes place 24/7.

From here trees seem to grow from above the garages but they aren't. Also to put more perspective to the view I am on top of two stories and those house across the ally way are much higher than I. From the top you can count the stories, 5. Three for the house and two for the garage. For some odd reason I find this to be far more interesting than the fronts. However for up here the fronts aren't to bad either!
I hope you have found this to be an interesting blog, short even in its descriptions.
Until next time.
Peace,
B

A Stick Burning Party

A friend of mine had a thought to have a party and revolve this party around burning sticks as well as a party to usher in spring. I think it is ingenious. Invite your friends to help gather sticks and branches that fell during winter pile them up and have a party to help burn them and of course to keep an eye on the fires as well. In the photo above is one of two piles that were used to burn these said sticks. A very cute firebox with stars and moons.


Getting together and having a party is always awesome but to bring live music to it makes it even better. To have lots of musicians as your friends - priceless! I was one of those musicians and out of 20-30 some odd people more than 75% were musicians who brought instruments with them. I brought my Michael Kelly 5 string acoustic bass with me but it was drowned out by the acoustic guitars. Good thing someone had an upright and I brought my camera so things worked out for the best.


To capture the essence of fire is a bit difficult. So many parameters to consider. One being how to focus on something that's not quite there yet or is dancing around like crazy. Having a small f stop is pointless to make sharp focus problematic. Making sure the flames don't overpower the embers in the belly of the fire is a lighting problematic. So waiting for the fire to "cool down" yet keep it's height was a 10 minute ordeal. I was able to freeze the essence of this fire with one shot at the right time at f1.4, 1/1600 sec. @ ISO 3200. In the larger photo one can see the embers just as well as the detached flames at the top of the fire column.



In the above photo a "fire tender" resting after stoking "burning sticks". Fire does tend to make for some very interesting shadows and highlights. Here I positioned myself to use the light from the fire as more rim lighting than trying to light the subject as a whole and to keep the other faces in as having full lighting on the face .


Macro is the "bomb"! The photo above was taken with a 105mm f2 macro lens. And yes, it was very hot. I thought I would loose some knuckle hair on this shot. I didn't have very much time to compose, focus, and shoot. I didn't want to loose my lens after all. This was shot through the fire box on the top photo.
All in all I had a good time at this party taking photos of the fire and the people, conversing with other musicians and photographers. Thanks for the invite Jenn!
Well now I hope you enjoyed another post on my "A Day,.... in the life..." Till next time - Peace!
B

Assateague Island at the end of Winter

Well here it is another month has gone by and I have only one post to show. Winter can be so limiting on your creative flow. So, enough of that and on with the post. Assateague Island as most of you know in on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. It has some of the most beautiful wild horses living on the island.
These guys have some very long eyelashes (eat your heart out Maybelline girls). The long lashes developed because of the blowing sand. Just as camels have these long lashes as well.
The most disturbing thing about these horses are the humans that visit them. We are not supposed to get close to them and pet them or feed them. Even if it's the grasses they feed on. They can and have been know to "defend" their space by rearing up and kicking. Signs are posted everywhere and with warnings of fines. But still while I was there, people were coming up to them and getting within their personal space. What is it about "wild" do these people not seem to understand. Certainly they have disregard for nature as well as the law.
Enough about the goofy humans. I did manage to see more horses this time around on the island then ever before. I think around 25 different horses were in view on my short excursion. Oh there were other animals coming out to feed as well.

Take this rabbit (actually don't) for example. It was foraging around the base of these thick bushes looking for some new green growth to feed on. Good luck rabbit. He/She stayed in this one spot until all the people and cars disappeared from sight, including me. I came back no more than 10 minutes later and it was gone.

Now this gull can read. It was only standing after all....There were plenty of these flying around , getting annoyed at me for intruding on it's territory or for just not having any boardwalk fries.

And this guys was just so annoyed with me He kept yelling and fly around me. Guess he thought I was after his horde of female cardinals that were very well hidden in the brush. Wow, like ease up dude! He would not let me get any closer that this and i didn't have a 1000mm lens either. Would be nice though.

Now, dunes are created by the wind, sand and, other things like plants and fallen branches for example. A grass tuft grows in the sand. The wind blows remove the sand from in front and deposits it at the back Some of these can get very large. I've seen, in the past, 20 feet high or so. But they are very fragile and one should not walk on them. The photo above has these little pieces of debris on top of these miniature dunes. Very cool to look at. You can tell which side the wind was on. But in this instance the wind wasn't strong enough to move that little tiny piece of wood on top nor the sand under it, but was strong enough to remove the sand around it.

These photos and more are on my zenfolio website, under Assateague Island, listed to the right of this post

Until next time, Peace!
B

MSP Polar Bear Plunge Event Photographs

Well now I know it has been a while since my last post but I will make it up to you guys.
This post is about the Maryland State Police Polar Bear Plunge which took place on Saturday Jan. 30th at the Sandy Point State Park. The plunge is to help raise monies for the Special Olympics of Maryland, and from my last look, over 2 million dollars was raised.
Although I did not take the plunge myself, I was on the beach at the waters edge. It was the coldest day of the week and to top it off it started to snow at around 10:00 am and by 11:00 am there was enough snow coming down that walking around was difficult at best. However, I managed to get some good photos of strange people (they're all strange and crazy to go plunge at 24 degrees) and a few of the states best.

As you can see in the photo above a few people have a few cloths on. This one was very excited, but not sure if it was the beer doing most of the talking.

Here we have a Ravens Roost or Nest bus who came to show their support. As you can tell there is a considerable amount of snow coming down. Very fine flakes and some ice mixed in as well.

Here at the beach we have the states divers just getting out into the water. From there they will go father back and create a line to prevent plungers from going any further back. The US Coast Guard has tugged in a crane to hold The US flag.
Here everyone behind me was waiting and shivering, dancing around to keep warm. Keeping the snow off my lens and camera was quite the challenge considering the wind kept blowing the snow at right angles. However I was smart enough not to keep it inside my coat because if I had the lens would be constantly fogging and freezing. Unfortunatley I did not have my plastic bag covers for this kind of weather. My camera is doing fine even though getting it back into the back pack it started to condensate. Thank you Nikon for having done a great job of sealing it. There was no condensate on the inside, all outside. Yeah!

Finally -
It did not take long for people to run in and then run right back out. Some just got their feet wet while others dove right in. You can see the line the divers made. A lot of what I heard was the "Oh my God, its so freaking cold" I think this phrase was used more than several hundred times. It's for a good cause so it's worth the little bit of cold.


Here is another one such strange individual. Sporting a lifeguard swimsuit and a blonde wig this plunger went all the way under.

A lone diver keeps a vigilant eye at the very edge of the plunge area. The Bay bridge is in the background while a police boat waits patiently in case of any emergency. Notice the divers are all wearing thermal dry suits...They're not crazy by no means. Very few people had to have emergency services out of the all who showed up.
There were three set times for plungers. The first was the power plungers at 11:00 am and the second was at 1:00 pm. The third plunge was supposed to be at 3:00 pm but was canceled due to inclement weather...Wait! What! Inclement weather. Not sure if that really made sense or not.
I was with a group of plungers that raised over $6,000 called the Baltimore Tailgators Society.

Well now, I hope that made up for some of the lack of posting on my part. Hope you enjoyed this.
Until next time -
Peace,
Brian