Frank Davis Photography

2012-01-01T09:01:00.000-05:00

Tenacious

It's hard for me to find inspiration in the Winter, I don't do Winter very well. However, a trip to Great Falls on Saturday produced this photo of a very tenacious young tree clinging to a rock as the mighty Potomac roars past behind it.

2011-11-02T14:30:00.001-04:00

The Pond

I saw someone post in a forum "What's the greatest camera of all time?" I'm thinking to myself that it must be the pinhole camera! So I remove the lens from my DSLR and tape a piece of black paper over the lens mount with a pin hole in it. Here's the result of about a 1/2 second exposure. It's tweaked a little but not much. Pretty amazing! You can't get much more low tech than a piece of paper with a hole in it! Of course, you can't get much more high tech than using a high-end DSLR to record the result and then a computer to process the end image.

The Camera

2011-10-18T14:31:00.000-04:00

Skyline Drive

We went up to the Shenandoah National Park yesterday for the fall colors. One of the shots I always like to take is to stick the camera through the sunroof and shoot the road ahead at a slow shutter speed to blur the sides of the road. I tweaked the color a little and ran Topaz simplify on this one. Click to enlarge for a better view!

2011-10-06T14:45:00.000-04:00

Beach House

This was an enormous, ostentatious, beach house. I didn't want it to appear that way, preferring to try to capture the essence of a more typical beach house. I hid most of the house behind the grasses and emphasized the sky to minimize the house. Did I succeed?

2011-09-22T11:13:00.000-04:00

If the camera in my profile photo looks like a point and shoot that's because it is! It's the 1955 version! The Voightlander Vitessa was a very innovative camera back then. With it's folding bellows and clamshell front, it folded down to a size not a whole lot larger than today's point and shoot cameras. The plunger allowed for rapid, one finger advancing of the film, making rapid shooting possible. It had a built in Selenium cell light meter and although it wouldn't set the exposure for you, it featured an innovative system that made it easy using an EV number. The fast f/2 lens made low light exposure possible considering the fastest available films back then were still quite slow. The ASA (Which preceded the more modern iso speed numbers) only went up to 200 on the light meter. Oh yeah, it used 35 mm film! There may still be a few who remember what film was! It's probably worth somewhere around $400 as a collecter item. Not bad considering most old cameras have very little value today.

2011-09-17T16:51:00.000-04:00

Coleman Bridge

I went out to take some photos on Saturday and it turned out to be just a plain old overcast day. Thought this might be a good photo to try Topaz B+W effects out on. I kind of like it!

2011-09-13T16:28:00.000-04:00

From a shoot at the River's Inn Restaurant and Crab Deck in Gloucester Point, VA. I haven't done a shoot for a client in some time. This was a lot of fun though I had forgotten how exhausting it can be working under pressure on a hot day.

2011-06-16T19:18:00.000-04:00

Last night was the full moon. I got out the tripod, 300 mm lens, and 2X converter. And still had to crop to get this closeup!

2011-05-17T19:23:00.000-04:00

I was out taking pictures in the fog this morning… looking for those soft pictures that are to be had on a foggy morning. Found this bike with a compass in the bell. I’m not sure what the attraction was for me, the compass? Perhaps because the compass was gimbaled the horizon remains somewhat of a mystery?

2011-05-11T19:26:00.000-04:00

I was sitting outside today. It was one of those days we old photographers used to call a Kodachrome 25 day. For you not so old photographers, a Kodachrome 25 day is one of those days that are clear and bright with plenty of sunshine to allow one the use of a film rated at an iso of 25. I was watching the puffy clouds and thinking of one of those childhood days where you would lay on your back in the grass and watch the sky pass by. I couldn’t resist getting the camera for a pic of one of those puffy clouds.