Star Spangled Banner

September 19, 2009
We awoke to a see of red, white, and blue today. Truth be told, we saw a bunch of volunteers lining the park with flags last night but didn't know what the occasion was for. I kept trying to think of some major holiday that I'd missed but never would have guessed a Constitution Celebration. I guess it's been 222 years since the constitution was written and someone decided our city needed to celebrate. So out came, I'm guessing 222 flags at the park. Seeing it as an opportunity to practice my photography skills, plus we were all up by 7 a.m. anyway, I took Pearl across the street to try out a few things with the camera without a major crowd to get in the way. What I was really going for was a high aperture so I could capture the individual rays of the sun with the flags. It was hard deciding which picture to post today... not that they were great or anything (in fact not a single one stood out as "awesome" to me) but this was the one that I snapped right before the lady in charge of the event asked me if she could get copies of all my pictures. I was pretty surprised and tried to scare her off by telling her I was only trying to practice so I wasn't promising anything spectacular (really, I was pleading with her to not make me share my horrible understanding of composition, lighting, and camera settings). But it made me feel good and this shot does have those sun rays I wanted... too bad she'll be disappointed when she opens her email tomorrow!