About Me

I’ve always had an eye for photography…

Beginning with a simple Polaroid instant camera when I was a kid, I’ve had a lifelong passion for photography. My first real camera was my trusty Nikon D5000, which I purchased as a freshman in high school to assist me in my job as a photographer for the school newspaper.

Over thirteen years later, I went on a Mediterranean cruise with my family and returned with hundreds of breathtaking photos. At that point, I decided to pursue my photography passion more seriously by setting up a Redbubble store and uploading some of my shots to Shutterstock.

Fast forward to today, I now photograph everything from landscapes to architecture and flowers with my Nikon Z7 - and my dog, too!

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Last batch of the #scortoncreek pics from a week ago 📷 All of these are woodland scenes from the various trails. I even managed to photograph a #whitebreastednuthatch 🐦 foraging for food on a dead tree trunk using my #nikonz7 's DX mode! #capecod #woodlandtrails #pinetrees #pinetreeforest #capecodbirds #darktable

🌷#springhassprung ! 🌷 Found a few #crocuses blooming right next to my driveway, so I decided to set up another #focusstack. This one is comprised of 20 images front-to-back, with the focus starting on the leftmost #crocus. #spring #flower #heliconfocus #darktable #nikonz7 #focusshift #vanguardtripod

Round 2 of my #scortoncreek photos! Fun little challenge - can anyone identify what kind of fungus the one in the fourth picture is? 🍄 #birdhouse #catkins #willow #forrestfloor #treeroots #treefungus

Giving my #nikonz7's sensor a good #springcleaning! As you can see in this before image, there were some large dust grains on the sensor filter. A few puffs from a blower bulb took care of them easily, though there are a few more spots on the sensor that'll need to be swabbed. I'm terrified of that step 😅 #sensorcleaning #camerasensor

Been a little bit since I posted last - a few technical difficulties prevented me from posting last week 🙃 I've been a #busybee lately with several photography-related things, including editing a batch of photos from last weekend's trip to the trails around #scortoncreek. It's still too early for the trees to have leaves or the flowers to pop up for those wonderful #springphotos, but I got a few good shots that I'll be sharing over the next several days 😁 It was a great challenge, too - I'm focusing more on #composition and #lighting when framing photos, and I'm experimenting with longer exposures, though I'll need several Neutral Density filters to reduce the amount of incoming light... and a good sensor cleaning too. To compensate for the longer exposure times without ND filters, I had to shrink the aperture as far as it will go, which apparently increases the effect dust has on your image. Unfortunately, my #nikonz7 has quite a bit of dust on its sensor filter since I bought it used. I grabbed a sensor cleaning kit after trying to remove the dust spots from several images, so I'll give sensor cleaning a go - wish me luck! 😅 Also - as I'm still learning, feel free to leave any tips or feedback on composing photos or #photoediting. Every bit helps! #capecod #massachusetts #woodlandtrails #woodlandphotography #pinetrees #commonreed #phragmites #forestfloor #birdhouse

Here're the shots from yesterday's video. They're now all up on my Redbubble page, so check out the full sized versions if you see a few that you like - link in my bio for more details! #nikond5000📷 #capecodphotography #sandyneck #sandyneckbeach #capecod #beach #shells #clams #horseshoecrab #dogportrait #redbubble #redbubblephotography

Happy #firstdayofspring! I wanted to get a jump on my #springcleaning by clearing up some space on my hard drives as photos from my #nikonz7 eat up a TON of #harddrivespace, even when compressed 😅. While doing so, I came across a pair of old photos I took at #sandyneckbeach on my #nikond5000📷 and edited with a trial version of #lightroom several years ago, along with several others I took on the same day but never touched. Since I’ve switched to using #darktable, I decided to reedit all of them – and, as a bonus, record a #timelapse of the process! For the video to work with Instagram, I had to vertically crop the video, which did present quite a challenge about how to frame it. I went with a simple right to left pan for the timelapse followed by a #slideshow of the photos I edited with before and after images. Sadly, there’s no audio with this one: I edited this video in #davinciresolve and it's nearly two minutes long, so if I wanted music I’d have to add it myself… which then led to a multi-day research project about locating free, Instagram-compatible and copywrite-free music without running afoul of copywrite laws (seriously, I feel like I need to get a law degree to understand all that 😵‍💫). If you have suggestions for that problem, feel free to leave a comment - every bit helps! I'll be posting the photos from this video separately soon (Instagram limitation - video is too long 😅). If you like these images, they'll also be available on my #redbubble page soon - link in my bio for more details! #capecodphotography #sandyneck #capecodbeach #cairn #sunset #beach #dogportrait #clams #clamshell #horseshoecrab #horshoecrabshell #sand

A day late due to some #technicaldifficulties with #darktable, but worth it in the end! I got a great deal on a #vanguard VEO 3 265 HCB #carbonfiber #tripod (#notsponsored 😋) and decided to try out some #focusstacking with my #nikonz7. The tripod is incredibly lightweight, compact and stable - perfect for #macro shots on #woodlandtrails. Naturally, I used my tried-and-true Test Log as my first #macrosubject. The results were good, but I don't think I set the initial #focuspoint correctly, so the front bit of the #moss is out of focus. Oh well - I can always go back and #tryagain! The second shot is of a pile of rusted steel railroad scraps. That one I managed to #focus correctly, and the result is spectacular 🤩 Both focus stacks were first edited in Darktable and then combined using Helicon Focus. Also, @z_dawg14 was there with me for #floofysupport while I fumbled around with my camera and tripod - she was VERY patient yesterday 🐶 #cameratripod #cameragear #macrophotography #depthoffield #heliconfocus #testlog #wheatenterrier #woodlandphotography #rustedsteel

More shots from the #nikonz7 ! I managed to sneak out to my usual #woodlandtrail this afternoon during a lull in today's #noreaster . Everything was damp out there, which darkened the tree trunks and revitalized the #shelffungus on them and allowed for some spectacular #macro photos. The #z7 continues to outperform my expectations; I've even played around a little with switching between DX and FX modes for a little extra zoom. It certainly helped with the first photo - I can even see tiny little bugs crawling on the stump and moss! 🐜 I think there's a bit of compression when my photos are uploaded here as the first image is a bit less sharp to my eyes than the original is, so I'll have to figure out how to showcase the full-sized images. Perhaps some #motivation for building my own website...? 🤔 #mushroom #mushrooms #fungus #moss #stump #darktable #depthoffield #woodlandphotography #tinybugs

First test photo with my #nikonz7 📷! I've been using this log as a test subject for a few weeks as I learn how to properly control #depthoffield , though I started with my older #nikond5000📷 . I figured that since I had a few photos of this log with both cameras, why not show a comparison between the two? The first image is from the z7 and the second is from the D5000. I tried to post them in the original size, but unfortunately that didn't quite work out (had to repost this! 😅 #stilllearning ). I've increased the opacity of the watermarks for these images so you can more easily see which camera was used and what focal length / settings were used per photo. Minor differences in #composition and #lighting aside, the main thing that jumps out at me with the z7 is the incredible level of fine details in the wood that pop out of the image, whereas they are less defined in the D5000 image (though some of that is because the 18-55 mm kit lens I used there has a wobbly front element, so it's not 100% in focus 🙃). The z7 also has far more #dynamicrange than the D5000 - the colors are more #vibrant and well defined in the z7, whereas the D5000 is much, MUCH hazier (even with #darktable 's dehaze module active!). While I'm totally in love with the z7, I'm still not 100% liking the test shot: some of the moss in front is just out of focus, so I need to work on that depth of field a bit more. It is a LOT more forgiving on the z7, I must say! #testphoto #nikon #naturephotography #moss #log #woods

I regularly post photos, videos, and behind-the-scenes sneak peaks on how I set up and edit my shots.