This is what I did last year at Photoshop World Pre-Conference Workshop!!

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I couldn’t sleep last night.  In fact, I woke up early double and triple-checking my cameras, CF cards, batteries, and lenses.  I must have worn out the carpet pacing back and forth in my hotel room.    It’s Photoshop World Pre-Conference Photo Safari Workshop with world famous photographer Joe McNally and Moose Petersen.  The picture above is the 3 of us… I guess you figured the guy in the middle is me.    I’ve been looking forward to this workshop for many months.  This workshop is so popular that it’s literally sold out within a couple of days from open registration in May.  In fact, I tried signing on to this workshop several years but I was always a little too late.    This year, I was watching the open registration like a hawk and signed up on first day.  A couple of days later, my buddies couldn’t join me because it was already full.  So, for those of you who wants to learn about lighting, composition, and all out have fun with 2 great photographers… register early!

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Happy 4th Wedding Anniversary to Michelle and Chris

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What a beautiful and gorgeous day for a wedding!  I’m so lucky to photograph Maryann and Ryan at sunny Dana Point, California.  We had so much fun photographing their big day, we were laughing the entire day.  They are such a fun loving couple and I can tell they are so in love.  ~Sigh~ This is the perks of being a wedding photographer.  I get to meet great people all the time and witness the love that surrounds us all. 

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Today I woke up early because it’s my last day in DC and I wanted to take a last look around the Smithsonian Museums before driving to the airport.  I decided to go to my favorite museum of all time… The National Air and Space Museum.

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We had to recover from yesterday’s event at the National Boy Scouts Jamboree.  So, we slept in and a little bit and arrived at the National Spy Museum.  Although this museum is not part of the Smithsonian Institute (and $15 entry fee), I highly recommend it.  There were thousands of display of spy equipment that you would see in the movies for the past decades which I thought was so amazing for its time.  In addition, it showcased many celebrities who were spies during the WWII to the Cold War.  People that you would never thought of being spies such as Julia Childs and John Ford to name a few.

We then head over to the Museum of Portrait Gallery which was just around the corner from the Spy Museum.  I’m a big fan of Norman Rockwell, and they happen to be showing he George Lucas and Steven Spielberg’s private collections of Norman Rockwell paintings.  To see the actual brush strokes was so inspiring and to have glimpse of the genius of Norman Rockwell. He approached his paintings like a photographer and cinemaphotographer… lighting is everything to him.  He would then hold audition for his models.  Yes, audition as if he’s casting a role for a movie.  This explains why his paintings were so animated!

We were not allowed to photograph pictures at the museums we visited today.  So finally, toward the end of the day before sunset we walked over to the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial.  Click on the image above to view some of the images I photographed today.

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We woke up extremely early this morning to venture out to a 68 mile drive to Fort A.P. Hill in Bowling Green, VA.  It’s the hosting site of the National Boy Scouts Jamboree.   This year is BSA’s 100th years of scouting.  Due to the anticipated large amount of visitors to the arena show tonight, they might turn away visitors today once they have reach maximum capacity.  The site doesn’t open until 9AM, and we got there by 9:30AM with heavy traffic at various times.  Believe it or not, we were re-directed to the over-flow parking already.  They are estimating over  70,000 scouts at the arena show tonight base on the visitor attendance today.

We took the shuttle from the parking lot and went straight to the Merit Badge Midway which showcased over 100 different merit badges.  Some of these merit badges include “Geo-tagging”, “Metalwork”, and “Model Railroad”.  It was a pretty hot day but I remember being a lot worse back in 1993.  Incidentally, I bumped into a fellow ’93 staff member.  We took a picture together with that year’s theme T-Shirt.  One of the fun event is BMX Cycling, Skeet-Shooting, and Air-Gun Rifle.  It sure brought back old memories. We then stopped by for lunch at a local trading post.  Believe it or not, there were so many people today, it took us over 30 minutes to purchase our food!!  Boy, it was hot waiting in line in the heat.

By mid-afternoon, we were pretty tired and we decided to enter the arena show early to get a good vantage point of the arena show.  There were fireworks, and musical entertainment.  It was live-feed to the Internet for those who cannot fly all the way out here to enjoy the festivities.  Although rumor has President Obama attending, but he and his advisors decided to attend “The View” rather than fly over to the Fort A.P. Hill. It’s only a short helicopter rider from DC.  Yeah, we were pretty disappointed considering President George Bush attended 2005.  You can view his speech by clicking here.

There were a low fly by of the Thunderbirds briefly and the Rangers performed their usual jump out of the airplane.  What was also missing this year were the hot-air balloons by the Army, Air-Force, and the Order of the Arrow.    Mike Rowe from “Dirty Jobs”, an Eagle Scout, gave a heart-felt speech about his childhood an how Boy Scouting changed his life.  To view his speech, slide the timeline on the video below to 3:08:28.  He even wore a T-Shirt that says, “A scout is clean, but not afraid to get dirty”.  This T-Shirt can be purchased here if you didn’t get it at the trading post at the Hill.  All in all it was a great experience as we made many friends in scouting from all over the country.  Just take a look at the photos of all the scouts attended.  As far I could see were “Sea of Boy Scouts” in uniform.  It was an amazing sight to see.  I’m glad I took the time, flew over to DC, drove 70 miles, and walked 10 miles in the heat today.

Here’s the 100th Anniversary Jamboree Arena Show

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What a beautiful glorious day in DC!  We decided to head back out near the Dulles Airport to the Udvar Hazy Air and Space Museum.  This is also part of the Smithsonian Institutes and a second Air and Space Museum.  Although this museum is smaller than the other National Air and Space Museum but it houses the Space Shuttle Enterprise, SST Concorde, and the WWII Air Bomber Enola Gay!  It was also so cool to be in this museum because that’s where they filmed “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”.

Although this museum was awesome but it’s not as big as other Smithsonian Museums.  So, the remainder of the day, we drove back to DC to the National Archives.  I have always wanted to see the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  However, with all the trips to DC, I was too pre-occupied with the main museums at The Mall.  They close at 6PM and we barely made it in as there was a long line getting in.  At the National Archives, we were not allowed to photograph anything.  That’s why I have no pictures in the above gallery.  I did take mental-photographs of these documents though.  Sometimes, mental photos are better… it’s in HD, stills and motion picture at the same time and it’s forever stored in my head. 

Our national documents are now showcased in bullet-proof, temperature controlled, low dim-lit room to preserve these 200 year old documents as long as possible.  I was anxious to walk through the line and finally, when they let our group in, I went straight for the Declaration of Independence because I might not get a chance to view it if they close the museum on us.  I was shocked to see that the signature section is so faint that I can barely made out “John Hancock” signature.  Boy, another 50 years, this document will be gone.  So, for those of you who wants to see this document, don’t delay.  Don’t wait too long  before it’s too late. 

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I woke up kind a late this morning, still adjusting to the time change for the East coast.  We managed to drive out to the Smithsonian and visited the Museum of American History.  It’s one of my favorite museums in DC because it has everything that represents our history of this great culture.  It has Fonzie’s leather jacket, Michelle Obama’s inaugural ball gown, George Washington’s uniform along with Colin Powell and Gen. Schwartzkopf military uniform.  The Star Spangle Banner flag which over 100 years old can also be viewed in a temperature control vacuum room to preserve it due to its fragility though the years.  It used to hang in the main lobby, and it would be revealed every 15 minutes with the National Anthem.  However, since the flag is slowly coming apart, they do away with that when the Smithsonian Institute reconstructed the museum.  It now hangs a metallic American.  No need to worry about this flag coming apart any time soon. 

Although it was raining, we were not hampered by the hot muggy weather because we spent most of the day in a air conditioned museum  We also ventured out to the Capital building and the sun peeked out long enough for a couple of closeup shots of the garden with the building in the background.

We then drove to the Library of Congress in hope to get a glimpse of the interior of the building but it closes at 5:30PM.  We were able to go into another building and watched a documentary about epidemic of child pornography in our nation.  It was a disturbing film but an eye-opener none-the-less.  We need to look into this issue and take it more seriously.

When we took a break while walking back to our cars, we actually saw the Secret Services in action.  They drove in their black bullet-proof Suburbans.  It was a sight to see them in black suits and speaking into their hands.  All of the sudden, I felt much safer.

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I flew the red-eye flight into Dulles International early this morning.  While driving to my hotel, came across Arlington Cemetery.  I was so in awed with the solemn ceremony of the changing of the guards at the Tomb of Unknown Soldiers.  As I walked the grounds to view various grave sites such as JFK and RFK, I walked passed a field of grave stones which reminds me of so many have died for our freedom.  It’s too bad that we so often take that for granted.

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