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Jones Point LighthouseOriginally uploaded by etacar11

Jones Point Lighthouse, in Alexandria, VA. Almost right under the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. My mother and I visited it on the 4th of July.

I’ve had a fascination with lighthouses for a while now and I took advantage of the day off to see this local one.

It’s owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution and the building is not open to the public. Sadly. Maybe they will restore it someday. But it was nice to be able to walk around it.

Located on the grounds of the lighthouse is one of the boundary stones for the original boundries of the District of Columbia. You could only see it from above, though a hole in the seawall. Best viewed from the water, I guess.

Clopper Lake

Originally uploaded by etacar11.

Ok, I haven’t posted in a millenium and the time has come for a new one…

Rob and I are always looking for new places in the area to go hiking (our new hobby) so we checked out Seneca Creek State Park on this day. It’s a beautiful area, once you get away from the street noise. We saw signs of beaver activity on the trail (felled trees), though the culprits were nowhere to be found.

We walked mostly on the Greenway trail, and a little bit around Clopper Lake. The official trail guide that we got at the visitor’s center for $4 had an amazing amount of detail. I will definitely have to get one at every MD state park I go to in the future…

This park, by the way, was one of the locations for my brother’s film, the Blair Witch Project.

Ocean City, Maryland

Originally uploaded by etacar11.

I just spent a week in Ocean City. Beautiful beaches, wonderful weather. This was near the condo we stayed in. I’m working on my own web travel guide. More on that soon. I will definitely have to include stuff on Ocean City.

I took my dad’s Canon AE-1 with me. Haven’t developed the Ocean City roll yet. I DID get the roll back that I took on the Washington Photo Safari to Dumbarton Oaks in DC. Not really satisfied with the shots I took. Maybe it’s my inexperience. I don’t know. I have the photos on a CD, too. I’ll have to see if Photoshop can do anything interesting to the images. I think the Sun is too bright in most of the shots.

Seven Foot Knoll Light

Originally uploaded by etacar11.

I was supposed to meet a friend in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor–she never showed, must have been a miscommunication. But I did get a nice picture of this lighthouse, part of the Baltimore Maritime Museum. I’m a big lighthouse fan…

Grace Church

Originally uploaded by etacar11.

Went on another Washington Photo Safari a couple of weeks ago. “Georgetown by Land and Sea.” We started along the C&O Canal, where they have boat rides on the canal (we didn’t go on the boats) and then walked by Grace Church. Then we took a boat down the Potomac to the Jefferson Memorial and back. Windy on the boat, but fun. I can’t wait to get a camera with a better zoom. I’m signed up for their Dumbarton safari next.

I found out recently that my dad has all kinds of lenses and filters to go with our old Canon 35mm film camera. He bought it in ~1979 at the Naval Station exchange on Guam. The battery door broke off, but otherwise it still seems to work. I think I might play around a bit with it…

Canopy flowers

Originally uploaded by etacar11.

Hey, I can post photos from my flickr page here. Cool! This is a shot I took at the USBG…

Wow, I haven’t posted in a long time.  Laziness…

DC Web Women have made me co-chair of the expos committee.  I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing!  I’ve never done anything like this.  Currently we are signed up to do a booth at the Government Video and Technology Expo in December.  We’re also in talks with a few other expos.  Guess it’s a good way to get the word out about DCWW.  And for our members to make contacts.  It will all be a first for me.  Hope I get the hang of it !

I’ve moved all my photos to Flickr. It’s SO much better than my old online album.   Much easier to work with and organize.  And of course, you can easily access other people photos, on just about any subject.  Cats, New York, lighthouses, any thing you can think of.

I’m starting to take photography very seriously as a hobby.  I went on my second Washington Photo Safari a couple of weeks back.  Architectural treasures of Pennsylvania Avenue.  It was fun but incredibly hot.  Not a lot of shade on Penn in June!   Anyway, I’ll probably be talking about photography here.   I was going to keep it just web design and web-related stuff but what the hell.  It’s my blog!

The first thing I need to do is get a better camera.  I was thinking of getting a Canon A700 but after one of the other people on the Penn Ave. safari let me look through his camera I’m leaning towards that one: the Canon S2 IS.  It’s still point and shoot, but very SLR-like, with a 12x optical zoom.  My current camera is a cheap Vivitar I got at Target for less than $100.  It’s not bad, I’ve had a lot of fun with it, but it doesn’t do much and it’s got a crappy digital zoom.  It will do, though, until I have $300 to spare for the S2.