Denny Henry

The gallery space in the Corcoran can be a fun and challenging environment to shoot in. The main challenge of shooting in the galleries is that the light levels are kept very low to protect the artwork.   The conditions give me a welcome excuse to shoot with my fast prime lenses.  

The image below is from a gallery talk that coincided with the annual all-senior show.  For the talk, a group of about 9 students spoke to gallery visitors about the work that they had in the show.  The talk was interesting for me because I  had seen and photographed all of the work in the weeks an months leading up to the show, but had never heard anything more about it than what was in the artists statements.  

Corcoran Students talking about their work in the gallery.

The Corcoran re-designed their gallery and college websites about a year ago, and their image needs changed with the new website.  The new layout of the website use a lot of narrow horizonal images, and I've been shooting with that in mind. 

The clip below is from the Corcoran's monthly newsletter that has a similar need for long horizontal images. The image is a panorama of the 2010 Corcoran Ball.  If you look close you can see the video camera for the Time lapse , clamped on the right side of the second floor railing. 

Last week I shot a portrait of the director of the Corcoran's library, Mario Ascencio.  I arrived after the library was closed for the day, so that we could use the stacks for the backdrop.  The lighting was a simple two light setup.  In the top photo there is a softbox above the camera, and a SB-800 clamped to the shelves above and behind Mario.  I also put a reflector below the camera to soften the shadows. 

More images after the jump

Click to read more ...

 I've previously written about photographing Jana and Kevin's wedding, but I left out one of my favorite images from the day. I was extra excited for Jana and Kevin's wedding, because she specifically wanted me to shoot film.

I sometimes shoot 4x5 or other film when I'm covering weddings, in addition to my regular digital coverage.  Mostly I do it for my own enjoyment, and often the film images simply blend in to the other black and white images from the day. The film images that do stand out are the 4x5's, because I often mess with the tilt-shift functions of the camera when I'm shooting with it. 

Tilt-Shift portrait of the bride and groom shot with a 4x5 in Dupont Circle

I spent half of last week teaching photography to kids at Camp Innabah in Pennsylvania. I didn't have much time to go into great depths about photography, but my goal for the week was to get them interested in taking pictures.  At the begining of the week, it took a little coaxing to get them to shoot even 10 frames.  Fortunatly they got the swing of things pretty quick, and were shooting wildly by the end. 

Photo Campers taking pictures Photo Campers at Innabah in Pennsylvania

Campers learning about nature