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

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 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

It seems like every other night this week in Washington, we've had lightning storms. 

During each storm (after I unplug all my hard drives and other photo equipment) I set up a my camera on a windowsill to capture photos of the lightning.  The way our apartment is situated in the building, we have a limited view of the skyline.  We could see the flash from lots of lightning strikes, but most of the lighting bolts themselves were obscured by buildings. 

Lightning strike in Washington DC