Family Photo Session at Sugarloaf in the Fall, Frederick County Photographer

Sugarloaf Mountain in the fall is bustling with hikers, families and rock climbers.  It holds a special place in my heart. Not only did I spend afternoons of my childhood hiking thorough it's leaves but I was also married on the mountain. A Chicago developer wanted Frank Lloyd Wright to design a parking garage for motorists in the shape of a spiral, similar to an upside down Guggenheim Museum on the mountain.  While I love Wright's architecture I am so glad that idea never came to pass.  

When one of my clients asked me to photograph their family again this fall, I suggested Sugarloaf due to it's various backdrops and fall colors.  I think their son and dog want to go back and have more time for exploring.  Here's a sampling of the session.

A boy and his dog

Family and the East Vista

Hamlet!

This boy loves to laugh!

Every kid loves a piggyback ride!

Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia, PA, Frederick County Photographer

We recently visited Eastern State Penitentiary on a tour of Philadelphia and I will say that is was my favorite stop of the trip. While a lot of the other sites were interesting and historical and I added to my US History Knowledge, this tour delighted my visual senses and I would go back in a heartbeat.  

"Eastern State Penitentiary broke sharply with the prisons of its day, abandoning corporal punishment and ill treatment. This massive new structure, opened in 1829, became one of the most expensive American buildings of its day and soon the most famous prison in the world. The Penitentiary would not simply punish, but move the criminal toward spiritual reflection and change. The method was a Quaker-inspired system of isolation from other prisoners, with labor. The early system was strict. To prevent distraction, knowledge of the building, and even mild interaction with guards, inmates were hooded whenever they were outside their cells. But the proponents of the system believed strongly that the criminals, exposed, in silence, to thoughts of their behavior and the ugliness of their crimes, would become genuinely penitent. Thus the new word, penitentiary."-Eastern State Pennitentiary

 Imprisoned Overtime (B&W)

Imprisoned Overtime (Color)

Looking Up

65

Taken for "Men" Week for 52 Frames

Golden Light

Cellblock #5

Bird and Snake, Point of Rocks Photographer(s)

I walked out on the deck at noon to eat my lunch to hear a two catbirds, many robins, a couple of red finches, a mocking bird and a blackbird all screaming at each other as they flitted between the fence and two of our Green Giant trees (like Leyland Cypress). We thought it was a fight over a nest with the catbird causing the trouble.  We observed this for about five minutes and then things quieted down.  Ryan finally walked over to the tree to yell, "I snake is consuming a bird!"  This is what Ryan and I caught on camera….I still have chills after seeing this.
Ryan said the snake is still up in the tree and trying to eat the last of the feathers.  Bon Appetit!