Photo Safari

For the past month or so, I’ve been taking an iPhone photography class through a program at Johns Hopkins University, and on Saturday, we had our final class – a photo safari. We started at the beautiful Hopkins campus with its classical architecture, and then made our way over to the adjacent Baltimore Museum of Art. It was a crisp clear morning, and just a little too late to get the good low morning sun.

But the trees around the campus were in full colour, so that helped a lot.

As we wandered around the campus, the teacher told us to look for textures and shapes.

We wandered down to the west side of the BMA where there are some great sculptures,

dramatic trees,

and gorgeous buildings.

I love this image of the small puffy clouds, with the moon just below.

There are a number of lion sculptures scattered inside and outside the museum.

We headed to the sculpture garden on the east side of the museum, where I spotted one of my favourite buildings, which used to house the campus newspaper. Not sure what it is now, but I still love it!

Despite the fact that it was the end of October, there were still plenty of things blooming and green.

Then we headed into the museum itself to check out some of the galleries and to try and get some good pictures.

As you might expect, my favourite section is the American decorative arts, where so much is wonderfully familiar. This is looking out at the beautiful little Benjamin Latrobe-designed spring house on the grounds.

Three of the spaces. In the center of the middle image, you can see the famous Woodlawn Vase, the most expensive trophy in sports. A replica of it is given each year to the winner of the Preakness Horse Race here in Baltimore.

Of all of the 200+ images I took, this was one of the last ones, and I think that it’s one of the best. No filters, just a tiny bit of cropping to get rid of an Exit sign. Just the guard leaning against the door frame with the light shining in.

This was my other fave – a leaf in a fountain with some reflections of the surrounding buildings.

Going out and shooting like we did was a rare thing for me. Although I’ve carried a camera, and now a phone with me for 12+ years, every single day, it’s not often that I purposely go out to shoot pictures.