Family Archives - Page 2 of 2 - New Jersey, Philadelphia, NYC Personal Branding, Commercial and Editorial Photographer

Kayaking the Crosswicks Creek For The First Time

August 25, 2016/0 Comments/in personal /by Deirdre Ryan

This summer I’ve been spending a lot of time with my family. One of the outings we’ve always wanted to do together was to learn how to kayak. But before going out, buying one and the other stuff you need, we thought it would be a good idea to first take a lesson. Also in our area, the you need to have a very good understanding of the tides. We live on the Delaware River and it’s a tidal river that goes out to the Atlantic ocean.

So I contacted Mr. Mitchell, he’s one of the second grade teachers here at Clara Barton Elementary School in Bordentown, NJ and he has his own business, Greenwave Paddling. He is a professional kayaker who gives lessons and tours along the creeks in our areas.

I originally wanted to bring my Canon Mark 5DIII with the 24-70 f2.8L lens and the 70-200 f2.8L non-IS lens. But I thought that perhaps just for starters, since I was learning and it was our first time, I brought my Canon S100 point and shoot and of course my iPhoneSE.

We first met him at the Bordentown Beach so that he could properly fit us with life vests, instruct us on paddling techniques,safety, show us all about the kayaks that we were using, getting into them, making sure that when were seated the kayaks that we were in them properly, and that then we were off!

Having lived along the shores of the Delaware River, Blacks Creek and Crosswicks Creek all of my life. I have never been out on the water of either of them. Not that I never wanted to, no… the opportunity just never came up. So for me I was in heaven and loved it!

I sat in the front with Mr. Mitchell behind me, we both were paddling, while my husband and our daughter were in the other. Once we got past the light rail road bridge, this is what I saw, the beginning of Crosswicks Creek. It was a gorgeous day and just perfect for what we were doing. We brought along water, snacks, and we did stop to rest a few times. Mr. Mitchell talked to us about the history of the creek, our town and the Revolutionary War, nature, what to look for and we just enjoyed the day, because as you can see by the images…it was beautiful.

We got to a certain point, switched front rowers, and headed back as the sun was starting to set.

We spotted saw this Blue Heron, I was kind of far away, so this is cropped from a zoomed in image. Of course I was thinking that I should’ve brought the other camera and longer lens…

The Riverline crossing the bridge with Mr. Mitchell and our daughter in the foreground.

This was an amazing adventure, we never once felt unsafe or insecure. It was relaxing, we were able to truly enjoy our surroundings. Our daughter paddled and did her share very well. This is something as a family we truly recommend and we will be doing this again with Greenwave Paddling. Go to the site and check it out. Thank you Mr. Mitchell for a great time, see you soon!

Ocean City, Part 2

August 11, 2016/0 Comments/in personal /by Deirdre Ryan

Tuesday was a full beach day. Of course I started my day early, got my coffee at Ocean City Coffee Company, my book, camera and sat on the beach to read before it gets crowded.

Now I really enjoyed and loved the Panasonic Lumix 100 LX camera and for this vacation it had everything I needed. A fast lens, large enough sensor, shoots in RAW, etc. However there was a quirk that I had no idea about until much later and I’ll get into this later on.

After spending the day on the beach we ate dinner at Ocean Cafe, and this time with the entire family. While waiting for our food, we heard the Mummers on the boardwalk stop right outside the restaurant. It was really cool!

Found this original Pacman and Ms. Pacman machines… We let her play a few more games including the Batman pinball game, and by then we were exhausted and wanted to get back to our rooms. We had spent the day bodyboarding on the waves, looking for shells, and walking the boards after dinner.

I let my husband take a few pictures.

The next morning I again woke up early to find that after it rained, there were these cloud in the skies that lingered and it looked like the sun was setting, when in fact it was rising. So before getting my coffee, I headed in the opposite direction towards the rising sun to capture these images:

I kept chasing the light and so I found a spot and sat down, putting the camera down on the boards while people were jogging and riding their bikes around me. I shoot in manual mode, so these were almost straight out of the camera with some adjustments.

Then I went onto the beach and continued:

And that’s when I noticed a lone horseshoe crab. The tide was already out, and by the time the beach crowd arrived, I know that someone would try something with it. I man came by and he took off his shirt, placed it around it, and then put the crab in a spot so that it could safely get back into the water. But I first took some shots:

Here’s me taking a selfie with my iPhone SE, no filter in front of the Ocean City Music Pier. I remember when I was a little girl you could set up for the day underneath that pier. Also you could walk underneath the boardwalk, and myself and other kids would throw up sand between the boards at people as the walked above us….but I guess Hurricane Sandy changed all of that.
I started to walk along the beach to go get my coffee and I found another one, but this one was on the move…

I couldn’t get enough of the light that morning, it was just beautiful!

It was super hot and muggy every single day. Even early in the morning, you could feel it. This was the week of that super bad heat have…

Now back to the one quirk that I found really annoying about that camera:
Even though I had the image settings set to RAW, I found out that for some reason the camera was defaulting to jpeg every time I turned it off. I brought my laptop down with me to back everything up, however I thought that I had the proper adapter, when in fact it was my old black Macbook’s. So I had Amazon Prime send another one, but I didn’t get it until Wednesday. Once I got it, and opened up the images, THAT”S when I saw that pretty much ALL of my images were jpeg and not RAW!!!! The evening shots on Sunday? Jpeg. Everything from Monday? Jpeg. The mummers? Jpeg. Those sunrise images? Jpeg. So every single time I turned off the camera for any length of time, I had to keep putting it back to RAW even though my settings were set to RAW, it still defaulted to jpeg. I couldn’t find a way to fix this 🙁 If anyone here knows what to do about this, please leave a comment…or if you’ve had a similar experience I would love to know about it.

Later on that day, we went to Castaway Cove so that we could go on some rides. It’s pretty much next door to our motel.

These are video stills:

Taken from the top of the ferris wheel.
Of course we went back to Shriver’s for some fudge…They still make taffy and fudge on the premises.

Eventually I’ll get to the video, but for now these are what happened on Tuesday and Wednesday of our week’s stay. If you missed my last post click here to get caught up, thanks!

Annual St. Patty’s 5K Run for Our Local Schools

May 4, 2016/0 Comments/in event photography, Photojournalism /by Deirdre Ryan

I was asked to photograph the Annual Bordentown St. Patty’s 5K Race and Family Fun 2 Mile Walk in March in Bordentown City, NJ. This is a fundraiser for the Bordentown Regional School District’s Board of Education, one that I’ve covered for before when working for The Register News under The Packet Publication. Our superintendent of the school district spoke, we had a gorilla mascot, Miss Bordentown ran, and volunteers to organize, set up and help run the event. It was great to see friends of mine with their kids in the race, we are a small community and there were other people from place in the surrounding areas. As our daughter is in the school here, this benefits her.

The race started in front of The Bordentown Home for Funerals and the Finish Line was in front of the Clara Barton Elementary and Macfarland Intermediate Schools(both schools are across the street from each other). After the race, the Family Fun Walk started as well as the awards ceremony in the Clara Barton’s All Purpose Room.

Since I live in the city, I walked over to where everything was. Packing light, I carried only my Canon 5D Mark III with the EF 70-200mm f2.8 L non IS lens and the Canon 6D with the EF 16-35mm f2.8 L lens packed into the Think Tank Retrospective bag(stashed this as well as my heavier jacket away someplace safe inside the school with other volunteers items), then when shooting used their modular belt system with the Hubba Hubba Hiney and the water bottle holder called RU Hot(love this thing!), with both cameras attached to the Black Rapid Double Slim camera strap. When I worked for the newspapers, travelling light was essential as well as having the right gear. True… if you were lucky enough to worked full time, the gear was given to you by the news outlet to use(it was theirs not yours) you always good gear and glass(lenses). But I own everything you see me carry.

Thank you to the Board of Ed for asking me to photograph this event for you, I enjoyed being out there for our community and I know that many of you all loved the images.

In the photo above is our daughter’s former kindergarten teacher running with a student, now THAT is awesome!!!

Studio Portraits of a Beautiful Family

April 7, 2016/0 Comments/in Families and Children, Portraits /by Deirdre Ryan

People do ask if I can photograph their family and I can of course! Normally, I prefer to shoot in natural light outside, but with the bad weather we had here in NJ, an indoor session was what this family wanted.

Such a beautiful family! The boys were great! The youngest was acting his age of course. You need to be patient and try all the tricks in the book and work quickly, never stop shooting, or look away. Eons ago, while in art college, I worked for Expressly Portraits in the mall. There I learned how to photograph all kinds of people and work with them. I quickly learned how to be patient, and hone in on customer service skills. Unlike those days, I don’t need to rush my clients, I take my time, relax everyone, and work with everyone.

I got the shots my clients wanted, plus some great ones of the parents. Thank you for choosing me to be your photographer!

Mom wanted a photo of her and her “baby boy”.
His little brother didn’t want to get too close while standing up, so after this, I had them sit down.
Their mom and dad suggested they do something they like to do in the car, and it worked!