Our Little Trip to Richmond, VA

Christina and I went to Richmond a couple weekends ago for my friend Mike's wedding. The wedding was great and it was really fun to see and catch up with friends from VA. It was also cold! But we enjoyed the [much] cooler weather regardless. We had some time on Saturday since all of the Virginia folks drove home Friday night, so we headed into Richmond to walk around, get some food, and enjoy the brick buildings and beautiful, old homes (Florida is lacking in both of those areas).

We also enjoyed the taste of fall and the oranges and red leaves. I didn't take a ton of pictures - it seems I am just as good at not taking pictures - but here are a few!

RE: How to Take Great Race Photos @Healthontherun.net

Since my sister-in-law had a funny post about marathon photos, it inspired me to do a quick search through the several marathons I have photographed for family and/or friends. I sifted through and found a few good ones (embarrassing ones) you know - the usual. And from a photographer's perspective, it is pretty difficult (especially towards the start) to catch your friend or family member, often times a marathon is just a sea of faces.

But to respond to a few of the questions posed like "Can you ever really have a good marathon photo?" -- I would say "Yes! But only when you know it's coming." Check out the last photo in this post - it is definitely helpful having a photographer in the family or a close friend because they can be recognizable and you can end up with a frameable photo for your home or office (like my dad is requesting for a Christmas gift this year). Enjoy these in the meantime:

I'll leave the caption up to you... 

 Can you tell who has run a few marathons? Dave (far left) is a sub-3 hour marathoner smiling away,
my sister (middle-left), my dad (middle-right) making a great straining face towards the finish, and
Dom (far right) seems to be concerned with someone on the sidelines.

 Just an all around good shot - dribbling water, great facial
expression, extra water dribble on her thigh, nice tattoo on
her abdomen...and more I'm sure!

My dad and sister near the finish line (left) - I love the guy right next to
my dad (in blue) - funny expression and so exhausted!

 My sister making a face - one that exclaims "How are
you there AGAIN" - since I caught them twice on
this bridge alone!

Thanks Lauren for sharing your funny photos! It was fun seeing yours and searching through mine to find some best of's! Here is a posed shot - where it is so helpful knowing a photo is coming!!

Costa Family Portraits - Bal Harbour Beach, Miami, FL

Here are some of my favorites from the recent family session with the Costa's! Such a beautiful and fun family. Grandma was in town from Texas, so she joined for the session and for some of the photos. Enjoy!

Check out my Facebook page for more photos:
http://www.facebook.com/BrettBeckerPhotography

And my Website:
http://www.brettbeckerphotography.com/

Less Time Blogging Does NOT Mean Less Time Photographing!

Some photographs of birds over the past month or so from our balcony...

 Blue Jay in Black and White

 Caught this bird at the right moment!!

 Dueling Birds

More posts to come!

Highlight Photos from Last Weekend - Fort Pierce, FL

Weeks seem to be flying by right now for some reason! Been busy with photography, my part-time work, and some other things as well. But another weekend is just about here! Crazy. Here are some of my favorite photos I took last weekend while Christina and I were up on Hutchinson Island in Fort Pierce, FL. I woke up with the sunrise...and because of the sunrise. But I got some beautiful shots and there were quite a few people walking as the sun rose!

My model (wife) showing her beautiful new haircut!

 This is my best butterfly shot so far - not so great, I know!
I'm working on it. They seem to be so evasive!

Took some beautiful shots of the ocean!

Have a great weekend! I'm sorry that most of you can't go to the beach to celebrate the coming of October and fall...but be grateful that you can drink hot pumpkin spice lattes and hot apple cider and not sweat profusely because it's still in the 80's. I know...it's still not the same!

Happy Friday and have a wonderful weekend - and a wonderful long weekend for some!

As always check out my photography site: http://www.brettbeckerphotography.com/

And my amazinly beautiful wife's blog: http://talesoflifeloveandicecream.wordpress.com/

National Coffee Day...is TODAY!

Yep, that's right. Today is National Coffee Day 2011! Althought some places said it's International Coffee Day 2011. Not sure many are celebrating - although Caribou is offering buy one get one free, 7-11 was offering free coffee until 11am, and Krispy Kreme offered some sort of free coffee as well. The Washington Post Blog had a little snippet here.

I'm not sure that Americans need a "special day" to drink coffee, right? Most people that drink coffee have it most days and those that don't aren't going to drink it on this nominally special day. But hey, since I drink coffee most days, might as well celebrate...

In honor of NCD (that's what celebrators call it nowadays obviously) here are some places where I have enjoyed a memorable cup of coffee (that I can remember)...

Costa Rica - enjoyed coffee at a hotel, bought 2 lbs of coffee in a market in San Jose, and 3 years later enjoyed Costa Rican coffee on my Honeymoon in Papagayo...

Kenya - big tea drinkers/producers but I enjoyed both in Nairobi...

Haiti - strong and sweet, almost syrup-like sometimes! Gives you enough caffeine for 3-4 days. My friend Thony said he doesn't like to drink it everyday or else he gets a little crazy and then gets headaches.

Go celebrate. Drink some coffee. Most of you already have and/or were already planning on getting your second or third cup today probably. I might go enjoy one cup today, since I've noticed that two cups gives me a headache! At least at Starbucks...

Announcing Brett Becker Photography!

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New Domain! BrettBeckerPhotography.com

As you may have noticed in my previous two posts, I started watermarking with "Brett Becker Photography" and some of the new BIG NEWS is I also registered my domain name http://www.brettbeckerphotography.com/ - don't get too excited just yet! It will bring you right back here! But there are some exciting things in the process and will hopefully be unveiled soon. So in the meantime, take a look around and enjoy all the photos I have on this blog already!

But it means there are two ways to get here for now:
http://www.brettbeckerphotography.com/
and
http://lettherebelightphoto.blogspot.com/

In the meantime, here is a photo of my parents from a family wedding last year (such a good looking couple, right?!):

I'll tell you this...since I am now editing with Adobe Lightroom 3, Blogger does NOT do my photos justice. I think they look so much better before they get loaded and compressed into Blogger! But that's okay, I realize that Google is high-powered and all, but not enough to put full-size, all-the-millions-of-pixels-photos on my blog time and time again. There's only so much space I guess!

3 for 3 this week (Monday-Wednesday posting) - not bad!

South Beach Miami - Paying to Park...for the Homeless

With all that's going on in South Beach, Miami, it was actually really refreshing to see this! There is SO much money, fame, greed, and waste going on that you wouldn't expect to find a program that provides something for free and even more so you wouldn't expect them to actually forward 100% of the money raised! This parking lot is on Commerce Street in between Washington Avenue and Alton Road - a little west of Collins Road (A1A).

Check out these signs for the full info...

Curb Your Dog! But more importantly, a program that helps change lives...

THIS IS NOT A PARKING METER
You Don't Have To Feed The Meters To Park Here.
But The Change You Put In Them Will Change Lives.

By placing your spare change in our donation meters, you are helping change lives. 100% of the monies collected in these meters fund housing and indoor meal programs for people experiencing homelessness.

Miami-Dade Count Homeless Trust

FREE CALL - Homeless Helpline
1-877-994-4357

 I think these are some of the coolest looking parking meters around. I have taken a bunch of photos of viewers (you know, those things that are like "binoculars" or a "telescope" so you can see the view of the beach or city in a little more detail?!) - well maybe I will have to do some parking meters now! Who knew that they varied from place to place. 

Here is the website for Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust if your curiosity has been sparked. There are definitely a lot of homeless down here in Florida. Having lived in New York, Massachusetts, California, Virginia, and now Florida, there are homeless everywhere and we are all aware. But at least next time you are parking your Lamborghini in South Beach or Miami, you can give to the homeless pretty darn easily. 

I know Hollywood, FL has a homeless shelter and ministry called the Homeless Voice - and they help feed, clothe, house, and provide job training for those who are homeless. But there are usually great people doing great things almost everywhere!

A New Camera, A New Photographer, A Not-so-New Model!

BIG NEWS!

It has come - the time to upgrade to a new camera. It is an exciting time! There is some more news that will be coming along with it (good news of course), but it's not quite at sharable status yet. So stay tuned! But in the meantime, I enjoyed taking my Canon 7D out for a "get to know you date" with my lifetime date (aka wife) to get to know how to use the 7D a little better - and of course enjoy time with my wife. Having my Rebel XTi for 4 1/2 years had me so used to the settings, how to change things quickly and make them the way I wanted, I was so used to the weight and size, and everything changes with the 7D. In order to do the very same things, I had to read the owner's manual...the OWNER'S MANUAL! You think, "Who even reads those anymore??" Well, I read a lot of it. It's very informative and a good reminder of settings, but more importantly I needed to actually LEARN how to change the settings quickly, rather than the slow way which I had figured out easily.

Short story long, here are some photos I took of my beautiful wife Christina - we went down to South Beach Miami (look for my next post) and walked around for the day. It was 95 degrees...and humid of course. So it's not a photographer's dream to be sweaty and trying not to drip all over his camera, nor is it fun for a model who is also sweating. These shots were taken after cooling down for a good half hour or so in a coffee shop, enjoying cold drinks and VERY cold a/c (Florida knows how to keep things cool!), so we weren't too bad by now!

Since we were both pretty unfamiliar with South Beach - as far as finding cool spots to take photos - I tried to keep my eyes peeled for some good ones. I definitely like this one we found (above). This is along the sidewalk that follows the beach - I wouldn't really classify it as a boardwalk. But this short wall added some cool dimension to the photo and elevated my beautiful subject, which also helped remove the people walking and cars behind her.

Here's my new photographer! Christina now tells me this is her camera (the XTi). It mostly is, unless I need a backup! I'm so excited to help teach her how to use it at a more advanced level, since she already knows the basics. She'll be a pro in no time.

I don't think I can pick a favorite between this photo and the first on this post. She is SO beautiful! Stay tuned for a post about South Beach!

New Blog Header...Yes It was FREE!

I was trying to redo my blog header a week and a half ago, and I didn't like what I did to it at all...in fact, I know I made it worse! But anyways, I was trying to search for correct sizes and possibly how to make a good header without the use of photoshop - since I don't have PS - and I came across what you now see above from the website you now see below:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/03/05/blog-headers-for-free-download/

I think it looks great! Of course, you are entitled to your own opinion about it, and you can also make a joke that it looks like the beginning of "The Simpsons" on FOX. Yeah, I just saw that, but putting that aside, it's great and will work out well until I go super custom and make my own blog header - that is nice to look at of course.

So there ya go, a few totally free, "unrestricted use" blog header designs. Free. Haha okay, now I can feel good about my next few posts! I'm very excited to share my favorites from my cousin's Senior Portrait photo-shoot from last Friday. It was a busy weekend in New York, but now we are back in sunny Florida and I edited a big handful of photos so far today. So stay tuned!

Rain Photos into Video #2

Liszt - Hungarian Rhapsody #11 is playing in the background

So I promised giving it another shot...so here it is! I will probably try again, hopefully getting a little better each time. During our almost daily afternoon shower, I decided to take a few more photos. I really like a few of the series that I included in the video and will probably do some similar shots next time it rains! 

Let me know what you think!

NEW Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital - Officially Open to the Public Today!

In honor of the official first day of seeing patients, I wanted to share a couple more photos of inside the brand new hospital - part of Memorial Regional Healthcare System. The doors opened at 7 a.m. from what I heard and I'm not exactly sure when they started moving patients from the old hospital to the new hospital, but it was probably sometime this morning!

3rd Floor - Imaging Service

Child Life Specialist explains the play CT scan
machine - rumored to cost about $20,000! The scan
can be pushed in (usually with a teddy bear on the bed)
and the screen will show a "photo" of the bear's heart,
brain, or lungs - the photos are on a loop. I think I
should get into the medical play toys industry.

This is one of the opertaing rooms at JDCH - this is a panoramic
photo that didn't come out perfectly, but still looks cool!

Above is the Oncology holding room - with a little play area/lounge

Check my previous post for more photos of inside of the Hospital and July 16th's grand opening celebration...
Let There Be Light Photography: Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital Grand Opening Celebration SATURDAY! JDCH Hollywood, FL

Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital Grand Opening Celebration SATURDAY! JDCH Hollywood, FL

So I was able to spend a few hours over at Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital on Saturday - a little while of that time getting my "VIP" tour from my lovely wife. The hospital is nothing short of amazing! But I guess $140 million of anything should be! Regardless of constructions costs, this hospital will do what it is designed to do: Make children feel comfortable for any and all medical procedures, from life-changing surgeries to simple tests. I think from the moment you walk in, you feel strangely "at home." As I put it to my wife, I think the rooms have so many distractions and colors that you forget about all the tubes and wires and things connected to the bed and walls (and eventually patients).

The waiting rooms are situated on the side of the building in cylindrical rooms with sweeping views of the property outside. I can imagine that going to the hospital for tests on your child is not something any parent enjoys, however I think this hospital has done a great job of making it an all around better experience for both child and family. Among others, I know the employees are excited to be in the new hospital! One child on the tour told my wife to break his arm so that he could stay overnight! What he didn't know is the hospital is not open and if he broke his arm, he would have to take a trip to the "old" hospital where the ER will remain.

Remember, with giving away free food...comes LONGGGGG LINES!!!!! This is a photo from the 3rd floor looking out on the line. Luckily, when I went a couple hours later it wasn't as bad, but I still had to wait about an hour I think. But, the food was still free.
 

View from the 3rd Floor to the parking lot

 

Here are some of my favorite photos of inside the hospital...

CT scan (CAT scan) - designed as a pirate ship!

Nuclear Medicine machine - jungle themed! So fun - waterfall needs a bit of redesign!

One of the holding rooms

This is a physician-bot (robot). Can't say I fully understand
why this is needed, but it sure does look expensive!

Hotel Room...I mean hospital room! Sorry, my mistake!

They are going for the "hotel feel" - with folded towels, info folders, and room service!

3rd floor is the Orange Floor

Not your average hospital room, right?!

I saw the custom shower curtain and couldn't resist - I mean clearly that is a needed feature in the bathroom! Also
from that keyboard you can access the features on the flat-panel screen the bed faces. Custom room-service is
included...meaning anything you want anytime you want it - I can imagine that is going to be awesome for patients
and a complete nightmare for the kitchen staff!! That same TV also has internet access, TV of course, on-demand
movies and games, hospital services, and more!

One of the many tours going through!

Some of the outdoor activities seen from my bird's eye view...

 Check the guy on the right - not only is he 20+ years older, but
he is mid-break on those little boards!

 

Hope you enjoyed! 

Here are some follow up links and articles...

Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital - Main Website 

Memorial Healthcare System - Main Website 

Sun Sentinel - DiMaggio Children's Hospital expansion to open Thursday

Miami Herald - New children’s hospital opening in Hollywood

NBC Miami - New Children's Hospital Gets Ready to Open