May 13, 2024

News

This is my photo the juror selected for Falls Church Arts' Flora and Fauna show. The show continues until June 9th, and as of today this photo hasn't sold. If it doesn't sell during the show, I will add it to my Framed Prints in June when I can get a photo of the way Tom Gittins of Art & Frame of Falls Church framed it for me.

I was so happy to get photos of Blondie and her two new cubs last October after her three cubs from 2022 were killed by a male grizzly who wanted to mate with Blondie. The female grizzlies won't come in season if they have cubs, and the cubs normally stay with their mothers until they are entering their third year. Knowing that the male grizzlies tend to avoid the areas near the roads, many "famous" grizzly bears like Blondie, 610, and the most well known 399, raise their cubs close to the roads to use the crowds they draw as a shield.

I wound up in northern Maine to find clear skies for the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse, and it was an incredible experience. I created this composite image to show the partial phases, the major "must have photos" at the beginning and end of totality, and the corona that is only visible during totality. I chose to make the beginning and ending of totality images at the cardinal points of the layout to emphasize those photos. I have other composites with the partial phases and totality, a "panorama" of seven images during totality, and the individual images in the Eclipse-2024 gallery.

Please also take a look at my photos from the 2017 Solar Eclipse where we had about one and a half minutes of totality when Elena and I travelled to Ashton, Idaho. I actually think that my diamond ring photo from 2017 may be better than the diamond ring photos I captured in 2024.

Please check out my Best Images of 2023 gallery for my favorite photos from 2023. I tried to limit the number of photos from my Western Trip in the gallery, and I also tried to avoid overloading the gallery with my astrophotography, Shenandoah National Park or wildlife photos.

I have created a new gallery with (almost) all of the photos I post to Facebook and Instagram except for my fox hunting albums. The photos in the gallery are in, roughly, reverse chronological order from newest to earliest, and, by default, you will see the photos I have posted in the current year since I have posted a lot of photos over the years. You can select another year or All if you want to through the filter just above the gallery thumbnails.

I have finally created a solo gallery with my photos from Huntley Meadows Park. The gallery brings together my bird, wildlife and scenic photos that I've taken in this park. The photos in the gallery are in, roughly, reverse chronological order from newest to earliest, and, by default, you will see the photos I have posted in the current year since I have posted a lot of photos over the years. You can select another year or All if you want to through the filter just above the gallery thumbnails.

Here are my photos from the 2023 Virginia Field hunter Championship that was hosted by Old Dominion Hounds on Sunday November 12th. Congratulations to Mo Baptiste of Piedmont Fox Hounds who is the 2023 Champion.

In late September and early October of 2023, I had a really good trip trip through Glacier, Grand Teton, Yellowstone and Arches National Parks and some other spots on the way to or from those parks, and all the pictures that I've processed, so far, are in the West-2023 gallery. Seeing the grizzly bear known as Blondie with two healthy cubs may have been the highlight on my trip, since Blondie's three cubs from 2022 were killed shortly after I left Yellowstone / The Tetons in June of 2022.

In 2022, I made stops in Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, Monument Valley at the Utah/Arizona boundary, Capitol Reef National Park, the Grand Canyon and, very briefly, Bryce Canyon National Parks before I headed North to Grand Teton and Yellowstone Parks for about two weeks in May and early June, and then I had another week and a half in the Tetons and Yellowstone in mid July before coming home. In 2021, I visited Arches, Monument Valley, Horseshoe Bend, the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, the Tetons, Yellowstone and Devils Tower.

You may also like to check out my photos from my 2019 Winter Trip to Yellowstone, with a separate gallery for the sequence of my Lamar Valley wolf encounter, and my gallery of autumn photos from my West 2018 trip.

I have been getting a lot of photos of the White Tailed Deer in Shenandoah National Park, so I have created a new gallery for all my white tailed deer photos, and I will be going through the Shenandoah National Park and Wildlife galleries to reduce the number of deer photos in those galleries.

If you have been following my Facebook Page, you know that I have taken a lot of bird photos in the last few months. I have created a Birds gallery for just my bird photos, and I removed most of the bird photos from my Wildlife gallery.

Please check out my Farmington Hunt Club page for all my fox hunting photos. This includes February 10th Joint Meet with Keswick at Millington, December 30th at Schoolhouse Field, December 23rd at Millington, photos from earlier in the hunting season, and my photos from previous years.

I spend a lot of afternoons, nights and mornings in Shenandoah National Park for sunsets and sunrises, the stars in between, and the wildlife and scenery, and I have collected most of the photos I have taken in Shenandoah into this gallery. The colors are mostly gone now at the higher elevations, but the wildlife are still active, and I am hoping for some clear skies for a little more astrophotography in the coming weeks.

Over the last few years, my fascination with pictures of the rising or setting moon has grown to encompass many photos of the Milky Way and other astrophotography images, which you can find in my Stars & Other Astrophotos gallery. There is some overlap with the photos in my Moon & Nighttime gallery for now just as the moon photos overlap with photos in my Sunrises and Sunsets gallery. The Sun & Moon is a bit of an orphan now though I occasionally do add photos there as well as in the more specific galleries.

I have scanned some of my old slides and uploaded a lot of images from places like Mount Baker, Yosemite National Park, the California coast, and spots closer to home. Check out the Wilderness and Ocean Images galleries in particular. I will also be adding a few more slalom races and other kayaking and canoeing photos in the Whitewater galleries in the next few days.

Website Updates

I added a field to the filter form, so that you can now search for photos taken in a specific year in my larger galleries. The form field should only appear when the gallery contains photos from multiple years.

If you are still having problems with the shopping cart, you can always send me an email with a list of your favorite photos, and the size(s) you wish to purchase.

Let me know what you think of those changes or if you discover any new bugs.

All of the URLs on my site should now be a lot easier to remember and share. Instead of the old format with the gID=XXX in the URL, you should now be able to simply enter a URL like www.CathySummers.com/2017-NVSL-All-Stars to find the photos I took during the NVSL All Star meet, or www.CathySummers.com/Abbott-Lane-Foxes to see the photos of the foxes who used to live in my backyard. You can always use the Gallery Search page to find a gallery by name or part of a name.

If you login when you start your visit, you can now mark photos as your favorites, and then you can look at all of your favorite images on a separate gallery page. I hope this will really help those of you trying to collect images from multiple galleries as you try to decide which one to purchase. Once logged in, you will see "Your Favorites" as the first item in the "Your Galleries" menu.

The Framed Prints gallery now allows you to look at zoomed in photos of all the framed prints I currently have and are ready for immediate pick up or delivery.

I have added a limited search capability to the gallery pages. You can now filter the images in a gallery by how I have rated the photos, if you want to see which ones I think are the best, and you can search for keywords if, for example you just want to see my rose photos without looking at the other flower images. Please let me know what you think of this change, or contact me with other suggested improvements.

Remember to follow my Facebook page for additional updates including previews of images that I add to the galleries here. See the button below.

Swim Photos

Lee Graham Parents,

Please contact me if you need access to the Dive or Swim Team Picture Day galleries. I also posted a gallery of photos from the July 2nd A Meet versus Vienna Aquatic Club for your enjoyment. While I will be out of town for the next few weeks, I can fill ordered for ePrints (higher resolution copies of the photos without the visible copyright watermark) while I'm on the road if I can get a good internet connection. I will be able to make prints when I get home in late July / early August.

Swimming is a highly photogenic sport with water flying off the swimmers' hands or cascading down over their faces, or with the distortions provided by the water, and sometimes I think the pictures can be enhanced with various effects in Photoshop, so I created the Swimmers as Art gallery to showcase some of those treatments and otherwise dynamic images. (If you have a favorite photo of your swimmer, contact me if you want to see if I can apply any of those transformations.)

If you are looking for the photos I have taken at some of the High School or other "winter" swim meets, you can try the Gallery Search to find the gallery. Contact me if you need a gallery's password. I will leave the photos from the High School and other swim meets on this web site for a while, and I will be happy to sell you prints or electronic copies.

With Elena now too old for swimming in NVSL meets, I will not be as tied to Lee Graham pool on my summer mornings. Please contact me if you are interested in discussing having me do your team photos.