September 8, 2024

News

My Spring trip to the Tetons and Yellowstone was cut short, so I am headed back with my daughter Elena helping me make the drive west. Look for new photos soon, and please enjoy these photos of 399 and her yearling cub called Spirit, Rowdy, Uno and possibly other names by the wildlife photographers there in the Grand Tetons. Please check out the Tetons and Yellowstone 2024 gallery for more photos from the Spring trip, and my 2023 Western Trip (last fall), 2022 Western Trip (May, June and July), 2021 Western Trip (May and June), and Western Trip 2018 (my first fall trip) galleries for more scenic and wildlife photos.

I was completely blown away by being able to see the Northern Lights / Aurora Borealis here in Virginia. I expected to find a narrow band of color at the horizon. Instead the aurora more than filled the frame at 14mm, which is a really wide angle. Here is a gallery of my photos from that night and from August 11th in Dolly Sods. I created two short,time-lapse videos of May 11th and August 11th to show how dynamic the aurora can be.

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.

If you are looking for a photo you saw on my Facebook, Instagram, Threads or Twitter pages, please take a look at my Facebook and Instagram gallery with almost all of the photos I post to social media 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.

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. While I still don't consider myself a bird photographer, I hope you will enjoy the photos in my Birds 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.

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 have posted some old photos from slalom races and other kayaking and canoeing photos in the Whitewater galleries.

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

Swim and Dive Team Parents,

Please send me an email if you need access to your swim team's picture day gallery. I can still take orders for collages and prints.

If you are having any difficulty ordering prints or collages from my website, please use the option to email me your order during the checkout process. Please also contact me if you have any questions about the image sizes, magnets of your swimmer's or diver's portrait, et cetera.

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.