Maryland, MD

Maryland is a state located on the Atlantic Coast in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States of America.

It is comparable in size to the European country of Belgium. According to the most recent information provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, as of August 2007, Maryland is now the wealthiest state in the United States, with a median household income of $65,144, ahead of New Jersey which had previously held that title.

It was the seventh state to ratify the United States Constitution and bears two nicknames, the Old Line State and the Free State.

Its history as a border state has led it to exhibit characteristics of both the Northern and Southern regions of the United States. As a general rule, the rural areas of Maryland, such as Western, Southern, and Eastern Maryland, are more Southern in culture, while densely-populated Central Maryland — areas in the Baltimore and the Washington Beltway Regions — exhibit more Northern characteristics.

Maryland is a life sciences hub with over 350 biotechnology firms, making it the third-largest such cluster in the nation.

Institutions and agencies located throughout Maryland include University System of Maryland, Johns Hopkins University, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health.

Geography

Maryland possesses a great variety of topography, hence its nickname, "America in Miniature."

It ranges from sandy dunes dotted with seagrass in the east, to low marshlands teeming with water snakes and large bald cypress near the bay, to gently rolling hills of oak forest in the Piedmont Region, and mountain pine groves in the west.

Maryland is bounded on the north by Pennsylvania, on the west by West Virginia, on the east by Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean, and on the south, across the Potomac River, by West Virginia and Virginia.

The mid-portion of this border is interrupted on the Maryland side by Washington, DC, which sits on land originally part of Maryland.

The Chesapeake Bay nearly bisects the state, and the counties east of the bay are known collectively as the Eastern Shore. Most of the state's waterways are part of the Chesapeake Bay watershed, with the exception of a portion of Garrett County drained by the Youghiogheny River, as part of the watershed of the Mississippi River, the eastern half of Worcester County, which drains into Maryland's Atlantic Coastal Bays, and a small portion of the state's northeast corner which drains into the Delaware River watershed.

So prominent is the Chesapeake in Maryland's geography and economic life that there has been periodic agitation to change the state's official nickname to the "Bay State," a name currently used by Massachusetts.

The highest point in Maryland is Hoye Crest on Backbone Mountain, which is in the southwest corner of Garrett County, near the border with West Virginia and near the headwaters of the North Branch of the Potomac River. In western Maryland, about two-thirds of the way across the state, is a point at which the state is only about 1 mile (2 km) wide.

This geographical curiosity, which makes Maryland the narrowest state, is located near the small town of Hancock, and results from Maryland's northern and southern boundaries being marked by the Mason-Dixon Line and the north-arching Potomac River, respectively.

Much of the Baltimore-Washington corridor lies in the rolling hills of the Appalachian Piedmont. A quirk of Maryland's geography is that the state contains no natural lakes.

During the last Ice Age, glaciers did not reach as far south as Maryland, and therefore did not carve out deep natural lakes as exist in northern states.

There are numerous man-made lakes, the largest being Deep Creek Lake, a reservoir in Garrett County.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Maryland".

Looking at Photography from the Inside

by Terry Daniels

Photography is a science and an art that originated in the 1800s. The word photograph means "drawing with light."

There are many terms involved with photography that are the keys to understanding the full spectrum of the industry. We will discuss some of those elements and how they add to a picture.

One word is focus, and it refers to the adjustment that enhances a desired subject within the realm of the lens. It is usually a convergence point where the light rays originate to form a point on the object.

Another term is known as aperture. Aperture is the adjustment of the lens opening, measured as f-number, which controls the amount of light passing through the lens.

It has an effect on depth of field and diffraction because the higher the f-number, the smaller the opening and less light enters the picture. This creates a greater depth in the photo and an increased diffraction blur.

The focal length divided by the f-number gives the effective aperture diameter which translates as the spectrum of your picture. From the left to the right, what your photo captures is controlled by the aperture.

Another term is referred to as shutter speed which is the adjustment of the speed of the shutter to control the amount of time during which the imaging medium is exposed to light during each exposure. It is often expressed as either a fraction of seconds or as an angle when dealing with mechanical shutters.

The shutter speed is used to control the amount of light striking the image plane. Faster speeds decrease both the amount of light and the amount of image blurring from motion of the subject and/or camera.

The slower the shutter, the more light has time to transfer and the fewer pictures you can capture. The quicker shutters will allow you to process images faster and take in more as a result.

White balance is a phrase that refers to electric compensation for the color temperature associated with a given set of lighting conditions on digital cameras. This ensures that the white light is registered on the imaging chip and that the colors in the frame will appear natural, once developed.

On a mechanical device, film-based cameras, this function occurs by the use of the operator's choice of film stock or with color correction filters. Also, using white balance to register natural coloration of images, photographers usually choose to employ white balance to aesthetic end.

Basically, the color temperature is made warmer by using white balance. This will enhance the color scheme and increase the aesthetic quality of your picture.

Metering is the next term, and it is the measurement of exposure where highlights and shadows are exposed according to the photographer's control. Today, most meter and set exposures are automatically adjusted by the cameras.

Before the automatic metering system that exists today, the correct exposure was found with the use of a separate light metering device or by the photographer's knowledge and experience of gauging all settings correctly.

The amount of light is put into a usable aperture and shutter speed, the meter needs to adjust for the sensitivity of the film or sensor to light. The film speed or ISO sensitivity are set on the meter to attain the appropriate amount of light.

The ISO speed is used to communicate to the camera the film speed of the selected film. ISO speeds are used with modern digital cameras as an indication of the system's gain from light to numerical output and to control the automated exposure system.

This is a very technical term which many are thankful most automatic cameras can control on their own. However, then we can simply adjust the ISO speed which will do the rest of the work for us if we understand how to translate it.

The higher the ISO number, the greater the film sensitivity will be to light. The lower ISO numbers will make the film less sensitive to light.

An accurate combination of ISO speed, aperture and shutter speed will produce an image that is neither too dark nor too light. Thus, the correct exposure will exist as indicated by a centered meter displayed on the camera.

A great tool used today is an autofocus point where the imaging frame is set by the camera itself. The technology is only increasing in photography, making it more and more possible for people to enhance their captured images to capture memories and treasured moments.

About the Author

Terry Daniels has been taking profession photographs for the last 25 years and has written hundreds of articles relating to photography. He recommends Kansas City wedding photographers.

Contact Info

Terry Daniels

TerryDaniels09@gmail.com

http://www.rvrphotography.com/