Joe Benning Photography

Travel & Photo Blog

  •   Reston, VA

Ginkgo Grove 2023

The state of Virginia maintains an arboretum, complete with an experimental farm (The Blandy Experimental Farm) that is managed by the University of Virginia.  There students and ecologists maintain the farm and conduct experiments using a wide range of trees and plants.  Blandy’s Ginkgo Grove is one of the largest public Ginkgo groves in America, […]

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Great Falls National Park in Autumn

We had some visitors from the wilds of New Jersey the other day. Mary Anne’s sister Ellen and her husband Steve came by our neck of the woods for a visit. The four of us took a walk around town and then made our way to Great Falls National Park in McLean Virginia. Among other […]

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Autumn Arrives

Fairfax County Virginia has an extraordinary system of public parks. There are lakes and nature trails everywhere you turn. In addition, Great Falls National Park in McLean Virginia features a spectacular series of waterfalls in addition to picnic grounds and hiking trails. Now that the end of October has arrived, the trees are bursting with […]

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On to the Caribbean—Aruba

After traversing the Panama Canal, we arrived in the Caribbean Sea, leaving South America behind us. Our first stop in the Caribbean was Aruba.  It is a small island, just 19 miles long and 6 miles wide and a population of about 104,000.   The geography of Aruba is very interesting. One side of the […]

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Frodo Lives!

When Peter Jackson filmed JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy, he was determined to be as true to the book as possible. One of the first problems he faced was finding a location that looked like the Tolkien’s description of the fantastical Middle Earth which he dubbed “Endor”.  Endor had snow-capped mountains, golden grass […]

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Stewart Island / Rakiura

We made our way to Stewart Island, also known as Rakiura by the Maori people who arrived from Polynesia about 800 years before Captain James Cook claimed it for the British Crown. It is the 3rd largest of the New Zealand islands measured by size. But the population is only about 400 people.  So, we […]

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Hobart, Tasmania

Hiking in the Rain Forest We made it. By that I mean we successfully returned from a 2.5-hour hike through a Tasmanian rain forest in Mount Field National Park. The park is around 22,000 hectares (about 54,000 acres) and is part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. When we finished climbing up and down […]

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Another Safari Day

Out in the Bush   When you head out to the bush country you just don’t know what you are going to find. For the second (of three) Safari days out in the bush, the plan was to find some elephants in the morning, and maybe more lions in the afternoon. That meant getting a […]

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A Little Macro Photography

Macro photography, which entails close-up photos of a subject, is particularly well suited for nature photography. So in order to learn about the art of macro photography, composition and technique, I went to a Visions Photographic Workshop run by Michael S. Miller. I might add that Michael’s classes and workshops can benefit any and all […]

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