It all came together better than I could have hoped. I had initially hoped to travel from Thursday to Sunday, but there were very heavy rains on Thursday, so I elected to depart early for the Catskills on Friday. In the meantime, I had reached out to Bret and Mark to see if they might be interested in getting together while I was within driving distance to New Jersey. By Thursday night, I had plans to meet with Bret at the trailhead near North South Lake Park. This would prove to be the shortest and easiest drive to a campsite so far. I drove east and then south on the NYS Thruway, exited off the highway and had a brief drive to arrive at my destination where I would wait for less than 30 minutes before Bret would make his own turn into the lot. The ground was sopping wet […]
This year, I nailed it. When I traveled to the ADK last year, my arrival seemed to be a week premature as many of the colors hadn’t yet emerged. By contrast, I was a little concerned when I departed for Wilmington this year that I might be departing a bit too late, but my concerns were quickly laid to rest. There would be an abundance of fall color for me to capture this time around. Only a week earlier I had planned to stay at the same location that I had the year before in Tupper Lake, but the property owner had a disagreement over a refund that had been awarded to another user by HipCamp and pulled his property off the site in a tantrum. I was left to scramble to find another place that could meet my needs and ended up an hour further to the east in […]
Only one week earlier, I had failed to capture an image that I was pleased with at Green Lakes, so I was determined to do better this time. When I arrived to the lake there was a thick layer of mist/fog that wasn’t going to give the the opportunity to capture geese in flight as I had wanted last week, but I thought I knew where and how they might be flying, so set myself up at the edge of the lake in hopes that the geese might fly through the scene. I was hoping to use a landscape orientation, but the birds ascent was too fast and I was forced to use a portrait orientation successfully captured what the scene presented to me, but the birds are ultimately smaller and more abundant than I envisioned and the image falls a bit short as a result. When the birds were […]
I had arranged to take the morning for myself; there was a photo club meetup at Green Lakes at 1000, and I wouldn’t be able to take the kids to TKD. But 1000 is a little late to go out for decent photos, so I went out early with the camera(s) to see if I could have a go of it in the early morning light. I expected that the geese would be a Green Lake and I decided to try to make them the focus of my morning. As I walked the lake it became apparent that they were collected exactly where I had expected them to be. And while I had hoped for nice light, I was a bit surprised by how pleasant the sky looked this morning. I was trying to avoid a noisy image, so kept the ISO low and the shutter speed a bit slow. […]
It made for an early morning, but I was up at 0430 to be out the door by 0510, to be at Buddy’s house in East Syracuse by 0530, to be at the Wildlife Preserve by sun-up. All went according to plan. When we arrived at the preserve, there was a considerable fog that surrounded the area. There were a few ducks in the water, but not much else aside from thousands of swallows that were flying through the marsh 100+ yards away. I had traveled with hopes of seeing some eagles and while the eagles might be seen later as the light improved and we changed location, this scene required a bit of a shift in expectations. The scene was moody and I was going to need to push my ISO, so I was already thinking in black and white. A tree in the distance caught my eye, so […]
I was torn about entering any of my photos into the photo contest for The Stand this year, but ultimately decided that the events, meetups, and photo walks are held as a means for the paper to generate content and awareness, so the more photos that are contributed the better, even if they aren’t that good. There are a lot of phrases out there that remind me of what I did to the 2 images that I submitted for the contest. “Lipstick on a pig” comes to mind, but “Polishing a turd” seems most apt, I think. The first image was only half good. I very much loved the expression of the woman on the right, and I was really happy with how I elicited their expressions in the moment (although I don’t recall no what I said). Still, the expression on the right (while authentic) is not conventionally photographic, […]
The kids were with Grandma and Grandpa, but Christine was training. The air was exceptionally warm and the sun was shining, so an exceptional morning with the camera was out of the question. Or at least an exceptional morning with a traditional camera was out of the question, but what about the infrared camera? Perhaps it would be worth a try? I didn’t want to drive too far and I didn’t feel like walking too much in the heat of the day, so I elected to collect my gear and go for a drive up East Lake Road and photograph one of my favorite trees. I started along the road, but there was a hill in the background that I couldn’t seem to get out of the way and it muddied the composition, blending the leaves of the tree with the grasses behind it. I moved to the side of […]
For the last few years, the Durfee farm has grown a sunflowers in a small roadside field and each year they have wilted before I had a chance to get out to photograph them, but not this year. This year, I woke up early on a Sunday morning and made the very, very quick drive to the farm with the camera and an assortment of lenses, eager to capture a beautiful scene. I had the 20, 35, 50 and 120mm FF equivalent lenses with me and I was ready to create something to put on my wall. Yeah, well … that didn’t happen. The 20mm was too wide for a field so small and there was no way to fill the entire frame with sunflowers. The same challenge presented to the 35mm, but while there were a few spaces that I could eliminate distant distractions, it was impossible for me […]
I didn’t want to go somewhere, so I just took my cameras outside this morning to see what I could see with the macro lens. I started with IR camera. I tried to look at some foliage/grasses on the ground, but the IR really only works when there is a sky (or something) that provides contrast to the scene., so I struggled to see anything in my viewfinder that was compelling until I noticed something that I had ignored thousands upon thousands of times until that moment. I lifted the camera, experimented with a few different compositions, and ultimately captured this graphic image that tickles my fancy. Then it was time to get out the regular camera and aim for the easiest target: the spiders in shrubs in the front yard. I take pictures of these creatures every year and I seem to do better and better each time I […]