What a great day this was at NY John Boyd Thatcher Park. The park is located on the trail that goes back to early precolonial times. The Mohawk Indians created an ‘Indian Ladder’ trail to traverse over a 1,300ft escarpment, now know as the Helderberg, which has the earliest and one of the best fossil bearing formations in the US, to trade on the Hudson River.
The park has many trails and one which goes to the 120′ Minelot Falls. The entire area is steeped in history. From one of the limestone caves, a group of Torrie’s, raided the settlers below the escarpment during the Revolutionary War 1777, until one day their smoke fire found them out, and the leader was hanged, later an 18th century poem was written about the event and was famously read at the time.
For me, I loved the hike and adventure going to this lightly traveled spot. Each step was interesting and inspiring. My goal was to get some waterfall shots, and I took quite a few, to try and do an HDR image. So I was well versed in all the parameters to get that perfect HDR image…but….on my way back for the day…I stopped over a lovely bridge and hopped down into a small babbling brook.
As it so happened, I had a very interesting Micro-Nikkor lens on top of my D3. I had just received it a few days earlier after reading about it on Thom Hogan’s and Moose Peterson’s sites It was an early Nikon AF 70-180 f/4.5-5.6D… This lens does not focus fast and it has a smallish f/4.5 aperture, it’s kind of ‘old school’ like ‘Prez” 
, but I was looking for an opportunity to check it out.
So I was shooting around, looking for patterns in the brook-stream rocks and lichens, when back between the rocks I spotted this glowing orange Newt,… I dropped to my knees, wallet and cell phone be damned, and got in close, closer and tried to steady myself in the wetness and started to work with this wonderful lens, going on blind faith from the Pro’s reviews about the macro prowess of this lens..
Now every boy or (grown up man), loves newts, turtle and frogs… so I felt like I was 8 again… playing with the critters, looking eye to eye. Anyway, he soon scampered away and I was really encouraged that I had some decent shots by looking at the viewfinder. I’ll tell you now, just for this shot, I’m glad I purchased the 70-180, the DOF is just wonderful, and it is a great macro lens.
