2011 Aug Blog
The fun stuff has started, I had a chance to get away to hit the Tri-State area of NY/Mass/Vermont and found myself on the Appalachian trail, Ball Mountain Dam, Heldelberg Cliffs, Hudson River walkway, Weston Vermont, and in a few streams to work on image taking with some Black Glass. The postman has dropped off some tech gear for the fall, a new sling bag, and any day now the Epson 4900 (@ $1000 off). If you are a Kelby video watcher, there are some great classes for you, Moose has done his best work on Romancing the light #3, and from an inspirational...
Berkshire Shade
his image(s) was taken in near midday sun at the base of the Berkshire mountains looking south. The big bright white puffies were out in mass and the opportunity to get it all in with my Nikon 16-35mm f/4 VII, was on my agenda. The first order of business before the click was to find an access road from the main highway. I have been looking for a while for a dirt road which provided a view of an open field at the base of the mountains. For me finding this spot was a definite check mark. We have all seen those Images of the great mountain...
Mount Cloud
fter finishing capturing my previous Images from yesterdays Blog (Berkshire Shade), I observed these fantastic elements of summer. I decided where to position and align my Nikon D3s wiht the 16-35mm and then waited for the large cloud to enter the frame. On my lens I was using the Marumi CPOL filter and a .9 LEE neutral density grad filter to assist in pulling out the colors and the ND grad really helps keep your eyes from traveling out of the frame. The lighting gods did me a favor by lighting the top of hills, which added to the over depth...
Cherry Plain Elements
id-day sun at Cherry Plain State Park in the Albany area of New York. The dynamic tonal range is quite large. If you try to put these elements all in your DLSR you are sure to get a bad case of the blinkies, or youll underexpose the fore ground. Whats a guy supposed to do....Well you can do an HDR, then let your favorite HDR software smash your pixels around and get your Image, you can do Image harvesting, then spend time in the digital darkroom blending them together. Yet there is another option, Flash, yep, flash along with a 9...
Berkshire Sunup
headed over to this spot to check in on its morning beauty, it never fails to serve up something unique. There was a heavy overcast weather system that rolled in at midnight, which caused the grounding of geese from staying at their regular overnight resting spots. When I arrived on scene there were three flocks resting on the ponds edge. Try as I might, my stealth mode didnt work, and they soon headed into the water for safety. I framed up my image on the Nikon D3s, 16-35mm f/4, set AWB to cloudy and picture control to vivid. I liked...
Vermont Stream
his stream is located near the Ball Mountain Dam in Vermont. I spent some time shooting this river rock path from the shoreline but by changing my location to a large rock near the tail of this path, it provides a more compelling image. In the digital darkroom the early morning colors were very muted towards the rich earth tone so I took my que from mother nature on how to best develop the image with NIK Duplex.
Look Back
his image is from a few months back and as the title suggests, photographers need to keep in mind to look back to make sure that we observe all of our surroundings. This is particularly important when we are moving into and out of our light source. This Image is a good case for remembering to Look back. I was moving past this flowering bush eager to hike forward and explore the trail. Yet, that little inner voice, which I know to yield to, caused me look backward. The Image had changed substantially due to the backlighting of the flowers...
Great Bay Critter
sheath-fully positioned myself and gear (tripod, D3s and 200-400mm) near the base of a white birch tree which housed a woodpeckers nesting hole. Then I waited and waited and waited as the woodpeckers did their best to try and lure me away from the tree by feigning all sorts of ariel and verbal antics. It was just crazy, the damn birds would not go near that damn nest, and the chick(s) inside were calling out frustrated that no one was attending to their dietary needs. But I waited and waited, I wanted to get an Image of these nesting parents entering...
Pearl Street Diner
fter a few well deserved libations, I headed out to observe and capture some urban images in Albany, NY. Even though Albany is the capital of the NY, the city just does not seem very active like other large cities... However, the city has a bit of heartbeat once nightfalls and people travel over the Hudson River to take in the citys nightlife. For my part I was looking for something that you dont find while clicking landscapes or critters. Here the green and red neon caught my attention and I watched the city traffic to add some time-delay...
Woodland Therapy
ver the weekend I traveled along some of the various remote roads in the area. I am always on the lookout for a trail or turnoff that lets me do a bit of exploring. The weather was overcast, so I had a giant grey soft box, and that allowed some mid afternoon shooting. The bend in the stream and the curved log in the foreground caught my attention. I set the Gitzo real low and with the D3s and 24-70 lens began to frame my image. As this was going on the sun peeped thru and luminated the far bank before I had a chance to reset my exposure. It...
Helderberg Cross
ocks ? Is there no more interesting subject ? Interestingly enough, I waited a year to take this Image. The last time I was here, this area was under two feet of roaring mountain stream water which went rushing over the 1,500 foot escarpment cliffs, less that ten feet from this location.. The time before that, I walked over this trail in the dry season, and was taken by the enormous slabs of one billion year old rock with thin spider cracks, creating four sections, like X marks the spot. The rain and ice and erosion has thickened and depended...
Good Night Irene
t has been a long day here in upstate NY. The small town that I live in, has a lake at the base of a small mountain(Bear Mountain) . The mountain streams filled up quickly and roared down into the lakes at the edge of the mountain. The destruction was very unusual, as the water headed into areas that had not seen this type of event. In one area, the water that normally moves into a culvert under a road, hopped up over the culvert and then onto the roadway carrying its branches and tree debris with it. A few area roads were shut down as...
Twin Roar Dam
discovered the beauty of this wonderful dam spillway a few years ago and wrote a blog about it. Since then, it has been in the back of my mind to do a return trip when the situation was correct. Well Hurrican Irene seemed like the right time for the return... I really wanted to see how this twin waterfall was going to handle Mother Natures wrath. The lake above is rapidly filling with mountain stream runoff from Hurricane Irenes six hours of rain and at this stage of the day the lake is about two feet higher than normal. The...
Urban Symmetry
his wall is part of building designed like a castle found near the Hudson River in the South end of Troy. I spied the turrets of the castle a year ago while taking shots from the other side of the river. Every once in a while Ill travel around and scope out some new things to photograph. I finally found a road into the lot of this urban brick castle. It has been boarded up for a while, and has been tagged with graffiti. I had intended to get some images of the architecture features of this unique building, but the graffiti and the brick frame...
