Both taken last Sunday morning at Chestnut Ridge Park:
It Begins: Emotional Winter is here!
The first snows of the 2023-2024 winter season have fallen.
Yes, I know it’s not winter yet, technically…in the astronomical sense of the Winter Solstice having come and gone. Nor is yet Meteorological Winter yet; that begins on December 1. But I submit that it is now Emotional Winter, because that’s determined by when the snow first falls. What’s interesting about Emotional Winter and Actual Autumn is that they can both hold sway at the same time.
Anyway, the local social media was, of course, loaded with all manner of whining and wailing and rending of teeth and gnashing of garments, but…I love snow and to me, the world was beautiful this morning in a very special way.
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At the Botanical Gardens
Night-time at the Botanical Gardens is always magical, especially when they have it all decked out for Halloween.
More here.
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When the Light is Low….
One area of photography I need to work on–well, I need to work on all of them, but especially this one–is low-light photography. I’ve done some experimenting here and there, and my results haven’t been super-encouraging yet, at least, not until the other night, when I got several shots that were workable. Not really good, but workable. We went to dinner at Lago 210, a restaurant that is right on the Lake Erie shore in Hamburg. The views there are pretty special, but when we got there it was after 7pm, and this time of year that’s well after sunset. Visibility was surprisingly clear, given how crappy the weather lately has been around here, and I could see clearly all the way to the city of Buffalo and I could even make out the lights of the Peace Bridge crossing the water. There were blinking lights of beacons out beyond the water, either on land in Canada or perhaps on buoys out there…I’m not really sure.
One of my main problems with low-light photography will be suppressing my point-and-shoot, get-it-quick instinct. This is something I’m working on anyway, the fact that I need to stop for a moment and compose my shots, but low-light makes it even harder because then I also need to adjust settings and study what I’m doing, and this is all while I’m still…well, I’m still not quite sure how the settings work and how to set up the Exposure Triangle to get a good night-time low-light shot. Also, I need to get more accustomed to using a tripod when doing low-light work, because the long shutter speeds make stability essential.
These first two are looking north-east toward Buffalo, which from Lago 210 is about 9 miles, give or take. Both of these I took right around the same time, so obviously my settings were very different!
Larger versions here and here.
I’m not in love with either of these, but I’ll figure it out. Another factor is my zoom lens, which is harder to manage in terms of settings during zooms. This may be a limitation of my particular camera, being a fixed-lens bridge camera, albeit a very good one. We’ll see, as I move forward. I’m determined, y’all!
Then there was this, which was the first photo I took when we got there, looking out into Lake Erie toward Cleveland, about 180 miles thataway. I’m quite happy with how this turned out, even if there’s still more noise than I would like.
Larger version here.
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Impressions of Buffalo
From a walk I took last week, going from Buffalo’s Old First Ward to downtown and back. My original plan was to accompany The Wife into downtown for one of her days working at the office; I was going to spend the entire day walking Buffalo, taking photos–doing street photography, basically–and then going to the Central Branch of the Erie County Public Library for an afternoon of reading and writing. Alas, Hobbes’s leg injury put that plan on ice for that day, but I still got downtown for half the day the next day. The day was hot and very bright–not the best lighting conditions, really–but I got some photos that I like a great deal. Buffalo is a fascinating place.
More from that photo-walk here.
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And now, some wisdom:
Beware the Candy Corn Fungus!!!
Taken at the Charles Burchfield Art and Nature Center, West Seneca, NY.
And apparently, believe it or not, it actually tastes like chicken!
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“In spider’s web a truth discerning”
I took this photo last Sunday while walking around the Charles Burchfield Art and Nature Center in West Seneca, one of this region’s underknown gems. It was a stunning morning, because the fog had not yet lifted and therefore the light was soft and diffuse and almost dreamy in places. And I am starting to wonder if maybe I’m starting, just starting, to get the hang of this photography thing.
More photos from that day here.
The spider, dropping down from twig,
Unfolds a plan of her devising,
A thin premeditated rig
To use in rising.And all that journey down through space,
In cool descent and loyal hearted,
She spins a ladder to the place
From where she started.Thus I, gone forth as spiders do
In spider’s web a truth discerning,
Attach one silken thread to you
For my returning.–E. B. White
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In our neighbors’ yard…
Street Photography: East Aurora, 9/17/2023
I’m finding myself more and more interested in street photography, or “streetscape”, as I prefer to call it. Here are a few examples from a walk I took last week around the village of East Aurora.
I do hope someone knows how that last one turned out. I have, ahem, a certain degree of sympathy to people who use the reader boards of public businesses for proposals.
