An abstraction from nature
A few weeks ago I spent a morning at a particular spot in Chestnut Ridge Park, about as far into the park as one can get without getting out and walking. It’s a spot most people at the Ridge don’t go to, because it’s so far into the park’s interior, but it’s hardly deserted; it’s just far from the entrance. At this spot, one of the park’s streams–I believe this one is actually the one that goes over the Eternal Flame Falls, farther upstream–drops something like, oh, I don’t know, maybe 20 or 30 feet, over a few hundred feet of stream bed. So there are a lot of short drops, sloped spots, and deep plunge pools.
On this particular day there wasn’t much water–there usually isn’t, in August and September–so there wasn’t much to photograph by way of flowing water. So while I did get in some nice practice with shutter speed and working with the light, I didn’t get a ton of images from the session that I really liked…but I did like this one. It’s almost an abstract, almost impressionist in what it suggests without being able to depict it without enough water to do so.
Also that day, I photographed this wonderful old well house. Chestnut Ridge has a lot of these, and I’m saddened to think that they’re probably going to all have crumbled away within another decade or two. This one, by its surroundings and the way it always seems to be sitting in half-light, makes me think that I’ve entered a Hayao Miyazaki movie every time I see it.
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Golden Hour shining on Buffalo
Last weekend I had an opportunity to go out and do some shooting at Golden Hour, which is what photographers call the rough hour at sunrise or sunset. I hadn’t had an opportunity like that yet, and I am thrilled with the results. I haven’t edited them much, but I did edit this one just to give a taste of what the evening was like.
Lookin’ good, Buffalo. You’re lookin’ good.
Big version available here.
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Buffalo skies
Sometimes I don’t want to go to work but I grit my teeth and go anyway, and the Sky Gods see this and take pity on me by giving me something amazing to look at as I arrive…like this morning when the sunrise was shrouded in mist over the creek and through the trees, creating the most wonderful shafts of golden light.
I’m always a big fan of our skies here in Buffalo. We have the best skies I’ve seen, quite frankly, outside of any place that rhymes with “onolulu”.
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On the cusp
Fall isn’t here yet, but we can certainly feel it knocking on the door. And I’m fine with that! Fall is my favorite time of year, followed by winter, and lately summer has been rising in my esteem. The summer that’s entering its final weeks was a particularly pleasant one, if my photos (many of which are still awaiting editing!) are any judge. There’s one big post about my day shooting around the City of Buffalo that’s still waiting in the wings…but for now, here’s my latest panorama of the Buffalo Niagara region as imaged from the sledding hill at Chestnut Ridge Park. Note that now you can see clearly the emerging superstructure of the next home of the Buffalo Bills, and between the cranes, on the horizon, the faint skyline of Niagara Falls, ON.
Bigger version here.
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Dispatches from the Faire
Last weekend, The Wife and I attended the Sterling Renaissance Festival. We went by ourselves and The Daughter stayed home, because we didn’t want to board the dogs overnight; but never fear, The Daughter was able to use the third ticket today. In fact, she’s there as I write this.
I took a ton of photos that day, so let’s just get to them. More are available on this Flickr album, including some images that I didn’t revise in Lightroom.
The Renaissance Faire continues to be a pleasant mix of the old and comforting with the new and exciting. I didn’t see as much of the Festival’s cast interacting with the attendees in impromptu displays of Elizabethan-inspired improv this year, but there was still quite a bit of that. Also, we seem to eat less at the Festival than we usually do. Lunch was a turkey leg (and I managed to eat mine without getting barbecue sauce on my white shirt!), later we had wine slushies and She had a pickle while I enjoyed a pretzel. We stopped for fried chicken on the way home. I do admit that I had plans on a slice of cake, but they were sold out when I got back just before the evening joust, and honestly, I’m not sorry about that. Much.
The weather for us this year was nearly perfect: low humidity, temperatures in the mid to high 70s, and decent breezes through the wooded Festival grounds. I continue to be amazed at my adaptation to heat as I get older. Years ago wearing overalls to the Faire would have been unthinkable, and yet, here I was!
And now, another year is over. Next up for us, Festival-wise, is the Erie County Fair, and then about six weeks after that, we’re off to Ithaca. This is a wonderful time of year.
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Reflection and Paddler
“A ship in port is safe, but that’s not what ships are for”
From a walk at Buffalo’s Canalside and the Military and Naval Park a couple weeks back, the USS Little Rock presented a particularly nice look. I was there early enough that the sun was reflecting off the water in between the ship’s starboard side, casting a wonderful shimmering dappled effect on the hull. I like that because of photography I am starting to see what light is doing, in addition to just seeing where light is.
The shift in thinking about photography, from capturing images or subjects to capturing light, has been one of the most fascinating parts of this entire enterprise for me.
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And now, a dragonfly
Walking at Knox Farm yesterday, I arrived at the pond on the park grounds and noticed a bunch of dragonflies zipping around one end. These dragonflies were pretty striking-looking, with stripes on their wings. I stuck around a bit, trying to photograph them, and I actually did manage a few, though not without an unforced error. Earlier I had been trying to get a few photos of a couple of bees drinking from a birdbath, and to do those I put my camera into its Macro mode. And then, I forgot to take the camera out of Macro mode for trying to shoot the dragonflies, which I had to try and shoot from a distance. So, the focus wasn’t what I would have liked had I not screwed up my camera settings, but a few shots turned out OK. Here’s one that I gave a quick and rough edit earlier on Snapseed (a good mobile photo editing app). I’ll try to give it a better polish using Lightroom sometime in the future, but for now, this looks pretty good to me.
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On the wing
I doubt I’ll ever have the patience to really embrace wildlife photography as my genre of choice, but I have to say that I’m very happy with how these two shots turned out. One nice thing about photography I’m discovering is that you get pretty much immediate feedback as to how you’re doing, which means you know when you’re leveling up a bit.
Bigger versions can be found on my Flickr stream. Sharp photos of moving birds has been a challenge for me…and I didn’t even use burst to get these!