Our Woods

As recently as the Thursday before Christmas we had no snow, then it started. We had a first storm with a lot of wet heavy snow, that was followed by one with even more soft fluffy snow, followed by yet more soft snow. I've shoveled more snow in the last 10 days than all of last winter which admittedly wasn't much of a winter. It was still snowing lightly this morning and we cleaned up the latest 3". Finally this afternoon the sun broke through and I decided to break out my snowshoes. Snowshoeing is hard work too, especially breaking trail, but it is way more fun than shoveling.

I checked the depth in the back field using my hiking pole. I always take one pole when snowshoeing. If you trip and fall it makes getting back up easier. The snow in the field behind the house is now 26" deep. I continued on into our woods. We don't own much woods, 1½ to 2 acres worth, but it's nice having your own woods to hang out in. Walking through I spotted this young beech with the sun shining from behind. Arrayed in golden leaves and a mantle of snow it was ready to have its portrait taken. Shot with a Canon G11.

Merry Christmas

I really should have saved yesterday's photo for today but this one will do. I made this photo yesterday too. It is the same sugar shack I ran a photo of a short time ago.

Between the horror of the school shooting in Connecticut and then yesterday's shooting of firemen responding to a fire in Webster, NY along with all the other turmoil in the world this is a Christmas of very mixed feelings. On one local blog that I follow some comments expressed the view that evil is in firmly charge and that good has lost. I confess to feeling some dismay at the state of the world myself.

I do not believe in a God who magically impregnates women any more than I believe there is a real Santa Claus living at the North Pole. We know for a fact that the designation of Dec. 25th as the birth of Jesus (not even his real name) was an arbitrary decision made several hundred years after the fact and that has only a one in 365 chance of being the right date, but it is what the various traditions symbolize that is important, (re)birth and renewal.

 There are not a lot of things I 'believe', things that I accept without proof, but one thing I do believe it is that the triumph of good is inevitable, it is programmed into creation by whatever power brought forth the universe and sustains it moment to moment. I believe that system and human nature are 'rigged' for good in the end. At this point in the year when the ancients saw the day shrinking and figuratively dying, it begins to lengthen again, to rise anew. They created holidays to mark the rebirth of the sun, the beginning of a new cycle of nature. That is what we celebrate, that no matter what we humans do, good or evil, the cycle goes on, life begins anew.

When I was out photographing yesterday in the silence that is winter I could feel the new beginning that the Christmas story stands for. Some of those in despair are sure that there is a 'war on Christmas' but, as I see it, they are too caught up in the details of the story to sense the message behind it. There probably wasn't really a stable or a star, those are symbols in a parable to remind us that hope comes from humility and often seems to shine in the far off distance. The Wise Men symbolize those who seek in spite of difficulties and those who would deceive them. I find my truth in nature. I hope that my photos bring your some sense of what I find there. Happy Holidays whatever belief you choose to follow. May you have a wonderful new year.

A Snowy Christmas Eve Morning

I had an early appointment this morning and drove into town through a snowy landscape that brought "Over the river and through the woods" to mind. Where I grew up we attended a one room country school and walked 1½ miles each way. This morning's drive took me back to winter mornings walking to school wrapped in the exquisite silence of winter with snow flakes fluttering down.

We seem to spend all our time surrounded with man made sound these days; TV, radio, even wearing MP3 players to constantly blast us with music while we do other things. I could not help but remember the joy of no sound at all on those winter mornings, snowflakes landing so softly that nothing disturbed the silence. I hope that you all make time for some silence this season, an opportunity to commune with nature and experience peace.

Season's Greetings

I wondered if we would have a white Christmas. The local weather forecast as late as Wednesday said it was doubtful but it started snowing Thursday evening and hasn't quit. It will be very white. At the rate it's snowing we'll certainly have more than a foot (may be there already) and the NOAA site says it will continue for another 12 hours. We're warm and have lots of food in the fridge. I hope everyone else has the same good fortune.

Along with getting ready for company over the holidays I'm still working at scanning old negatives. Many memories come flooding back in the process along with an acute sense of how the world has changed over the last 3-4 decades, an awareness made even more poignant by the massacre of school children and teachers in a Connecticut elementary school. When I stood on the Thousand Island Bridge about 40 years ago to make this photo I never imagined I would see such events unfold on the evening news.

After such things (and there have been far too many in recent years) I have often wished that I had some sort of time machine so that I could go back to the day before such events and warn the authorities to take preventative action. Alas they would not be likely to believe me. I would be dismissed as some kind of nut case.

I find some solace in looking back at images I made in better times. The irony (it seems there is always irony) is that I didn't think those were better times when I made the image. If I tried to walk up the bridge with camera in hand these days I'd be arrested as a terrorist plotter. The line of the fence, the broken windmill and the abandoned farm buildings still speak to me across the decades reminding me that all things change and the more they change, the more they stay the same. Life does go on.

Image Quality

A friend has been looking at mirrorless cameras with an eye toward getting one that he could easily carry around. He is insistent that he wants one that is capable of the same or better image quality as his Nikon D80. In our conversation he mentioned some photographs he had missed back in film days because he didn't have his SLR with him and that he bought a small rangefinder camera but the image quality wasn't up to his SLR so he only used it once. He doesn't want to do the same again with digital.

That reminded me of Jay Maisel who has an incredible eye, not just for the obvious photograph but for finding top notch images in the mundane. Somewhere, on one of my old hard drives, I have a video of him talking to another photographer at lunch in NYC and the other photographer says that he passes up photos where the light is too dim or "not right", images that won't be high quality. Jay's response was "To hell with quality. I just want to get the picture". It must work. He is probably the most highly successful stock and assignment photographer ever.


Technical image quality is only one aspect of a photograph and not necessarily the most important one, often in fact it is not all that important. What is important is the emotion, the way the scene feels and how well that comes through to the viewer. The real challenge of photography is determining what is most important about the scene before you and how to best convey that with the least distraction by other elements in the photo.

The last couple of days I've been scanning and playing with some 35mm images I shot back in the early '70s but never got around to printing. I had no darkroom at the time but could develop film in a daylight tank so I simply filed the negatives away to print 'someday'. Someday arrived for this roll. It was undoubtedly shot with a Miranda Sensomat, the only camera I had at the time, and the 50mm lens that came with the camera. It was made on Plus-X Pan and would have been developed in D-76, my stock developer back then.

My personal favorite from the roll is the Winter Corn Field. Why? I like the arrangement of the bands of trees & brush, the small hill rising in the background, the sweep of the rows of corn stubble and the tractor tracks cutting across them in the snow. I like the dark sky. Overall it reminds me of photos and engravings from the 20s and thirties, the sort of images my grandmother hung on her living room wall. To that end I toned it, a way to heighten that feeling. Is it sharp? Not especially. It is quite grainy. I shot that scene about 40 years ago and don't remember doing it but I look at the scan and know exactly what I saw and why I shot the scene. The feeling is there. My challenge today is to interpret the negative in such a way as to convey those emotional qualities and I don't believe that absolute sharpness and clarity are necessary.

Following Jay's advice, I believe it is better to get the image with the equipment you have or can afford, under whatever conditions you encounter than to pass it up waiting for a better camera, better light, whatever. This roll of film that I'm playing with is not the only one that I shot and never printed because I didn't have the resources at the time so I'll likely find others in the future but I have the negatives and that's what counts.

Goofing Off Again

I haven't been diligent about posting to the blog. I have excuses. I haven't been shooting a lot of photos, I've been working on genealogy... I could think of a few more, all true but none of that gets posts on a blog. For your delectation this post I will give you a pair of "industrial" images. The first (above) is a roadside sugar shack from 50-100 years past. What makes me sure it was a sugar shack is the roof vent arrangement, characteristic of even contemporary small maple syrup operations that are common around here. This particular structure is just down the road, around a corner and over the hill from our house and it is the sort of structure that appeals to me so you'll likely see more photos of it from time to time.

The second is a contemporary industrial scene in Endicott, NY where our daughter lives. We went there for Thanksgiving and I took a photography break one afternoon. The area has little to offer a landscape photographer who (like me) prefers wild places. On the other hand some of the industrial buildings are a modern counterpoint to the technology represented by the sugar shack.

In keeping with the subject matter I did some processing of the Sugar Shack in PostWorkShop3 to give it a look of texture and age. The modern industrial image was processed in Photoshop CS6 with an eye to keeping it clean and crisp. The venting systems are what attracted me to both, a link between the old and the new. The Sugar Shack was made with a Canon G11 and the modern industrial image with a Canon 7D.

Getting Organized

I've been working at getting my studio in shape because I'm holding 'open studio' under the St. Lawrence County Arts Council's annual Studio Tour. Today was the 1st day with only four visitors, not counting the Arts Council's representative who dropped in to take pictures and drop off some newsletters to pass out to my visitors. It continues tomorrow and Monday (Veterans Day), 10am to 4pm. If you happen to show up at 4 or a bit after, I won't throw you out. My studio is now in my home so I don't to pack up and go anywhere after 4.

You can find me at 134 Russell Tpke. which is a left turn off Rt. 56 going from Hannawa Falls to Colton. The sign says Brown's Bridge but the road changes name after you cross the Parishville Town line, just keep going all the way up the hill to the brick house at the top of the hill.

After the open studio I will be rearranging the studio to accommodate portrait photography. If you would like to schedule a  sitting just comment "I'm interested in a sitting". I screen all comments so it won't appear here.

The photo was taken from my driveway a while back looking east as a rain storm passed and the sun was setting. Note the double rainbow on right. It went all the way over but was very faint for most of the arc. The picture is stitched from 3 handheld frames.

Our Woods

I mentioned a few days ago that when doing the layered effects in Photoshop and PostWorkShop the visual effect was largely lost when the image was sized down for presentation on the web. It is necessary to redo the same procedure on the size I intend to present it othrewise it simply appears to be a slightly fuzzy photo, the result of resizing mushing the pixels together and mangling the texture I had created in my layering process. This image has been processed to be seen at the size you will see if you click on the image above so be sure to check it out at that size.

It uses the same procedure I used on the prior one and I originally did it as a 16X20 print but I redid it to show here. Obviously the details on the 16X20 version and this one don't match exactly but it is closer than simply shrinking the big image. I like the effect of the texture. It looks sort of like a colored engraving to me.

Winds of Autumn

We're having a lot of wind here, both last night and today. I went out this morning and took a few photos including this one  looking across the meadow toward our small piece of woods. In just the couple of hours since shooting the original image the wind has knocked about half the leaves off the yellow/orange tree that is left of center.

It is a bit hard to tell in the small version here, even if you click on it to see it full size, but I have digitally modified it in both Photoshop and PostWorkShop. I used  the Topaz Simply filter in Photoshop to reduce detail and then layered over that  a version that I had modified in PostWorkShop with both watercolor and drawing layers. The full effect is visible on the large file which would print out at least 10"x15" but in reducing the image size for web use much of the effect is lost. To give an idea a cropped detail is below.

I find that when doing a lot of these special effects they only work well when reproduced at the size that the effect was originally applied to. If you shrink or stretch the size the effect loses its visual impact. I like this combination though. The overall visual effect matches what I visualized when I was shooting the photo.

Canon 7d with an 18-135mm EFs lens on a monopod.

Fall Color

Although dull color was forecast because of the dry summer the Adirondacks enjoyed some of the best autumn color I've seen in years, at least in the areas I frequent which are the NW corner of the park and the High Peaks area. I did two day trips in the last week. I'd like to have gotten out daily and covered ore of the park but gas prices are ridiculous so I stuck to areas I was familiar with.

The photo above is a waterfall adjacent the Wilmington Notch NYS Campground. It has no name that I'm aware of and the state does not promote it as It is a relatively dangerous place. The rock you see in the foreground is a point of land sticking out over the river that drops off at least 30 feet on three sides to the rocks and river below. You don't want to fall but it provides the best view of the falls if you can take the adrenaline that comes with standing there. The edge of the rock was only about 3-4 feet in front of me as I shot the two vertical frames that I stitched together to make this image. I've stood closer in the past but I bruised my left shin climbing Indian Pass on my last lean-to cleanup trip and it was still sore so I wasn't feeling steady enough to get too close and I thought the rock made a good foreground anyway (a juicy rationalization?). Whatever, that was as close as I dared get yesterday.

There is an album of 64 Adirondack Autumn photos on my Zenfolio galleries*. They were all made, as this one was, with a Canon 7D. Before anyone asks, yes the colors were that intense. Most have not had any added saturation. I did increase the local contrast with the "Clarity" control in Lightroom on many of them and that does heighten the impression of intensity but for the most part the saturation is what came out of the default conversion from RAW. It almost looks like it was shot with Kodachrome.

Autumn in the Adirondacks

I just completed an "Open Studio" event as a guest at the Paul Smiths Visitor Interpretive Center. I drove down to the VIC from home each day and back after. Each day the leaves got more colorful and they are about at their peak color right now. The photo above was made on the way home this evening in a light rain. The forecast is for rain all night and most of tomorrow. I hope it doesn't knock down too many leaves. I'd like to be able to go shooting on Tuesday.

The color is quite impressive this year, the best I've seen in at least 4-5 years and it is a bit of a surprise. They forecast dull colors because we had such a dry summer but we've had rain recently and apparently just in time to make great color. I'm most impressed with the reds. They are very intense and there is a broad range all the way from deep burgundy to lighter reds and orange-reds. Also there is a high  ratio of reds to oranges and yellows compared to past years.

Waiting (impatiently) for Fall Color

I went back the the Adirondacks on Friday looking for fall color. I had seen a posting on the Adirondack Mountain Club's Facebook page that it was at 50-60%. A friend and I did a loop around Whiteface (Gabriels>Bloomingdale>Franklin Falls>Wilmington>Lake Placid>Saranac Lake) and didn't see nearly that amount of color anywhere. Maybe 20% some places but we didn't get any real autumn color shots. The Heart Lake area must be a cold pocket where leaves turn early.

We explored the flume in Wilmington Notch. I had been there several times before but Ron hadn't. He was the one who spotted this rock and I thought it was a good candidate for B&W. The water was running over it, falling off three sides and also through a horizontal crack under it creating a two layer cascade on the downstream side. Be sure to click on the image to see the larger version.

I did get some color photos although not autumn color. We stopped by Moose pond en-route from Bloomingdale to Franklin Falls. I took a short walk down the trail that goes around the lake (going left from the boat launch area) and made this image.

It is characteristic of Adirondack trails and the light was perfect. The only editing other than some minor dodging and burning was to stitch two vertical frames to get the square composition. My 18-135mm wouldn't take in all the height and width I wanted so rather than switch to a wider angle lens I shot two and combined them. I saw this as a square image anyway. I've often wished that some camera maker would make a compact camera with a large square sensor. A digital Mamiya 6 (36MP) would be awesome. I wouldn't need or want face recognition or any of those other bells & whistles they are loading up cameras with these days. I don't use most of the "features" on my 7D. I suppose GPS would be nice but I rarely forget where I've taken a picture. Anyway, as you can see, there wasn't a lot of fall color.

I'll be demonstrating photo editing at the Paul Smith's VIC next Friday and Sunday 10am to 4pm and 10am to noon on Saturday as part of the Adirondack Artist's Studio Tour they are hosting. If you are in the area, drop by and say hello.

All photos were made with a Canon 7D and an 18-135mm lens. They are copyrighted. Please do not copy or re-post without permission. Prints are available. Email me for details.

A Day of Chores & History

In between my photo outings I have chores like mowing the grass which is what I did yesterday afternoon and this morning. We did a bit of exploring after lunch today going to Russell, the place that our road is named for. Since moving to the new house I've learned that the road (Russell Turnpike) that passes in front of our home was one of the first three roads built in this area.  The other two went from other areas to Russell.

The road out front went from Lake Champlain near Westport to Russell from where there was access to the St. Lawrence river. It was called the Northwest Bay Road then and transited many sections of current road that are familiar to me on my excursions to photograph in the Adirondacks. During the War of 1812 (during which my twice great grandfather Stephen was in the Vermont militia) this road was used by the military to get from Lake Champlain to the St. Lawrence and there was an armory in Russell.

GG Grandpa moved to this area after his service in the war and it is an odd feeling to realize that his first visit to the area probably involved a march past where I now live and took him over sections of road through landscapes that I now photograph. It is doubly strange because a maternal grandfather  (James) spent time in the Adirondacks as a tourist in the early 1900s and I have photographs he took of Barnum Pond, one of the places  Stephen would have passed on his military travels and one I too have photographed numerous times including this one.

The photo above is not from the route of the Northwest Bay Rd. but isn't very far afield. It was made in Wilmington which is a bit North of Lake Placid, one of the communities that was on the route. It is another image from my latest excursion. Made with a Canon 7D and 18-135mm lens, 1/10th sec. @ f/29. I did the B&W conversion in Lightroom 4 and toned it in Photoshop CS6.

Addendum: Sept. 13 - I did some web searches this morning and found a map of the Westport to Hopkinton portion of the original road. http://hsl.wikispot.org/Northwest_Bay_Road?action=Files&do=view&target=Northwest%20Bay%20Road.jpg That is the route that I usually take when I go to the mountains to photograph. Without knowing it and without intending to I have been following in Stephen's footsteps.