Posts from the ‘landscapes’ Category
Something different
A late afternoon walk in the park garnered nothing more than the usual suspects: the chickadees, nuthatches, woodpeckers, and other little birds. Then as the sun sank lower, it cast a soft glow on the scene, and I decided to go for a landscape shot of the power towers. Not my usual style, but I like it. I hope you do too. These wires lead to a power plant on the shores of Lake Erie, just a mile or less from where I was standing.
Carolyn aka Skip
Winter Wonderland
Consecutive days of snowfall have turned our park into a winter wonderland, making for some wonderful photo opportunities. The tree branches and fence rails are heavily laden with snow, and the wildlife have gone into “mooching mode.” With a deep blanket of snow covering their source of food, the animals have become conditioned to turn to humans for help. I posted more about this phenomenon here in my Blipfoto journal. Last winter we had very little snow. It was an easy winter for drivers and for the wildlife, but this week, just the second week of this winter, has been very different. Since Wednesday (four days ago), we have been blessed (depending on your point of view) by something like 15 inches of snow. It’s beautiful and makes for pretty pictures. It really is a winter wonderland. I hope you enjoy the pictures (Click on the first picture to open up the gallery).
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- snowy woods
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- hungry chickadee
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- juxtaposition of seasons
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- arching trees with snow
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- winging in for a seed or two
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- snow-covered evergreens
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- downy woodpecker
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- The titmouse sank in the snow, but still got the prize.
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- snow-covered fence rail-1
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- snow-covered fence rail-2
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- puzzled by the snow
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- looking down the trail
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- Our food is all covered with this white stuff!
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- partially frozen bog
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- chickadee contemplating a treat
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- grab one and go!
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- snowman
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- tiny pond
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- Everyone shares the trail.
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- watching (me)
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- more snow-covered evergreens
Thanks for stopping by today. I hope you enjoyed the snowy walk.
Carolyn aka Skip
Can’t they get it right?
Brrrr! It was a cold morning in the park. I encountered a mother with her snowsuited toddler and felt envious of his warm winter snowssuit. It was cold and it was snowy, but they (the national weather service people), never manage to get it right. They predicted that it would snow through Friday night and all day Saturday, dropping up to a total of 6-12 inches on us and neighboring counties in northeast Ohio. Well, as you can see from the pictures that didn’t happen. It snowed on Friday and then stopped. Someone in northeast Ohio may have seen the predicted foot of snow, but it wasn’t us. I don’t mind, well, not much anyway. We did get enough to make the park look pretty, but I just wish they wouldn’t be so definite about their prognostications. Six-12 inches? No way! Oh well, the winter is still young. There’s plenty of time for snow. Below are a few of my keepers for today. Hope you like them.
Carolyn aka Skip
Color it Autumn
Walk the winding trail or gaze across the landscape, and the dominant colors appear to be shades of brown and grey. These are the colors that define winter here in northeast Ohio (until snow falls). Look a little closer though, and you will discover a richness in Autumn’s color palette, hues you weren’t aware of at first glance.
Here are some of the colors I found along the trail today (Click on the first picture to bring up the gallery).
Postscript: This week I have been experimenting with my 50mm lens on my Nikon, wondering what a difference it will make in the things I notice on my photo walks, and, consequently, will it change (and hopefully improve) my photography? I have already noticed that this lens is faster, sharper, and more fun to use. On the down side, I missed an opportunity to photograph a pileated woodpecker today because my camera wasn’t wearing its 70-300mm lens. Oh well, I guess you can’t get them all!
So far, however, there are definitely more positives than negatives with this experiment. Here are three more pictures I captured today that would have been unlikely with the long lens:
Ollie
Hungry chickadee
Buddy hoping for a handout
That’s it for today. Thanks for coming down the trail with me.
Carolyn aka Skip
Come along…
… with me for a short walk in the woods. Click on the first picture to bring up the gallery and enjoy an autumn morning.
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- Walkers heading down the trail
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- Hoping for a handout
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- Sledding stairs, but no snow yet!
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- Someone brought corn for the deer.
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- Lady cardinal, one of my favorites!
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- The tufted titmouse is a perky little bird.
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- Tree in the bog
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- Friendly chickadee
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- No trespassing beyond this rail fence!
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- Fence post showing its age. I wonder who put it there.
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- End of the trail
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- Tufted titmouse sitting on a branch
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- Male cardinal showing off his colors
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- Intent!
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- Naturally framed, this doe posed for her portrait.
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- A hungry downy woodpecker came to the “table.”
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- Titmouse
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- “I see you!” said the little squirrel.
My walk in the park not far from our home is a special hour in my day. Setting out with my camera, hoping to capture a few good pictures, fills me with anticipation. Some days are lean ones, photographically speaking, and some yield a rich return, but when I reach the end of the trail, I always head home refreshed and thankful for this daily gift from God.
Lake Erie Bluffs
Several months ago, our Metropark opened up a new location, a small park with a beautiful overlook and a great view of Lake Erie. There was even access to a beach for walking, skipping stones, or picnicking. A few days after the park opened, Bob and I decided to see what it was all about, so we took Gulliver and headed to the park. When we arrived and hiked down a short path to the bluff overlooking the Lake, we found a few people already in possession of the best view on the headland. They had even brought out their lawn chairs and were obviously settled in to wait for the sunset, so we hiked a little distance down the trail to find out what else was available. Eventually we discovered that the trail led us down the hillside to the beach, a great place to capture pictures.
I only made a very brief entry in my journal that evening and it doesn’t begin to cover the delight of our discovery. Here’s what I wrote:
Went to the new metro park in perry to take pictures of the sunset. Color wasn’t spectacular but it was a peaceful evening.
And here are some of the pictures I took during our two hour sojourn. In this case.I think the images from the camera make a much truer impression than the words. What do you think?
That’s it for this very belated post. I’m hoping “Better late than never,” is a truism that works this time.
Searching for my photo mojo
Much has happened to interfere with my photoblogging over recent months. The illness of my sister (and friend) Marjorie for one thing. I just returned earlier this week from her memorial service in Florida. It has been an unusual summer with much to distract me from my photo walks. I did capture a few pictures while I was in Florida, and if I can find time to download them, they will be included in a future blog. But here and now, back home in Ohio, the seasons are changing. Fall, my favorite season, photographically speaking, is knocking at the door, and I’m hoping it will provide lots of photographic fodder in the weeks ahead. My photo mojo needs a boost!
This morning I visited the Arboretum, one of my favorite photo haunts. It was my first visit in many weeks, and I was hoping to capture some butterflies before they take off on their annual migration to warmer climates. I saw one! That’s it, just one butterfly, and I didn’t even get a very good picture of it. However, I did spend a pleasant hour in the butterfly garden and made it home before the rain began to fall. Click on any picture below to bring up the gallery and enjoy a short walk through the garden, complete with bees, butterfly, flowers, and a group of girls on a school field trip.
See you again soon.
Skip aka Carolyn
Migratory birds and more
Hopefully this will be the first of several posts with pictures of migratory birds, baby animals, and all the wonders of spring. We are blessed with a glorious creation to enjoy, and here in Ohio, spring has been both unusual and special. Here are a few photos for a start. Click on any picture to bring up a slide show that you can click through at your own speed.
I photographed the baby foxes yesterday in the backyard of a friend who lives in the country. The covered bridge is one of numerous covered bridges in Ashtabula County, just east of us in Ohio. This one is the Harpersfield bridge. I took a first picture from closer in, showing only the bridge, and then spotted these little blue flowers, backed off, and took a second shot to include them. I like it better than the first one. The other photos were taken in my neighborhood park.
That’s it for today from the south shore of Lake Erie. Thanks for stopping by!
Carolyn aka Skip
So much beauty, so little time!
I don’t have much blogging time tonight, so any extensive writing is going to have to wait for another day, and I will limit today’s post to mostly pictures. The sun was shining this morning, replacing yesterday’s grey skies. I was surrounded by beauty on my morning photo walk, and I am excited to be able to share some sunny, but snowy, landscapes (along with one bird). In my last post, I wrote about setting the bar (i.e. my standards) high. That’s what I tried to do when I chose these pictures, so I hope you enjoy the scenery.
Thanks for visiting my corner of Ohio today.
~Carolyn aka Skip
And now for the bird: a northern cardinal, the state bird of Ohio and a few other states too…
Raising the bar
In two recent posts, I have written about the steps I am taking to try to improve my photography…one of my personal challenges for the year 2012. The steps include…
…The third one is what I would like to talk about today. If you, as a photographer, are already completely satisfied with the quality of your portfolio, feel free to ignore the next portion of this blog post and go straight to the end to see the pictures I took on my photowalk today. On the other hand, if you are, like I am, an enthusiastic amateur photographer with a desire to take better pictures, read on. Then, if you want to share your ideas on the topic, click on comment and tell us what you think.
Taking some photography classes at our local community college is on my photographic bucket list. It’s a “One of these days I’m gonna do it” kind of thing…one of these days, but not yet. Meanwhile, I am on my own, and step-by-step I am learning how to take better pictures. Being a reader, my first step was to turn to some books by experienced professional photographers whose skill at taking pictures is equaled by the skill of explaining their techniques to amateurs like me. I have a good-sized collection of books, but my favorites and the ones I strongly recommend are anything written by Brian Peterson (Understanding Exposure, Understanding Shutter Speed, etc) and Scott Kelby’s very readable Digital Photography Boxed Set, volumes 1,2, and 3, and, for Adobe Lightroom users, Kelby’s book The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom3 book for digital photographers. Read what they say, study their techniques, and experiment. That’s pretty much my mantra.
My most recent approach has been to change my post-processing work flow. That came about when I began using Lightroom. Now, as much as I am learning to love Lightroom, I’m not suggesting that everyone has to plunk down the greenbacks to buy the program (or ask for it for Christmas, which is what I did). Any good photo editing program will probably do the trick, and if you have one you already know and like, that’s all the better. All you need to do is examine your work flow to see how you can make it more efficient and effective for you.
However, this post is already getting a little long, so I will hold off on detailing the work flow that works for me until my next post. Meanwhile, here are a few pictures I took today. In keeping with my intent to raise the bar, I narrowed down the images I downloaded from my camera to these six that made me the most satisfied and happy that I left my cozy computer room, piled on the jacket, hat, sweater, gloves, and boot, stuck handwarmers in my pocket and headed out to shiver in the snow and sub-freezing temperature (somewhere around 20 degrees Fahrenheit, minus whatever the wind chill factor was). Being a photographer yourself, I’m sure you get the picture. Enjoy the slide show and thanks for visiting me on the south shore of Lake Erie today. See you next time.
