Category Archives: Landscape

The Carnegie Abbey Club

The Carnegie Abbey Club in Portsmouth, Rhode Island is a magnificent place just north of Newport. The eighteenth hole runs along the Narragansett Bay, naturally adding beauty to the well maintained grounds!

Enjoy my favorite image of the clubhouse taken with the eighteenth green in the foreground…

Nauset Sunrise

I know I know… I haven’t posted in forever.  These cold winter days make me wish for days like this!  One of my favorite places in the world!  Nauset Beach in Cape Cod!!

Moonlit Foliage

I finally forced myself out to shoot some landscapes this week!  My schedule is pretty busy these days, so I used the only free time I had and went out around midnight to get my shots.  Yes midnight!!  This was my only light source for the session…20151027-0022

I have always loved shooting under moonlight.  It was pretty dark out, but the full Hunter’s Moon lit up the area enough to get a decent composition in the camera.  After that, the rest is pretty simple as long as everything falls into place like it did for me on this night…  It was extremely calm, which is key for long exposure shots.  It is also peak foliage season right now, so I was hopeful that I’d see some dramatic colors once I snapped off a few photos.  I did a few quick test shots to get my times down and then began taking a couple from each position, increasing or decreasing the shutter speed a little each time.  The images were between 2 and 3 minutes long and shot at f/8.

Moonlit Foliage

Barn on Route 100 in VT

The ride along rt. 100 in VT is one of the most scenic in the northeast. It’s very windy and you might get stuck behind an occasional slow moving car or truck, but it’s definitely worth the drive.

I believe this barn is in Pittsfield, but I took it back in 2009, before I started recording location info off the GPS, so I might be wrong on the town. I do remember it was just off the road to the right while traveling north on 100.

Vermont looks beautiful anytime of year, but it’s truly amazing in autumn!

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Hartford from Wickham Park

For the better part of the last year, my landscape/nature photography has taken a back seat to just about everything. Luckily for me, one of those things recently gave me the opportunity to get back into it a little. I was photographing a family portrait session (Yes…I do that from time to time and hope to have a new website up, promoting that work, soon) at Wickham Park in Manchester, CT. If you have never been there, I highly recommend it. It’s a beautiful park with many attractions for both families and couples.

While walking up to the high point of the park, the view of nearby Hartford jumped out at me. The foliage leading there and the low flying cloud at the base of the city drew me in. I only snapped off a few photos before getting back to the session, but it was enough to remind me how much I enjoy photographing and editing scenic shots. I’m thinking I need a day trip somewhere very soon with just me and my camera. It’s been way too long!

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The Round Barn in Autumn

The Round Barn on East Warren Rd. In Waitsfield, VT has always captured my attention. On this fall morning, I happened to be traveling on Common Rd., which runs higher on the mountain and offers up more expansive views of the Mad River Valley surrounding the barn. Everything came together perfectly for this image and I have always been pleased with result. I hope you like it too.

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Southford Falls

Well… I have been slacking terribly in posting to this blog. Because of that, I have decided to change up my format starting right away. I’ll no longer be doing a long write-up about each image. I’ll write where it was taken and maybe a sentence or two more but that’s it. If anyone wants more information about a particular post, I invite you to ask questions in the comments section or send me a direct email (chris.mcguire9@gmail.com).

This will hopefully result in more frequent posts. Time will tell…


Covered Bridge at Southford Falls

Southford Falls in Southbury and Oxford, CT is a great place to picnic, fish, hike, and view the many different sights it has to share. I return often when I need some photographic inspiration and it seldom disappoints.

Southford Falls

Spring is in the air!

After a very long and cold winter, I am finally coming out of hibernation. The grass is getting greener, the days are getting longer, and it’s finally getting a little warmer here in Connecticut. It’s all helping to get my photography juices going again. I still have a lot going on in my life, but the need to be creative and to share some of the beauty I’ve been fortunate to see over the years is rising back up.

 

Spruce Brook Falls – Beacon Falls, CT

I took this photograph back in 2010, but it still remains one of my favorites. I have it hanging at work so I get to look at it every day. It reminds me of the fact that most, if not all, good things in life require hard work. The photograph itself wasn’t very hard to take. I had been shooting waterfalls long enough at that point to understand what camera settings to use and what composition would showcase the falls In a pleasing way. What was a challenge, was getting to this location. It had been raining for days prior and continued that morning as I trekked through an overgrown trail to the falls. It’s not an easy place to reach, but I had read that it was worth the difficulty, so I continued forward. I carefully stepped through the slippery mud and over the soaked rocks while ducking the branches and swatting the mosquitos. When I finally reached the falls, I was rewarded with an amazing view as the water washed over and then down the ravine. It made the difficult hike well worth the effort and continues to be an inspiration to me when times get tough.

Spruce Brook Falls

Frozen!

 

Within the 9 to 5

Although my job at work mainly consists of analyzing and programming, every once in a while, I get to work on a photography or video project. Back in October of 2012, I was given the opportunity to produce a music video for my company. It was done during the viral parody days of the now famous Carly Rae Jepson song, Call Me Maybe. I was given the task to create one of these videos promoting Manufacturing in Connecticut.

Being a huge fan of shows like “How it’s Made” and “Unwrapped”, I jumped at the chance to go in and video eight different manufacturing companies during a span of two weeks. Editing was very time consuming, but I enjoyed every minute (That’s probably a lie, but how I remember it now!).

A copyright issue with the song kept the video from playing on mobile devices for over a year, but apparently that has been lifted. We managed to get over 10,000 hits despite the problem, but I often wonder how many we would have received if it was available on phones and tablets from the start.

 

Frozen!  Sylvan Lake, Watertown, CT

With all of the sub-freezing weather we’ve been having this year; I felt the need to post one of my favorite frigid feeling photos. Even though I am not a huge fan of the cold, I don’t mind (too much), photographing in it. Dressing in layers as well as wearing good thin gloves are two important keys for me to be happy while shooting. I definitely work a little quicker once the temp drops below freezing, but I can tolerate it enough to capture beautiful scenes like the one below.

Frozen!

Stay warm everyone! Spring is right around the corner!

Happy New Year!

2013 was quite a year for me and that’s putting it mildly. For the most part, photography took a back seat throughout the year, but it never fully left. I took on a few personal projects in the Photoshop composite realm to prepare for a new service I’d like to offer in New England. I’ll have more on this soon…

 

Proud Dad Moment!

I want to give a shout out to my oldest daughter!  She placed Best in Show for juniors in a local photography contest in September! She inspires me to not only be a better photographer, but a better person, every single day. I couldn’t be prouder of my Goose!

 

Gray’s Beach Follow-up

I wrote in my last post (Gray’s Beach – Bass Hole Boardwalk) that I’d be posting more of Gray’s Beach to show off why I like going there so much. So… To make up for my lack of posting recently and to honor that commitment… Here are some of my favorites:

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Cheers to a happy 2014! Looking forward to seeing what it has in store!