Category Archives: Nature
Blueberry Lake Before Sunrise
Mad River Valley Vermont
I first started going to Vermont and the Mad River Valley about 13 years ago when my then-girlfriend and future wife invited me to her grandparents’ cabin in Warren.
It was at a time when I was still getting into photography and I was blown away at all the beauty everywhere we went. I would go out every day and explore all of the roads In the area, trying to make mental notes of the ones I liked the best. The next morning I would wake up early and head towards one of those places to photograph the early morning light.
We’ve gone back up to the cabin almost every year since. Some years we would take both a summer and a fall trip, getting two very different vacation and photo experiences. The summer trips meant 4 a.m. wake up calls to be out for the early light, but also being back at the cabin just as the family is waking up. I can sleep in till 5 in the fall, which may sound early, but that extra hour makes a big difference to me.
The location of the cabin is perfect! It is a quick drive to route 100 for easy access north towards Stowe or south towards Rochester. Most mornings, however; I prefer to take one of the most picturesque drives there is and the cabin sits right at the beginning. Just over a mile down the road is one of my favorite spots and I don’t pass it up often. On every trip to Vermont, I end up with more photos of Blueberry Lake than any other location. The cool mountain air usually makes for low flying clouds along with steam rising as the water warms. This means it really looks different every day, but almost always dramatic.
Blueberry Lake Before Sunrise
The problem with having such a beautiful spot so close to the cabin, is that I end up missing my intended locations quite often. I might get there, but it’s usually after the golden light is gone, so on our most recent trip this past summer, I made a point to get to my spots on time. As you can see in the “Mad River Morning” post, I was successful at least once. In fact, I took this photo that same morning.
Instead of waiting for sunrise like I normally would, I decided to stop while it was still dark out and use long exposures to grab what little light there was. This was my final shot before heading towards Moretown, but I was delayed again when I saw the fighting deer along route 100. It was quite the morning!
This morning had some amazing fog. Actually. too thick for most of the morning, but as it started to lift I was able to capture some nice, moody photos. I hope to have something to share later in the week.
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Late Sunrise – CT Shore
One thing about nature photography is that the length of time for really good light seldom lasts very long. There is the time just before the sun comes up till just after it rises. There is also the time around sunset as well as times of dramatic cloud cover. Most other times prove to be either too dark or too bright.
For me, that means photographing in the morning most of the time. My 9 to 5 as well as family time makes shooting sunsets a little less frequent. I will usually check weather.com the night before a trip to see what time sunrise is then plan when I need to leave the house so that I will have plenty of time to setup before that good light comes.
Late Sunrise – CT Shore
So I planned a morning trip in the winter of 2011 to photograph the snow covered shoreline. We had been hit with a few storms that year which left plenty of the white stuff all over, including the beaches which don’t often hold the snow for very long.
The only problem was that I overslept by about an hour. I could already see it was getting light outside and it’s a 45 minute trip to get to the shore. I fought myself for a while on whether it would be worth it, but in the end, I decided to go find out. As I drove closer to the shoreline, I could see that a line of clouds had formed along the horizon, blocking the sun. I started to perk up a little as I might still get that sunrise after all.
I found a small beach parking lot that only had handicap spaces in it. I never did find out where the rest of us were supposed to park, but I figured it was early on a 30 degree day. Not too many people would be heading out to the beach, so I parked my car and trudged through the thick snow. Once I found a good spot, I cleared an area for my tripod, set up the camera, and a minute or two later, the sun started to show — like it had waited for me!
Tomorrow I will be sharing another from Vermont. Before sunrise this time.
Fog Over “7 Hills”
Setting the mood for the weekend
Starting today, my Friday posts will be a very short write-up, if any, and a photo that I believe does well without many words.
Fog Over “7 Hills”
Almost every time I venture out on morning photo expeditions, I turn onto what’s known as “7 Hills.” It’s a road in Watertown that leads to the countryside. Its nickname comes from the seven steep rolling hills that grace the land (I never really counted, but it would be a silly name if it was a different number).
On one of those photo trips back in 2010, I came across this scene, 5 minutes after leaving the house. I stayed for about 20 minutes before continuing on to wherever I had planned. It was going to be a good day!
Have a great weekend everybody! Tomorrow, a photo of a sunrise that waited for me.
Sunrise – Cape Cod National Seashore
As a follow-up to my last post, I wanted to share this website I heard about on one of Gavin Seim’s podcasts (It was on podcast #85). That site is The Framed Network. I just signed up myself, but from what I have seen so far, there is a ton of FREE photography related information in the form of video episodes where they dive deep into many topics. I have one playing as I write this (always multitasking) and photographer Joel Grimes is talking about Photoshop and giving an example of a composite he made. I paid for 12 months of training videos from an excellent pool of photographers a few years back. The videos were great but I always felt guilty when I wasn’t watching enough or at least what I considered enough for what I paid. I can tell you that the first two videos I watched on this site are of the same quality.
Cape Cod
I still remember being a kid vacationing in The Cape with my family. We used to wake up really early (hated that) so we can get a good spot at Nauset Beach before all the “normal” people showed up. Just as the parking lot was being closed as full, we would be making our exit, with a nap in my near future (I was lucky to make it out of the parking lot some days).
I never appreciated those post-beach rides my dad loved to go on. First, I had usually spent the morning riding waves over and over again, so not much was going to keep my tired little body awake; and second, I wasn’t impressed with The Cape’s beauty as much as my parents were. They could drive around for hours exploring all the side roads along the shoreline, stopping every once in a while to take in some seascape, luxury home, or fishing pier. I would usually be dreaming about a possible trip to the go-kart track that we would be passing on the way back to our place, hoping that today was the day my dad would stop. But my dad would usually take a different route on the day we finally did stop at the track (I never understood back then why we couldn’t go every day) to surprise me and my sister. I love being a dad now and teasing my own children, just like my dad did with me, but nothing beats being a kid on go-kart day!
Sunrise – Cape Cod National Seashore
Flash forward to this past summer and I’m waking up at 4 a.m. to leave my parents’ recently-purchased condo to go photograph that very beauty I ignored as a child. Mom, Dad and the rest of my family were sleeping away as I headed out. The one thing I hate about the summer, other than the heat, the noisy neighbors and a bunch of other stuff, is the time that the sun rises. Six a.m.comes way too fast on vacation, but knowing I might miss the best time to photograph helps me to get up and out of bed. The silver lining is that at least I am back with the family just as they are waking up or a little after. Unfortunately, because of my early rise, I will need a nap at some point during the day — just like when I was a kid!
Tomorrow? Action!
Moonlake
Starting with this post, I am going to be sharing some of my favorite photographers to follow. I’m not sure how often yet. Maybe once a week or some other scheduled duration or maybe just whenever I feel like it. Time will tell.
Who To Follow – Gavin Seim
I first started following Gavin Seim (http://seimstudios.com/) about two years ago during a phase I went through listening to any photography related podcast I could find. His Pro Photo Show podcast is the only one I still listen to regularly. Why this one? The energy and passion he brings. He is clearly someone who thinks about things from many angles and is willing to try new ideas. You may have to rewind a few times because he moves at a pace faster than the rest of us, but it’s worth a listen if you are looking to get good photography advice from a pro.
Moonlake
I came up with the idea to show this image when I was writing about HDR last night. This is not an HDR. In fact, it wouldn’t even be a digital image if it wasn’t for a scanner. This was taken on Black & White 35mm film and developed in a darkroom in my parents’ master bathroom. The reason this image came to mind, was that it followed the same concept as the image of the river. It began with a vision and finished with editing. It’s hard to tell, I know, but this is actually an ordinary lake. The black along the top is the result of severely underexposing the photo, and therefor, the evergreens on the other side. The sun setting just above them and out of the frame provided a perfect moon-like effect that I envisioned before snapping the shutter. The first time I made a print from the negative I was disappointed. The beach was way too dark. Today, that would easily be fixed in Adobe Lightroom© with a quick stroke or two of the adjustment brush. But in the darkroom it was handled by arcing a piece of cardboard along the water line for one length of time, then with the cardboard removed, exposed for another length of time under the enlarger. Getting those lengths of time correct took a lot of trial and error as well as enlarging paper, but using that technique allowed me to get the image I pictured in my mind when I took it. Just like the HDR technique I used helped me get the desired result in the Mad River image.
Come back tomorrow for one from Cape Cod!
Mad River Morning
A Quick Word About HDR Images
I will be doing a series on HDR imaging next month, but for today I want to just quickly mention my feelings on whether or not it is photography. I have read some heated debates over the subject, and foolishly chimed in on a few. I say foolishly because it doesn’t matter. Let me repeat that in case I wasn’t clear. It does not matter. None of us take a photograph thinking about what someone will call it. I hope not anyway. And anyone admiring it doesn’t care whether or not some forum jockey living in his mother’s basement says it’s not a photograph.
I take the high road most of the time and call my final output an image. It doesn’t matter whether I processed it using HDR or made a slight color change in Lightroom. It’s hard for anyone to fight the word image and it avoids having to deal with something that just doesn’t matter. My end goal when I go out with my camera is to be able to come home and create an image I can call a work of art.
Mad River Morning
A few minutes after I snapped the photos of the deer fighting, I found this little pull-off on Rt. 100B in Moretown, VT. This was a clear HDR image for me as the bright clouds from the rising sun would have forced me to choose between blown out (so bright there is no detail) highlights or very dark shadows. This “image” is the wallpaper for one of my monitors at work. I never wonder what to call it.
Tomorrow I go old school with one from the darkroom days.
To Crop or Not to Crop
Writing the 4 posts for the Newtown the Beautiful series took a lot out of me, so I will be writing very little today and in most of my posts this week. I will still be posting a daily photo unless something gets in the way of that.
Free Newtown Images
I mentioned at the end of the last post that I would be making the images from Newtown available for download. You can get them here.
Cropping
Cropping refers to removing unwanted areas from an image and depending on who you listen to, there are many viewpoints on the subject. One of my favorite photographers to follow and listen to is Moose Peterson. He has a great post on why he doesn’t crop here. That’s right! He doesn’t crop his images at all.
I often think about Moose’s philosophy when I photograph and edit. Then I crop anyway if it suits me. Why? Because for me, it is a benchmark to attain, but it doesn’t stop me from making my final image as good as possible. The downside to that is it limits what you can do with your final image.
The deer play fighting in a field happened so fast that I had one chance to turn the camera, focus and snap as many shots as I could before it was over a couple seconds later. Unfortunately the little guy decided to take a pee right in front of the action and I was left with an unusable set of photographs. That is until I cropped out the offending action. I also made it a vertical image because after cropping the right side off, there was too much empty space over on the left. I am much happier with the final image, which for me, is enough to say the cropping was justified. But cropping doesn’t come without sacrifice and the final size of my image is much less than the original 16.2 mega pixels. A large print goes out the window, but I wasn’t going to make a large print of the peeing deer either.
Tomorrow? One of my favs from Vermont and a little more on HDR.
Newtown the Beautiful. Part 4 of 4
When I started this self made assignment, I didn’t know what to expect. The only thing I knew for sure was that I wanted to capture beautiful images of Newtown / Sandy Hook. I didn’t expect to come up with any answers for why something so ugly could happen in a town like this.
We will never know all the facts that led to a poor deranged boy doing the unimaginable, but for me; I can only surmise that we, as a society, let him down in some way. We didn’t do enough to prevent this tragedy from being an option for him. We didn’t take these mass killing weapons out of his mother’s, and therefore, his, hands. And we certainly didn’t take away the idea that we care about anyone other than ourselves. That is my opinion and I am allowed to have it. I also have the freedom to write about my opinions.
We will all hear a lot about freedom in the upcoming months. I believe there is a line somewhere between ultimate freedom (You know? The kind we see in the movies like Mad Max, where everyone does whatever they want), and a communistic culture where we can do nothing without approval. I hope that line is far away from either of those two extremes, but the point I am making is that when people use the word freedom as an excuse to stop change. Let them know that we will still be free, and that those 20 children should have been free to grow up and call those people idiots if they wanted to.
Goodbye Newtown
So I really didn’t expect to come away with much more than my photographs when I started this. I never talked to anyone there yet the town and this project gave me so much more to take home.
On the last morning I would be taking photos there, I woke extra early because I heard on the news that they would start taking the memorials down that day. It was the day after Christmas and very cold outside. I had not intended to go to the memorial in town at all when I began this, but as my hope began to grow on that last trip, I thought I should at least take a walk through the memorial and say goodbye in my own way.
There was no one around that morning. The road to the school was still closed, but there were no more police. No mourners walking around. Complete silence and I would have wanted it no other way. I strapped my camera over my shoulder to take some personal photos, but it never moved from there. It was both a great, and an awfully sad walk. My thought to the victims: I hope they become the most influential people of all time. The ones who truly changed the path of a country.
I walked back to my car, over the bridge lined with frozen teddy bears and flowers. The same one that crosses the river I would be photographing for my last image.
Day 4 – Pootatuck River, Sandy Hook
As I entered my car; I hadn’t planned where I was going to photograph. I wanted to get to the memorial and walk around before it was gone. I planned to drive around and find a place to photograph later. Well, that spot was right where I was. As I turned left, away from the memorial, I saw a large parking lot with some sort of stage or something. A park, I thought! Perfect for a photo within Sandy Hook! It was more of a parking lot for the downtown area, but it had a nice walk that lined the river that runs through town, and that offered up a nice view as it rushed under the bridge I had just been on.
If I am going to photograph water, I almost always use a tripod because I like to slow the shutter down and make it look smooth. It was pretty bright out so I used my polarizer filter to help give me a longer shutter speed. I took many different photos here because each one was a little different due to the random nature of water. I chose this one because I liked the ripples curving around on the bottom. I liked the overall photo because it was right for an ending photo for this series: The memorial just out of the frame on top and the water continuing to move on below it. Just like we have to.
As a final way for me to do something, I will be making the fullsize version of all four photos available for download. I will have a link to get them in my post tomorrow.
As I left for the last time on this project, I passed the same sign I had the previous three trips. It said: “Overcome Evil by Doing Good Today”.
Newtown the Beautiful. Part 1 of 4
When I decided I was going to do these posts, I wasn’t sure how it would go. I was very emotional as I exited I-84 for Newtown/Sandy Hook. From what I have read over the last few weeks, I know I am not alone in the pain felt over the thoughtless act that occurred on December 14th.
It didn’t start that way for me though. You see, I had my work holiday party that day and was driving there when I heard over the radio that police were responding to a shooting at a school in Newtown. That is just 30 minutes west of where my daughter was in school and where soon, she would be in a school-wide lock down until they knew it was safe. The sad thing is that it didn’t even phase me to hear about the shooting and I assumed it was either one student against another or against a teacher. And I also assumed it was a high school or middle school. Like that would have been OK. It is a very sad truth, but we have become accustom to hearing these news reports in our society.
So I just continued on my way to the party and a few hours later, when a coworker told me that 20 children were killed, I knew for the first time that something on a larger scale had happened. I still went to the post party happy hour that happens every year, but being a big tough thirty-something (OK…in my mind I am tough) at a bar full of happy people, while inwardly weeping, was not a good place for me to be. I put on a good act for a while, but when I saw a friend outwardly emotional about what had happened, I didn’t know how to react. I wanted everyone to continue having a good time at the bar, but I was emotional about it too. So what choice did I make? I told her she should leave because she was bringing everyone down. Yes, I know I am an ass and told her so the next day. I left the bar early and immediately got a bad stomach bug that kept me up all night…served me right. Anyway, during the week that followed; I saw so many heartwarming stories and acts of kindness that I knew I had to do something too. A town was weeping and as I read on and on, I realized that it wasn’t a town, but a state; a nation; and a world that was weeping. And as we scoured the web in search of answers, we saw countless images of beautiful memorials in town; of the beautiful faces that were taken from the planet way too early; of the grieving that so many were going through; but I had been to Newtown many times in my life and that was not how I knew it, nor how I wanted to remember it, so I decided I would go as many days as I could on my holiday vacation and photograph the scenery of Newtown.
Day 1 – Pond Brook
As I entered Newtown before sunrise on Saturday, December 22, I couldn’t help but notice the local diner right off the exit. I would have stopped and photographed it right away, but I had been up a few hours already that morning and had planned out my trip so that I could be in a certain area by a certain time in case the clouds opened up. So I made a mental note to go back there another day and continued to my preset destination. When I do these trips I often open up Google maps and zoom into a wide area around my location. From there, you can see rivers and ponds, state parks, etc… And that is exactly what I did to end up here at Pond Brook. It was actually snowing out a little when I arrived, so my hopes for good light coming from the sun were pretty much over. That was until I was packing up the car to leave after taking about 15 or so mediocre shots. I noticed just a hint of the sun on the far trees.
I pulled everything back out, mounted my camera back onto my tripod and began snapping away. I only took 75 photos that morning, which is low for me on something like this, but I knew I had some good images and was satisfied. As I left I decided I would drive over near the school to see the memorial. I didn’t get out of my car, but I gave a nod and a wave to the policemen guarding the entrance to the school road. It was a very emotional first day.
Tomorrow I will share the Image of that diner I mentioned and bring a little color to this blog.
WELCOME AND HAPPY NEW YEAR
Welcome to After The 9 To 5! It is still a work in progress, so if you see anything that doesn’t seem correct, please drop me an email.
2013 – A LOT OF HOPE
I have a lot of hope for 2013 and in my world of photography, that starts with this blog. To find more info about this site, click here. I am very excited about it and plan on passing along some of the knowledge I have gained from many years of taking thousands of photographs. So many, that I have countless libraries of unedited photos that I will be sharing as I get to them. Those, along with the new images I create, provide a lot of promise for the new year.
As for my non-photographic hopes for 2013, I hope to see a more peaceful world. I know it is way over the top cliche, but seriously, people! I hope we hit a low in 2012. I am also hopeful that my children grow up. Two of them anyway. The other can slow down a bit.
WINTER FOG
A photograph really can tell a thousand words and for me, many more. Every image I make has a story behind it. From the journey getting to the location, to finding the best spot to shoot and then deciding on what settings to dial in so that the resulting image will end up looking like what I want given the constraints of the cameras, lenses and post processing software that I have. Follow that with the editing itself where the image can be finished in as little as a few minutes or as long as many days and a thousand words hardy seem like enough.
This image came at the end of a very long morning when I was out shooting nature photos on December 28th, 2008. It was a pretty bad morning for shooting, as it was a raining off and on and the light wasn’t very good. I managed a few decent photos in one location, but not much else. On my ride back home I passed this pond along the side of the road and saw the fog rolling in. I quickly turned around when I could. It is on a pretty busy road and I remember driving back and forth a few times looking for a place to park. The snow had covered the little parking area, so I had to guess and just pulled in hoping not to get stuck. But the mental photograph I had already taken as I passed by the first time was good enough for me to take that chance; I would deal with getting out after getting the shot, so I wasn’t too concerned. I also remember that the fog was moving so fast that almost every photo I took looks different even though they were seconds apart. In edit, I had a hard time deciding on my favorite, but this one won out in the end.
So you see? This photo was taken more than 4 years ago, and only it and one other from the morning shoot remained in my master library and yet I was able to remember all of that. I can’t even remember what I ate for dinner last week, but my photos reach a different place in my brain and hold endless stories within them. I hope you find some interest in them.
ONE LAST SPECIAL HOPE
A few weeks ago one of the most horrific events of my life took place less than 30 minutes from where I live. It was the shameless killing of 27 people. 20 of them, innocent as can be, 6 and 7 year olds, while they attended school. It has affected me more than I ever thought it would and during the week that followed, I had lost most hope for our world.
…and then I saw what Americans had in reserve and the love and outpouring has been amazing. A few idiots aside, the unity people showed over the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT was probably the most I have ever seen. It inspired me to do something to give back as well. I drove to Newtown and Sandyhook on four separate mornings to take photographs. Not of the thousands of items left at the memorial near the school – although it was overwhelmingly beautiful – but of the beautiful scenery in that area. I wanted to show people that Newtown is just an ordinary, New England town. One like most others that I have photographed all over the area. And that even though it may be banged up a little right now, the beauty is still there. Over the next four days I will be posting those images and a few of my thoughts and emotions as I drove around. Please come back, read, and share them with anyone you think might appreciate them.
So my one last special hope is that we never forget what happened in Newtown. That we try to make a difference and help our neighbors in any way when we can.
Cheers to a hopeful 2013.
