Monday, May 30, 2011

It's hot.  It's too hot.  It's too damn hot this early in the season.  I will not complain, because it's been too damn cold and too damn snowy this past, and last winter.  I know there are places in this country and in others that maintain a fairly uniform pattern of weather that never wanders into extremes.  But, we don't live there and have to make do with what we get.  Yesterday, today, and tomorrow the mercury has, is, and will be reading near 90F, but it was only a few months ago that the snow was approaching 4 feet in depth.  So....I repeat...I will not complain.  I will just post a couple of pictures from 2008 (when the snow wasn't so deep that I couldn't hike in it) that I made with the Shen Hao.  It was tough slogging in the snow with the 4x5 backpack and a tripod, but I really enjoyed the shlepp, so here they are, two antidotes to too early summer!



Monday, May 23, 2011

The town we live closest to doesn't have enough of the charm that other nearby places do.  In the middle and latter part of the 20th century, too much was torn down and replaced by characterless, modern storefronts and shopping venues.  Nonetheless, some of the town's ancestry remains on a few streets that have preserved their late 19th century flavor. However, there is one wonderful asset that is about a mile and a quarter around, and that is the Goose Pond park.  At all hours of the day people walk or run around it on the encircling footpath.  Serious joggers in spandex and tank tops pass very conservatively dressed Chassidic men and women with their strollers. In fact,  all manner of people seem to love the place (as do I). 

In the warmer seasons, the two halves of the pond (there is a street that divides it) are aerated to help keep the mosquitoes down, and a dredger pulls copious water grass out as well.  Early this past Saturday morning I visited with the camera, and these are what I came away with.



Sunday, May 8, 2011

Saturday, May 7th, was gorgeous here in the Hudson Valley, and staying home to do yard work was unthinkable (well, actually it was thinkable, but not acceptable) so off we went with cameras to the black dirt region.  I think I've photographed this particular irrigation ditch a dozen times, but it's always different.  The sunlight was creeping back across the field as the clouds moved on. 

(This was photographed with the P67 and a 55mm lens that I'm becoming very fond of, but have rarely ever used before.  I don't think wide angle is easy to use well, but I think I did so in this case.  There's always a lot to learn.)

Friday, May 6, 2011

The all too brief season of flowering trees and early leaves is upon us here in the Hudson Valley. The greening is progressing rapidly, and is discernible daily.  I'm amazed I haven't driven off the road, or into a tree for all the staring into the woods that I do going to and from work.  I've known where to find the dogwood trees below from having visited this spot in other years, but now there are a number of signs designating the area as a US Army live firing range with trespass forbidden. The gunnery is actually quite a way into the tract of land, and very far from the public road that borders it by the Hudson River, but it's off limits nonetheless.  So...of course that's where the best camera bait is located, hence I ran the very remote risk of being arrested by federal police while making these 'graphs.  It's interesting how doing that sort of thing is kind of exciting, and makes the experience all the more intense.