Vegetables, Beautiful Vegetables!

I went to the Farmers' Market in Burlington, Vermont this weekend and found a riot of color and texture in each stall. At this time of year, you get the deep rich colors of the root vegetables, and their shapes are amazing. Some of the vendors are happy to have people admire their produce, and I made sure to come back later to buy from them.

It was a happy break from my usual landscape images and a nice shady spot to cool off on a summer afternoon. When I'm in a city, I find it a good idea to switch gears and vary my focus from time to time. I think we do it naturally outside - changing from a mountain landscape to a butterfly portrait comes easily when the butterfly attracts our attention. In Burlington, I was shooting a festival, then the Church Street Marketplace, and the farmers' market was between them. After taking a few overview shots, I realized that I was more interested in looking at the veggies. Glad I did!

NH Lakes and Mountains

Last week's road trip took me to New Hampshire's Lakes and White Mountains. I stayed in Ashland, which is a very convenient location to explore from. The first day I drove up to the Kancamagus Highway, through Bear Notch, over Crawford Notch, to Jefferson, and back to Ashland. Day two was lakes day - sunrise in Meredith, then on to Holderness, Chocorua, Ossipee, Eaton, and Conway before going home to Boston.

These are two of my favorite routes year-round, and I'll probably repeat them in autumn. But the lakes are a special place in summer, so I try to visit every year.

The first picture here is a mill in Ashland. It's right on Route 3, just north of town. It would be better with a kayak, so that piece of sky wouldn't be pulling your eye away from the mill. This is a spectacular scene in autumn and winter. A red mill - how could it not be a winner?

Next come several pictures from the lakes - Winnipesaukee, Squam, Chocorua, Crystal. Marinas, villages, reflections, maple-covered hillsides. Lots to play with here. There are also a couple of shots from Jefferson, which is becoming one of my favorite places. There's a meadow there... Lupines in spring, and I think I missed fireweed in July! Can't wait to see what October brings.

1) Eaton NH 2) Sunrise at a Meredith marina 3) Meredith-Church Landing
4) Meredith Town Pier 5) Mt Chocorua 6) Holderness, hazy sunset
7) Jefferson meadows 8) Holderness marina 9) Jefferson meadows

Cardinal Flowers

Cardinal flowers. Where do you go to find them? No, you just notice them, driving past a small stream, out of the corner of your eye. A flash in the woods, a shaft of sunlight, a flame. I was looking for lake scenics. I found cardinal flowers. Who's complaining?

Wet Meadow in the Berkshires

Sometimes I get impatient with the Berkshires. A beautiful area, and I love the mountains, but the cultural features seem inaccessible. For a photographer, at least. The mansions and cultural venues are hidden away out of sight, and you can get in legal trouble for publishing photos of them. Sometimes I go to the Berkshires with a list of shots, and come home feeling like I didn't get what I came for.

This week I found myself missing the country. Needed to walk in grass and see some wildflowers. There are several wet meadows in the Berkshires, and this one is usually good around August 1st. It's in Tyringham, in a narrow valley that catches the sunlight late and holds the ground fog when everything else is dry. It has become one of my favorite places. The Hop Brook Wildlife Management Area. I've seen deer and many bunnies, and this week it was full of songbirds. A very nice way to start the morning.

Actually, the Berkshires have a good variety of natural subjects - running rivers, old-growth forests, glacial lakes, meadows and marshes, and even a limestone cobble that sprouts wildflowers and ferns in spring. There are state parks that are wild. Great places for a kayak. And if you ride a bike, there are roads by farms and pastures and country homes. There are quaint villages and ice cream stands and swimming holes to explore.

Me? I keep coming back to Hop Brook.

A quick trip to Nantucket

I opened my email Wednesday night and found a customer request for pictures of Nantucket. I have Nantucket, but the pictures are old film scans, and I know I can do better. Seems I never get over there - everything on the island is so expensive that I just can't break even going for a few days and shooting for stock.

This is a good customer, and I do pretty well with them. I want to be a dependable source of images. So I set a challenge for myself - could I do it in a day trip? I made a reservation for the ferry, packed my breakfast, and set the alarm. Thursday sunrise found me on Cape Cod with time to spare. I napped on the ferry and arrived on Nantucket at 9:00, ready to go.

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Nantucket Town has tourist facilities, shopping, museums, historic houses and cobblestoned streets. There are B&Bs, restaurants, bike shops, clothing stores, art galleries and ice cream shops, all quaint as can be. And not a chain store in sight.

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I can't walk like I used to, so I broke up the walking part of the trip by taking the shuttle bus to the extreme ends of the island - Madaket in the morning and Sconset after lunch. Both destinations have gorgeous beaches, and Sconset is a little village with wonderful pocket gardens and adorable grey-shingled cottages. The island is laced with bike paths which add to the serene atmosphere.

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By 6:00 pm, I had run out of steam, so I took the early ferry, had a quick (and cheap) burger, and drove home to feed the kitties. It took a couple of days to edit the photos, and a couple of days to rest the photographer, but now I'm ready to go again. A good selection of images is waiting for the customer and I have the satisfaction of knowing I did a good day's work. And Nantucket is such a beautiful place, it's always a pleasure to visit.

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A foggy day in Scituate

The weather has been humid lately and mornings have been foggy. Foggy photos can be charming, but fog and mist present challenges that need to be dealt with. Cameras are calibrated to make good exposures in average conditions. "Average" is the tone of summer grass and blue sky, paved streets, and brick walls. When a camera encounters a scene that's supposed to be very light or very dark, it mistakenly tries to make the exposure average.

You've seen photos with gray fog. Fog is not gray! When you step outside on a foggy morning, the sky is white. Yet the camera makes everything look gray. This is one situation where the photographer needs to use camera settings to override the tendency to make everything average.

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The picture on the left is underexposed, with a gray sky and dark foreground. That is not what I saw as I approached this lighthouse. Fog is white, not gray! My camera has an EV control, which I set at +1 or +1.5. My compact camera has a "Snow" setting which lightens exposures. Yes, snow and fog scenes have the same exposure problem.

Now that the exposure is set right, the next problem is that everything is white and not very interesting. The way I work with this is to put something in the foreground that is dark or bright. In foggy situations, the fog has an incremental effect. Distant objects are lighter than close objects. Here the driftwood log adds some foreground interest and balances all that white in the sky.

The really great thing about morning ground fog is that it clears away, usually by 9:00. I took a walk, made some pictures of beach houses in the (gorgeous) even light, and returned to the lighthouse as the fog lifted. At this point, it becomes apparent that fog is just a cloud on the ground. The sun warms it and it rises, creating interesting effects as it clears out. Including blue sky and foreground elements makes pictures of clearing fog interesting and unique. If you're lucky enough to see this at sunrise or sunset, you can get spectacular lighting and color and God-rays. I wasn't that lucky this week, but I'll keep on trying!

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I finished off these images in Adobe Lightroom, my favorite post-processing software. One of the pictures needed more help because the lighthouse was leaning toward the center. I fixed the perspective distortion in Photoshop and, while I was diddling, I used the HDR-tone adjustment to bring out the details. How did I do? Does it look natural? Which one is it?

The Kerry House - tone-mapped

This is the Beacon Hill home of Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. It is a beautiful building in a beautiful neighborhood. Yet, I have passed it by at least a dozen times. Its formal majesty is not inviting to me. The street is narrow, so if I use a wide-angle lens the sides of the building lean in to the middle, and I've just never connected with it. Yesterday as I passed, I decided to try again. Even though it was a sunny day, the light was even. There were lights at the door and reflections in the windows. The mid-summer foliage was lovely against the red of the brick. Might as well give it a try.

Of course, Photoshop can straighten out those leaning buildings. And Lightroom can light up the shadows a bit and crop an unfortunate bit of curb. At what point do you stop diddling with an image? I couldn't resist. I made a couple of copies and brought them into HDR-Pro. I had already saturated the image, so it didn't take much diddling. It just popped. I could get used to this really fast.



I didn't want it to be too garish, but I really like the color and the detail that HDR picks up. Of course, this isn't real HDR. You need three separate exposures for that, not one image used three times. Nevertheless, I could spend a lot of time playing with this stuff. And publish it under another name!