Yesterday on the return leg of a hike up some small mountains in southern NH, I spied this beauty on a striped maple. It's a rare and wondrous luna moth and the backlight was a bonus. Judging by the bushy and feathery antennae, it's probably a male. It had newly emerged from the cocoon and... Continue Reading →
For the last few days I've been grounded with the car in the shop for new brakes and some other fiddly bits. So I went into the yard with the 90mm macro, a 25mm extension tube and a ring flash. What do you know, abstract macro. And if you know where your towel is... Continue Reading →
Lots of people have done a 'what's in my camera bag' type post and have dragged every last bit of kit out of each and every nook and cranny of their bags. Kind of interesting, but out of all that stuff I'd like to know what a person really uses to create her images. I... Continue Reading →
Crazy, huh? Spring is so...springy. The two Ws are just irresistible - wildflowers and waterfalls. I've shot these particular falls before, but after a big storm knocked branches and whole trees down so the cascades were a mess. When I saw fellow photographer Jeff Newcomer's recent post about Garwin falls, I saw they were clear... Continue Reading →
As these are pretty common flowers (apart from the columbine, which I shot a few weeks ago) I'm not including them in the elusive category. Popular and ubiquitous or not though, I can't resist them. Wait!!! How did that last one get in there?? Heh.
Before I head out today in quest for more wildflowers, I'll share a couple more favorite spots. First is Senter Falls on Cold Brook. Why the heck they're called that, I don't know. I suspect my friend Mike made it up. It's a relatively popular location for local photographers and I've shot it several times.... Continue Reading →
The Piscataquog is my favorite river. I know, weird, huh? It's an important waterway not only for people, but for many animals and plants that thrive in the ancient glacial habitats along its course. It has 3 branches (north, middle and south), runs for 57 miles with little interruption and its name translates from a... Continue Reading →
Because the forecast called for overcast skies with a minimal chance of rain, I decided to take a ride over to one of my favorite little conservation areas to see if the brook was flowing and if there might be any wildflowers about. Pulpit Rock is about 20 minutes away and, while small, gave me... Continue Reading →
They aren't showy or rare, but I couldn't resist the artful arrangement of leaves in the early morning sun. I have shot them before, but not with a flower closed like this. I think it adds a tiny bit of the unexpected. Some tension maybe and makes you imagine the days to come.
If you hang around this blog you'll quickly realize I love the woods. Forests of all stripes and ecologies fascinate and enchant me. Mostly I look for the small scenes and tiny things that are often overlooked. This year I want to also try to show the larger view of why I hang out in... Continue Reading →
Do you remember me stalking a plant that wasn't blooming and me not knowing what it was? Well today was my lucky day and I finally found it blooming. It's columbine! Yay!! Another one I'd never shot before. I don't remember even seeing it outside of books. Sa-weet. The light was really spectacular, but... Continue Reading →
I was right. It took two trips to get these in bloom. Somehow I'm not satisfied with my work, but for now it will do. The light went from terrific to flat in a short time and since it was still pretty breezy, I packed it in. Here's what I got though. Shot with a... Continue Reading →
My photographic journey with this flower has been an interesting one. Despite the long hours I spend in the woods and my quest for wildflowers to photograph, I'd never seen these beauties except in the photographs of others. A photographer acquaintance of mine even refused to disclose the location of the flowers a couple years... Continue Reading →
In the event that I get crap out of the camera tomorrow, here's what I shot today. All three were shot with my old Olympus 90mm. It's round-lobed hepatica, a very early riser in the spring wildflower pantheon. And one I've never shot before. The name refers to the leaves which are quite distinctive and... Continue Reading →
By now most of you have caught on that this isn't a technical photography blog, but that I'm not above putting out a little know-how if I think it could be useful. With wildflower season approaching, I think you flower shooters will like this one - purple flowers looking blue and how to fix it!... Continue Reading →
One of my favorite things about the woods is finding the unexpected. Around here conservation land usually has a past, meaning it hasn't always been conservation land. A lot of it has been logged, farmed, lived on, mined and used for lots of other things, often yielding up its secrets decades later. This bridge isn't... Continue Reading →
It's as much a part of being a photographer as clicking the shutter - the ebb. Maybe not exactly an ebb, but a slack tide kind of time. The time between the rushing. When things are still. Calm. I used to resent my 'photographic funks', but now I sort of relish them. I think it... Continue Reading →
How they're longing for some color. Even more than usual for this time of year. See, we've basically had a snowless winter. It hasn't snowed with accumulation since Halloween. The extended brown stick season has sapped my enthusiasm and induced the need for color in a big way. So, without further ado - See what... Continue Reading →
to paraphrase Robert Burns. Sorry, Bob. With all the tools at our disposal now like Photographer's Ephemeris and just plain Google maps, we can really get a handle on a location, the light and how best to showcase both. In our minds we envision the photographs we want to take. We move the pin all... Continue Reading →
Do you fuel your fire or let it go out? Today I went with a friend to shoot the sunrise. I know this lake fairly well and know how few places there are with compelling or even just plain usable foreground elements. It's always a tough shoot unless you have a lot of time or... Continue Reading →
Granted it's not the only type of fern to remain green in winter, but it just looks so pathetic sometimes that it's irresistible. I found it while exploring some ruins in the Townes forest in New Boston, NH. We've had so little snow that I noticed swathes of evergreen fern all over the foundation. They... Continue Reading →
Winter is a great time for showing us things we might ordinarily not see at all. I have no idea how many times I've passed this house, but I'm sure it's dozens. Finally the other day I noticed it. I had to laugh though because it's about 50 feet from the edge of a pretty... Continue Reading →
OMG am I a lazy blogger or what? Nothing like waiting until the end of January to post about my best work of the previous year. I guess I picked a bad time to disconnect from the photography world for a bit huh? When I began sorting images into a best of collection in Lightroom,... Continue Reading →
The immortal last words of McManus (The Usual Suspects) perfectly describe what's happening with this picture on flickr - I put it up a few hours ago and it's had a hundred views coming from an unknown source. The Unknown source gag is something that frustrates the crap out of me with flickr. I've put... Continue Reading →
The other day I decided to walk in the common land at the end of the road. It's woods and has a couple of old roads running through it and it was logged sometime in the past. There are some trails, one in particular runs to the back of a nearby horse stable and gets... Continue Reading →
