Michigan’s cold and wet spring finally took a turn for the better today, with downright hot temperatures and sunny skies. So I slipped away for a bit and checked out the Mc Linden Nature Trails to see if any dragonflies were out.
The dragons were indeed out in the field - not as numerous as I expected, but given the cold temperatures I guess it is understandable. Here is the one shot I was able to get during my hour in the field - a Four Spotted Skimmer:
I haven’t been out shooting wildflowers this spring, but I found a directory of shots from the spring of 2009 that I never got around to posting. So here is the first installment (there will be a few more.)
These are all early spring hepatica. Most of these were taking in Berrien County, Michigan. The last couple of shots were taking in the Allegan forest. The dime gives an idea of the size of these blooms.
These were all taken in the early days of April, 2009.
Here’s a snapshot of the Chicago skyline in the early morning, as taken from a hotel room last year. I re-worked the photo, previously posted here, in Photomatix. I really like the results on this morning photo, but oddly, Photomatix didn’t help the night shot at all.
I don’t expect that I’ll have much opportunity to photograph wildflowers this spring, so I thought I’d post a some older shots form a few years ago. I recently upgraded my medium format scanner from an Epson v500 flatbed to a dedicated Nikon 8000 ED, and have been rescanning some medium format images. Here are three shots of a spring woods with trillium in bloom. I don’t remember when I took these shots (I guess 2006 or 2007) but they were scanned this year and re-worked.
Here are a few more snapshots from Chestertown, Maryland. All of these are, again, digital infrared tone mapped images.
First off - another fine old home:
And here is the old Courthouse near the center of town:
Emmanuel Episcopal Church - another very old landmark in the center of town:
Don’t have the precise name of this, but it was a Methodist Church near the downtown area:
Lastly, a commercial building, somewhere in town. I like the nice clean lines of these old brick buildings:
Next - Chesapeake City, MD!
World pinhole day would have been last Sunday, April 24, but since that was Easter the folks how run the contest extended the time period by several days. (More about world pinhole day at http://www.pinholeday.org/)
Here’s my entry:
Of course, that is the South Haven lighthouse on the Lake Michigan Shore.
This was taken with my trusty Pentax 6x7 medium format camera with a pinhole body cap. The film used was some very old (and very expired) Kodak E100V transparency (slide) film.
I’m always trying to learn new things, so here are a few things I learned with this project:
1. The pinhole body cap does not form an entirely light proof seal against the camera body. In this shot you can see a mild light leak in the arching light areas to the left of the lighthouse. In some shots the light leaks totally whiles out the exposure. OK - I’m sure I was careless in how I mounted the body cap in a few cases, but I’m not sure if the body cap mounted on the camera is lightproof. (And then I wonder… why *should* a body cap be light proof, eh?)
I’ll be testing that…
2. The Kodak E100V had expired in 2004, but here we are, 7 years later, and it performed fine. It was stored in a deep freeze so that probably helped. I’ll be less worried about expired film going forward (good news since I have a freezer full of expired film…)
And BTW - I wouldn’t recommend slide film for any pinhole work, unless you can really get your exposure precise. I just really wanted to get rid of this film after looking at it in the freezer for the past 8 years, so I crossed my fingers and bracketed…
One of the most relaxing days on our vacation was visiting Maryland’s eastern shore, and a visit to Chestertown was the highlight of that excursion. Chestertown is rich in history and architecture, and the downtown shopping district is home many interesting shops. (You can learn more about the town here.)
Here is a fine old Georgian (I think) style home located on the waterfront - again, digital infrared with a little hand coloring on the shrubs:
Here’s a shot looking back at the city from the waterfront:
Another landmark - the Imperial Hotel, which is located on High Street near the center of the city:
Lastly - The fountain in the fountain in the center of the city park:
More shots will be coming.