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Needle Music

On Sunday, I resisted the urge to stay home and listen to music, and opted instead for a walk around Burr Pond in Torrington. The day checked most of the boxes for “miserable weather”… so, on went the rain gear, and of the two current cameras, I chose the one that claims to be “weatherproof.”

The park was mostly deserted; just a few luckless fisherman and myself.

To my surprise, the shoreline was a feast of shadowless color: fresh pine needles and the inimitable calling cards of birch and maple. I took a number of simple exposures, all in color with the downward gaze. This was the first, just a few feet from the car.

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Flow of Fall

Late on Friday, we took a hike along Rock Brook in Harwinton CT. The trail follows the stream north for several miles into Roraback Wildlife Management Area. We didn’t run into anyone, so it was the river that commanded attention. The forest is mature here; a semi-darkened room built of pine, hemlock, birch, oaks and maple. Ferns and mosses complete the sense of enclosure. Despite all the pleasant “gloom,” pockets of sunlit foliage reflected in the brook. Late-day liquid gold.

In this picture, I used an ND filter to let the brook do its thing. The sapling couldn’t have been more cooperative and remained motionless for the long exposure.

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Great Spangled Fritillary

I’ve started to take some pictures of insects the last few weeks, including a pair of Speyeria cybele (one of whom appears on the zinnia). These aren’t macro images, but they do involve using a telephoto lens at the closest focus. To photograph the butterfly, I used a wide open aperture, just as I have been with many of my landscapes. With insects, this requires lots of patience and time. (I have a lot of the latter…maybe a little less of the former.)

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Upper Farmington Sequence

Much like my previous post (three views of a cloud), this group of river pictures were shot in sequence without resorting to a burst. Unlike most of my other recent river photos, I decided to use ISO 1250 to freeze the moving water which resulted in the pebbly blue-gray pictures you see here. With the pale rose accents on the upper left of the frames, the river resembles slabs of granite.

Canton, CT / July 21 / 1:37 pm

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