30-MAR-2009
Day 089 - Words could not describe
There is no way I could possibly describe this without a photo. I saw this scene yesterday when I was coming back from my PaD shoot on the pond. You are looking at an old mill house, built on the side of a ravine that drops about 40' to the river below (which drains into the pond I was at). In the foreground is a small piece of the falls that plunge downward. I am standing across the river on a bridge beside another mill building. Those ladders you see are resting on a ledge with a couple of feet to spare. From this angle it looks like you'd continue to plunge into the gorge below once you reached the bottom rung. There has to be a Discovery Channel film crew floating around here (no pun intended) covering either the "World's most dangerous jobs", the "Future Darwin Awards", possibly both.
29-MAR-2009
Day 088 - Melting
I expected to find the pond had thawed out, I was a bit shocked to see so much ice. It was raining out and I wanted to try a semi long exposure closeup of the pond water to capture the water drops landing on it. There was too much snow for me to get close to the pond which was mostly iced over anyway. The falls on the other side of Leigh's Mill Pond were pretty spectacular, but I saved them for another day.
28-MAR-2009
Day 087 - Somone is coming
After we had a dinner with the inlaws in Wells (on the coast) I took the remaining family members (my wife & my oldest daughter) on a quick jaunt towards the ocean for my photograph today. I didn't expect to make it to the ocean, and I didn't. I am parked in a restaurant parking lot in the middle of the tidal marsh. I had been shooting the water & fog when I decided to rotate the camera towards the oncoming traffic. I like the glow effect of the headlights into the fog. Today was supposed to be a beautiful day, it was cloudy and foggy pretty much for the most of it (but it didn't rain). Tomorrow is supposed to be a rain fest. I can't wait.
27-MAR-2009
Day 086 - Down the road (2)
This morning I knew that I wouldn't be home in time to do any kind of evening shot, so I drove around a little, looking for something to shoot. This is a dirt road just outside of an attached development that parallels a cemetery on the right (out of frame). Like most of my other PaD shots, I initially drove by this with intentions of a different shot altogether. I got about a 1/2 mile away and turned around (it took that long for my brain to process this shot apparently).
The reason I wasn't supposed to be home before dark related to an after work meet up for drinks with the group. That never happened, as I predicted, something important came up and kept a few of us there late. I wound up heading out with a coworker to check out his new property that he bought (just around the corner from this road). I find it interesting that this shot of a slightly muddy road, taken in the morning, is how I ended my day. We went muddin' in his Prius and my Suzuki (bike). I only wish the road we drove down was 1/2 as improved as this dirt road in the photo.
26-MAR-2009
Day 085 - Army Surplus
My daughter told us that tomorrow there is some kind of "WWII Theme" at school. There was a lot of drama about other various requirements, all of which had to be completed "right now" (wow, this really sounds like working at a Software Company). When asked how long she'd known about this (which we knew would have been an "Oh, a few days") we explained the difference between "expected" and "actual". Somehow, a WWII theme extends to BDU pants from my wife (who did not serve in WWII), dog tags, new style combat boots (again they were not in WWII), and a "Hot Shirt" which was most likely not standard issue in any war. On the PaD forefront, I left the camera gear at home this morning on purpose with the expectations ("illusion") that I would come home before 6pm so I could get out and get some kind of dusk shot. I'd envisioned a beach scene if there was enough time. I got out later than expected, it had already started to rain, and was so overcast that it was too dark to do anything outside when I got home.
24-MAR-2009
Day 083 - Springtime
I knew that this evening was going to be hectic, I didn't have room on the bike to bring my camera gear (I brought my Mac Book Pro into work), so I took my gear with me when I dropped the kids off to school. This was a bit of a whim, the park beside the falls. The last time I was here, I trudged through two to three feet of snow to get to the wall just beyond the end of this park bench to take a photo of the ice on or around the rocks in the background. Today there was no snow to be seen, the parking lot was open (eg: not covered in snow). I had numerous shots from this vantage point, most with the falls and the snow/ice that is almost framed in this shot. I nixed those shots because the composition wasn't right, turns out I needed to get a little lower to get the snow ice mounds, that looked like two scoops of vanilla ice cream, in frame. I might go back tomorrow and try again, we are fast approaching the day where there will be no ice or snow left to shoot, at least not for another 9 months or so. The lack of a working off-camera flash did hurt this a bit, I would have liked to expose for the lighter background & then light the bench in the foreground.
23-MAR-2009
Day 082 - Stool Bus
I rode behind this truck on the Tradeport and was laughing (inside my helmet) at it. I made a decision that if he turned the same direction I was heading at this one intersection, that I would try to follow him to get a photo. He turned. I thought he would go to a construction site, my mind was spinning trying to do an internal "Google Maps" kind of thing to locate a construction site in the direction we were going (there are none, the other direction had a bunch). Turns out he went to the "Septage Receiving Station" which was news to me. It is a gated off area just down the street from where I work. I parked the bike outside the gated area and walked in with my camera (in my riding gear again). I tried to find someone to ask permission, but there was no one around. I certainly couldn't have been mistaken for spying, I was in my neon orange riding jacket. Just a note, the hose coming directly out the back doesn't come anywhere near where I was standing, it doglegged to camera left into that building which must be the "Receiving Portion" of said building. I sure home there isn't a cafeteria in there.
22-MAR-2009
Day 081 - Bandaged
My youngest daughter took a babysitting class over the weekend. Part of the class involved First Aid, she even received a First Aid kit at the completion of the course. I'm not sure what is left in the kit though. To be honest, I've not been around, I've been at a conference during the days over the weekend, so it is possible that she created this bandage from scratch by weaving tiny strands of silk gathered from the various cobwebs that exist in our family room. It is possible, not necessarily probable.
21-MAR-2009
Day 080 - Something interesting on the screen
A sort of rarity for me, a P&S shot straight out of the camera (with cropping). I am attending a conference just outside of Boston through this weekend and I am riding my motorcycle each day. There is no room for the 40D gear and my "geek stuff" so I packed the LX3. I took some boring shots of the hotel (even though the hotel isn't all that boring) that won't make it into my PaD. This shot was supposed to be for our weekly "52 of Us" set, but it is pulling double/triple duty today.
20-MAR-2009
Day 079 - Local Memorial
I've wanted to take a shot of one of the civil war cannons in our town for a while. This morning I found myself in a "non-rush" situation since I wasn't going straight into work, so I gave it a shot (so to speak). I really needed my remote flash to light up the shade side of the cannon, but it wasn't behaving (I couldn't get the flash to trigger from only 2' away, which has not happened before). I gave up with the flash and relied on some Post Processing work. This is a pretty early post for me, but I won't be back until 9pm or so tonight, it is better to take care of this now.
19-MAR-2009
Day 078 - Old Reflections
I actually had a few extra minutes to spare before zipping off to a Spring Concert (oldest, Flute). I decided to head around the corner from our house to THE "Old Mill" (we live in a development called "Old Mill", though there were no mills in or on the site of our development). I originally started with the UWA and decided to pop back with the 17-55 to get a little tighter. This is actually a cropped down version of the shot I went with. The full version was too busy, there was nothing to focus on. In this version, there is a bit of symmetry in the center around that little outcropping of building. One of those "hindsight" things, but I wish I captured the roof of that building as well as it's reflection. Perhaps another time.