This was shot after a night of heavy rain and conditions were as calm as I have seen in recent memory. I usually would crop out the road,but with the leaves partially covering it, I found the blue shade a nice contrast to the row of trees. This is one of my favorite fall shots from this season.
Fall is my favorite time of the year,and even though this years spectacle of color seems a bit lackluster,one can still find pockets of beauty if you look a bit. Despite the fact that I traveled thirteen hundred miles this month to see foliage,this scene was among my favorites and it was less than ten miles from home. If anyone wants suggestions on shooting foliage,I would say mix it up and try some tight shots like this using a telephoto to compress the scene and keep sky out of the shot. It wont be long till old man winter starts to blow and just between you and me,I hope its one of the snowiest and coldest winters.I just got four new snow tires on the truck and I am itching to get out and explore.
This little shack was along the road in Vermont and the mums in the window boxes,the wood pile,and the stone wall all combined to create a country scene worth shooting. There were little maple syrup bottles on shelves in the windows,but I don’t know if the shack was used to make maple syrup or not.
I posted a summer image from this lovely location a few months ago, and thankfully I decided to drive by and see what it might be looking like now. The old maples were in their prime of fall color transition and the fact that fallen leaves were covering the entrance and sporadically covering the lane as well made for an impressive sight in my opinion.The property is gated at the stone wall and posted as well,but after I spoke with the groundskeeper and gave him a few large prints from my first visit,he was all too glad to welcome me back.I started shooting at the entrance and then moved up the lane for a variety of angles,and at one point the keeper pulled up on his tractor and offered to open the gate,which allowed me to get what is perhaps my favorite view. The lit lanterns on the stone walls finished off this fall scene,which will be just a memory if hurricane sandy hits the east coast as predicted. trees will be blown clean of leaves,which makes my visit even more special only days before the storm.
This Lake Placid park was full of color, but with twenty-mile per hour wind and driving rain,I was wondering why I left my warm motel room an hour and a half before sunrise in search of images. All the light in this image is coming from lamp posts throughout the park and my exposure for this image was thirty seconds at f11. Several early morning joggers gave me funny looks as they wondered what on earth I was doing.This image was taken shortly after I finished my streets of gold image from yesterdays post.
This Vermont farm is accented by autumn color,and the reflection in the pond just adds to the scenic appeal. A stone wall runs along the dirt drive and seems to be a very common attribute at many Vermont farms.
I just returned from a five-day trek to the Lake Placid region in New York, which was more challenging than I had anticipated. Foliage was decent,but the area is known as the high peaks region,which meant you are often in between mountains with not a lot of valleys to see farms etc. I am sure if I had researched the area more before visiting, I would have been better prepared to shoot in that setting. Foliage was slightly past peak,but still lovely as evidenced by this private lane with a rustic log gate with brilliant foliage surrounding it that I shot on the way in to Lake Placid. I will share more images in the days ahead as I get to them.
Several people told me they enjoyed the stories of my Maine escapades, so due to the fact I am behind on processing new images, I will share another story and image. Several years ago, I asked a friend if he wants to travel to the Poconos in Pennsylvania to shoot some fall foliage and a few waterfalls. It was a lovely fall day and we arrived to see perfect conditions for shooting. The location shown here is called Silver thread falls and although it’s not the most photogenic, it is among the highest at 80 feet. I was shooting film at the time and this image was snapped on the way to the top of the falls. We took the trail all the way to the top, and upon reaching this point, we were greeted with an overlook of sorts that included a rail fence. I took one look at the fence and decided I was having none of it, and immediately reached over the railing to set my loaded camera bag on the ground on the other side. I then turned to my buddy to say something, only to hear a small bumping sound, which was my camera bag headed down the embankment to the flowing stream. By the time I jumped over the fence, my bag was already heading downstream toward the top of the waterfall shown here. Without hesitation or thinking, I jumped off the bank from about 6 ft up and splashed into the water,which was about knee-deep and grabbed my bag. I made my way to the water’s edge real quick, opened my bag which was buckled shut, and of course every lens,camera etc was totally filled with water. I remember being so upset at my own stupidity as we drove home, as I held my lenses out the window to try to dry them.
The funny moment came when several hikers came rushing up from down below to the top of the falls to find me soaking wet, and told us they thought someone was committing suicide when they saw me jump. As I settled back down after the incident, I realized how dicey the situation was and how it could have gone downhill pretty quick. I was maybe 10 feet from the edge of this falls in fairly fast water, so one slip on a rock and both myself and my gear may have taken the express lane to the bottom. One thing I specifically remember after I got home was that my parents owned this kitchen device that cooked food with cyclonic heated air, which basically was air spinning incredibly fast inside this circular contraption. My 80-200 that would not dry for days, suddenly dried out totally in about 20 minutes in this thing. It was too late anyway, but it absolutely worked to dry the water out. This image is one of the few that survived because they were already in film canisters that stayed dry that day
Donald Reese Photography 