This is one of the first images from a recent photo excursion to the cemetery with a friend,and initially this area caught my eye as the rays of sun spread across the grounds. We parked along a lane and I decided to walk about 30 yards in,which put me in the right spot to see the rays and various light and dark tones. We had an hour drive to get there,and we had no idea the morning was going to be enveloped in fog,so we wish we had left earlier.
It has been a while since I have done any cemetery infrared shooting,so both myself and a good friend went out yesterday to explore a new destination. Lovely weather in the low sixties provided the perfect opportunity to look for compositions amongst the grandeur of this Victorian era cemetery.This image was captured with a converted Nikon D200,which only captures infrared now. I spotted these ornately detailed urns which were sidelit by the sun,and the mausoleum in the distance rounded out my composition. I am always amazed by the sights you see in these old cemeteries. I will share more from this trip in the month ahead.
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 colorful store in Lake Placid caught my eye as I headed toward the countryside for sunrise shooting. It was raining at the time,so the walkway was shimmering in golden street light which added to the appeal. I added some flash to the store fronts for added kick and enjoyed the stillness of the lonely street.
This is the view from our motel backyard on our Lake Placid trip. I only knew it was there on our last day,so I set the chairs up, tied the canoes fast and set the oars in position the night before. I came out at dawn in the dark,set up my laptop,tripod and camera and started lighting the scene in the dark,and then recorded the lake and sky as the sun rose. I could easily get used to sitting in those chairs and the home out on the lake with the light on is a dream location to live.
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.
This is a wall mural on the side of a small shop in a local town. I have no idea why this subject was painted but the artist is Wayne Fettro,who seems to do a lot of this type of work. I decided some light painting was in order to showcase the work.It took about 10 different flash pops to do everything.
I was bored the other night,so I grabbed the gear for a light painting attempt. I am still not that good at this,but I have fun trying. This is the result of about 30 different exposures with flash. Looked on the net and the cost is around $350,000 for this machine if anyone wants one.
Fall is the time when the annual street fair comes to town and this carousel was calling to me to do a little light painting. Both myself and my good friend headed out before sunrise to do some shooting at the empty fair and I settled on this particular horse with its cool color scheme as my subject. The first glitch I ran into was the street lights were pretty bright,so my longest exposure was around 8 seconds,which limited my flashlights ability to be the strongest light source. I went to plan b,which utilized flash with a snoot attached and that puts the light beam in a very narrow area across the subject. The flash was attached to an extendable pole to allow positioning it wherever I needed without standing on the carousel and having it move . This shot is the result of maybe 30 flashes throughout the scene,including the ice cream stand on the left. Carousels seems to have a magical quality that captivates the imagination and transports you to another world.
This is the interior of a local covered bridge that has been closed for over a year due to damage from tropical storm Lee last year. Not sure exactly what the problem is,but if you look at the exterior,the bridge has a slight bow to it. This bridge sits approximately eighteen feet above the creek,but last years flood was an extreme one that hopefully wont be seen for another hundred years.I used flash to light the interior in an attempt to show the intricate construction that goes into these beautiful structures. This bridge was built in 1867 at a whopping cost of $4,500 dollars. The arch design is credited to inventor Theodore burr,who lived around the early 1800s and was a cousin to Vice President Aaron Burr.
As the sun rises on an autumn morning,this leafless tree stands as a reminder that winter is not far away. This is one of my favorite times of the year, when leaves fall all around you and a chill is in the early morning air. A time when frost coats the landscape and the rising sun brings welcome warmth to those seeking out the changing of the seasons.
I photographed this old relic at the rough and tumble event a few weeks ago. It reminds me of something the Clampetts drove on the Tv series,the Beverly Hillbillies. It has a strange wooden bed on the back which is something I have never seen before.
I was chasing this balloon the other day and when it finally landed I drove up a dirt lane to watch it deflate.This Amish lady and her children pulled right into the field beside me,and initially the kids got out to run over to the balloon but the boy started crying, so they loaded back up on the wagon and I had enough time to get a photo.The girl had a basket of homemade treats that she was holding,and I was in my truck about 15 feet away hungry for a snack.
This is a photo I took after putting on the hip waders and going out to about mid stream. The creek is a little lower than normal right now,so I was not worried about getting knocked over by the current,and it provided a nice vantage point during a slightly foggy day. Depth was anywhere from 8 inches to about 2 feet,which allowed me to navigate anywhere on the stream I needed. I carried only one camera with lens on my tripod and brought a polarizer,which helped with the reflection.
A hot air balloon takes tourists for a breath-taking ride over the many Amish farms that dot the landscape.
A hilltop vista includes a one room school in the foreground and several farms dotting the landscape. A telephoto compresses the distance between each. Corn crops are ready to be harvested.
Dawn breaks at a one room school,which will be active with Amish children in a few hours.A farm in the background and an outhouse on the right,round out the composition.
A misty morning along this local stream provides a lovely spot to kick back and relax as fall approaches.
These old cars were part of a car club that was out touring the farm country,and I happened to spot them parked at a motel that is totally comprised of train cabooses. Each guest spends the night in his very own caboose, which come in every color under the sun. The evening was basically pouring rain,but after shooting under an umbrella for 30 minutes,the rain stopped and I began lighting the scene with flash. I thought the two modes of transportation complemented each other and harkened back to a simpler time.The yellow caboose is the Rio Grand.
Once again I was trying my light painting technique in the old feed mill. This time I was photographing what I think is called a pelletizer, which makes feed pellets and the two images show the machine in a closed, and then open position.The bottom photo shows the machines main part,which has a series of holes that form the hardened pellets. The room was very warm so I assume some heat process is involved as well. To do the two images,I first completed the scene with it closed and then simply opened the door for the next part of the shoot. Then I brought that image on top of the first and blended them.
A hot air balloon festival was held locally this past weekend. This was the dawn liftoff at sunrise sunday,which was an absolutely gorgeous morning.
The sun sets on a rural farm scene
This is last evenings blue moon as it began to rise behind this local farm. From what I understand the term refers to the second full moon in the same month. I decided on this location after conferring with the photographers ephemeris, which shows sun/moon rise and set for photographers planning shoot locations. By moving to camera right about 40 feet,the moon was coming up right between the house and barn,but the tree on the right was blocking the barn,so I had to go with this instead.Shot from my truck roof,which had the Amish wondering who this nut was on top of his truck.
Have you ever seen so many cobwebs,you thought you were on the set of some science fiction thriller? Well this was the case as both myself and a fellow photographer spent an evening shooting in a local feed mill. I walked around looking for a shot and came across this corner of the mill that seemed lost in time. It’s no wonder spiders have laid claim to this place as flies were a real nuisance while we shot. I light painted this with an off camera flash trying to bring out the webs and dust and dirt as best I could. At least no mice ran by me on this visit. I have no idea what the machine does but it must not get used very often.
The end of summer is rapidly approaching and farmers are busy beginning to harvest everything from corn to tobacco. This Amish family was busy putting freshly cut tobacco onto lathe, which then gets hung on the wagon and then it will move to the barn for drying. This scene includes at least three generations carrying on the tradition.
Here is another image from the thresher reunion at rough and tumble.For this image I mounted the camera on my tripod and shot several exposures utilizing a hand-held flash off camera. There is no way to get a result like this on one shot,unless you set up a bank of flashes to fire simultaneously. The exposure for the setting sun put everything in silhouette,so after capturing that piece of the puzzle, I moved to illuminating the tractor. As you can see from the smaller images, The starting shot with the sun was where I started and then lit each area as the example of lighting the front shows. A small detail worth mentioning is the use of a wireless remote to fire the camera from anywhere I need,so I can position the flash at the proper angle and then fire when ready.
I finally gave my steel wool spinner device a test run this past weekend, and it was more impressive than I expected. After a rainy friday and a quick shot from the garden hose before I did it, the yard was ready to handle the flaming steel wool. To accomplish this effect, I set up my tripod and waited till the ambient light dropped and my exposure was around 8 to 15 seconds at f11.At that point, I put on long pants,a long sleeve shirt,a hat, a face shield,and gloves and grabbed the steel wool device. This is nothing more than a steel kitchen whisk with steel wool stuffed inside, connected to a steel cable on a handle and then it gets lit and rapidly spun. You light the steel wool by touching a 9-volt battery to it and then spin it quickly to give the burning steel wool as much oxygen as possible.
The top image features me spinning the contraption all around me and you can see the steel wool even bounced on the grass a bit,and the bottom image was spun in just a circle,but the bright area shooting up to the right is actually a piece of steel wool that broke loose and landed in our tree.If you are brave enough to try this, do it in a safe setting,keep water nearby and protect yourself and camera.There was a fellow on the internet that had a flaming ember land on his eighteen hundred-dollar lens and fuse fast to the front element,which would not be good. Each ball of steel wool burns about 30-60 seconds and then you load a new piece. Also the real fine stuff works better than coarse steel wool.
Another evening of amazing clouds rolling across the farm land. I used a polarizer to bring out the contrast between blue sky and the clouds. I had to wait about twenty minutes till the clouds were across the whole farm.
This is last nights full moon rising over a pair of farms. I went out with a friend to this spot we had tried for during last months full moon, and after using his cell phone to utilize the program called The Photographers Ephemeris,we were in disagreement over were it said the moon would hit the horizon. I used my compass and the coordinates the program said and as it ended up ,I was in the right spot and my friend was down the road a hundred yards or so in the wrong spot. It takes a little effort to look at the satellite image and decide exactly were you are and need to be,but it is a great tool. The moon was not visible right away,but became stronger as it climbed. I had to shoot from my truck roof because the corn was too high to see the farms.
Here is a screen shot of the program we use. the colored lines show you all the rise/set positions.this is the portland headlight in Maine as an example.
This past week I came across a group of car enthusiasts that were touring the countryside throughout Lancaster county. The group spent five days navigating the scenic back roads and also spent time visiting several county sites of interest. The group included owners of what are known as E-M-F cars, which are early 1900 vehicles built by Byron Everitt, William Metzger, and Walter Flanders. This image is the result of some planning, and a dash of luck, which I will explain.
I got the itinerary for the day from the organizer and decided on a spot to shoot them as they drove by. I took a few images at the location I picked and then decided I was going to get ahead of the group for a second attempt. The second spot included a covered bridge, but as I got to the road, it was closed for repaving,so I tried to find another road to access the planned route. Thankfully one lane was still open,and it allowed me to get this image of the cars coming through the bridge and a buggy waiting his turn as well. This image would have been all but impossible if the road were not closed to traffic for the road work. Usually cars file down this road one after another, but I actually set up my tripod on the road and shot a series as they all came through the bridge. These cars are full of character and draw a crowd wherever they go. If you want to learn more about them, check out E-M-F Company on the net. I may post another shot or two in the coming weeks.
Donald Reese Photography 