From Vermont to Bar Harbor, Maine

When we continued our road trip toward Maine, we were sad to leave the beautiful mountains of Vermont, at the same time that we were eager to get to the wonders of Bar Harbor. We only made one photo stop, to explore one of the iconic covered bridges over a modest river. Here's a view from inside.

I think a toned "antique" look is an appropriate treatment of the exterior shot.

Pure, contrasty black and white works for me for the interior.

As soon as we arrived in Bar Harbor, we checked into the Castlemaine Inn (away from the touristy center and waterfront).

That settled, I grabbed a "walkabout" camera and lens (24-105 zoom with image stabilizer, quite versatile) and we hoofed our way toward the water front. I had to admire the view that some homeowners or guests would have right from their windows or porches.

We took advantage of low tide to walk out on the sand bar that connects with Bar Island. The bar is submerged at high tide.

Returning to the town, I did some night photos of the moored ships, illuminated by their own lights and some dock lighting.

This sailing vessel, the Margaret Todd, was striking against the clear, starry sky. I would return to shoot it again during the following day.

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A Day in Vermont

There's nothing quite like arriving in the middle of the Vermont mountains and having a goat be part of your welcoming committee. We were driving through a region containing a series of finger lakes when we spotted a summer camp that is a working farm. We were permitted to look around a bit, and this fellow was one of the first creatures we met.

The barn was colorful.

Our own destination was an amazing country house near the small, venerable town of Belmont.

Here is the Mount Holly Library and Community Center.

During a visit to the town center, we looked through a museum of old artifacts, including this portion of the original post office.

Imagine riding in this surrey, pulled by stately horses.

A demonstration, ostensibly for children, of how to sheer a sheep was interesting to me, and apparently also to this calf.

After lunch, we did some fairly serious mountain hiking. While I struggled with a backpack full of camera gear, Wilder, the pet dog of our host and hostess, ran circles around us with boundless energy. Here he is, fearlessly looking out over a cliff at the summit.

While we took a breather at the top, I managed to "capture" a dragonfly of brilliant red color.

Another spot to relax for awhile was on some rocks surrounded by the shade of the forest.

Back at the house, Wilder was also ready to rest, though still full of animation.

As evening approached, the Green Mountains took on a purple cast in the distance.

Altogether, it was an amazing day, and I hope that we can return for a much longer stay, especially as Brigid and David are such wonderful hosts!

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Talpidalpinism

Talpidalpinism, or, which is more important: lens resolution or camera pixel density?
What is that word?! Don't bother looking it up, I coined it from the mole family (talpida) and mountaineering (alpinism). Definition (according to me): making mountains out of molehills.

Perhaps because digital photography only began to appear in affordable form generations after film photography had matured and set "standards" for technical quality, and perhaps also because viewers of photo prints could judge the "sharpness" and detail of a print in what was thought to be an objective manner, those characteristics were treated differently (by many, perhaps most of us) from others like color and tonality (which could be considered matters of artistic taste, even though they could be measured just as objectively as resolution of detail).

At any rate, when digital cameras began to proliferate around the turn of the millennium, advertisers latched onto the number of pixels as a selling point, and the general consuming public readily accepted "how many megapixels?" as the measure of a camera's goodness. It's true that an image formed of, let's say, only a few thousand pixels will make its digital origins obvious to the naked eye, and until you get to the level of a few million pixels, a print of wall hanging size cannot have the clarity and detail that we expect from a photograph. By the time you are in megapixel range, though, all of the other characteristics of an imaging device become just as important as pixel count, in my opinion.

Which is more important, the lens or the imaging sensor? Both are necessary to make a photograph, and the technical quality of the result will depend on their interaction. If they are leagues apart in their capability, the quality of one may be wasted by the shortcomings of the other, but in the case of most "serious" cameras and their interchangeable lenses, it would be foolish to decide that a given lens is too good for a certain camera, or that a certain camera has too much resolution for its lens. It's a partnership, and the skill and care of the photographer also has to be maximized to get the most from the equipment.

And when you come down to an actual image, what matters most is content, composition, lighting, and the emotional communication that can result. Film, digital, paint, all influence how we craft things and the decisions we make along the way, but it always starts with seeing.

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More from the water gardens

I returned to editing yesterday's batch of photos from Water and Garden Creations, and realized that in my eagerness to post the punchy, eye-catching shots I had skipped some of the elegant, slightly understated, simple flower compositions. These were some of my first shots of the morning, when the light was particularly soft.

Even while concentrating on flowers, I can't resist the urge to capture an insect in the scene, even a common house fly. Maybe it's the influence of the classical painting tradition of including an unsought visitor in an otherwise pristine still life of fruit and game.

I suppose this next one would qualify as "punchy" - there was so much contrast that it was easy to allow the background to go black when I exposed for my subject. I will always think of these as "shower head plants", I'm afraid.

And a return to tranquility...

Another addition - a pair of accidental catches. As I shot the bee moving around the flower, a blue dragonfly came in for a fly-by. I wish I could have caught it fully in the frame, but it rose to avoid the traffic and didn't appear at all in subsequent shots. It's still a fun sequence to me, so have a look:

As always, if you see anything that you would like to have in print, please drop me a line:

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Water gardens, and the benign insects they attract

This morning I was kindly invited to participate in a photo outing with the Carolinas Nature Photographers Association. We were permitted to shoot at Water and Garden Creations of Frank L. Schwartz (in Johnston County), where there were a variety of lotus, waterlilies and other aquatic plants. It was a great place to photograph, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself!

I was hoping to "catch" some dragonflies. The weather began with a fully overcast sky and reasonably cool temperature, so we suspected there might not be much dragon activity. The bees were out, so I went after them, as well as the flowers themselves.

I used lens tilt to get everything in focus for this one:

After awhile, a few dragonflies did appear, and with some patience I managed to photograph them in a variety of poses and with various perches and backgrounds.

As I had a 600 mm setup for the skittish dragonflies, I used it to get extreme perspective for a flower portrait.

The bee is in flight, and seemingly so is the flower.

Wherever there are insects, there are usually spiders. This one was pointed out to me by a fellow photographer. I had to hang out over a pond to get this shot (with a 100mm macro lens).

Finally, no story of photographing around still water would be complete without an example of reflection.

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