Turkey Run Morning

Turkey Run was great this Tuesday.  We were given a beautiful and colorful sunrise.  Unfortunately, what I saw with my eyes turned out to be better than the images of the sunrise that were on my computer. There is one here.

The light was absolutely wonderful and the wind was manageable.  Then there was this wonderful tree with buds.  Unfortunately, I do not know the type. I have some learning to do.  But the buds and the leaves...

And of course there were bluebells around to give me another opportunity to shoot them and improve.

This is my "cycle of life" image for the day.

On the way out of the park, this magnificent bird flew over.  The longest lens that I had with me was a 105, so I had to crop the file quite a bit to get the image. 

Turkey Run at Sunrise

I was unable to stay for the full session at Turkey Run this morning, but witnessed the sunrise and tried to make pictures with it.

In the jumble of the forest, I tried to make the color of the sunrise, and its reflection on the river drive this photograph.  You will judge if it was successful?  Some of the early spring green creeps in through the trunks, and the lines of the trees converge on a dark spot in the lower right.

From the same vantage point, I tried to make the early green buds more prominent, softening the dark silhouettes of the previous exposure.  By shifting to the landscape setting, the emphasis is more on the horizon behind the forest, rather than the forest itself.

I was surprised by the contrails emerging from the lower left of the picture, and captured a third one as it was being formed. The vertex of the white contrails is joined by that large diagonal trunk to the hot point of the sunrise at the lower right of the photo.  There is enough exposure to gain some depth on the tree trunks, making them live rather than two dimensional black and white cutouts.  It seems interesting?

Scott's Run

Our outing on Tuesday morning left me with two thoughts:

1) I need better rain gear.
2) I need to come back.

I did so on Sunday morning.  The environment was so different without the torrential down pour.  Got a few decent pictures and I blew one by not looking at my histogram.  Somehow, my camera got changed to manual and those last pictures were grossly overexposed.  I have to decide whether going back for them is worth the hike.

I think that I was going for a tranquil feeling with this one; but could not get the crop to my liking.

Bluebells at Scott's Run

On our first visit, a regular Tuesday morning sunrise outing, it began to rain as we walked into the park and got worse from then on.   We scouted out the bluebell locations, and visited potentially photogenic points on the East side of the park.   Eventually, having earned Barbara's greatest accolade [ "you guys are great !!" ] we emerged soaked but not sorry, vowing to return.   Well, that Saturday I went back and took some pictures as the sun came up. I was lucky to be alone the whole time!

Which format is better to capture this faded path through the flowers ?  Vertical or horizontal?

I found the curved branch intersecting over the path rather attractive. Gives a sense of the flowers within the early spring forest.

Which focus plane shows off the flowers to more advantage?  Is more interesting?  Different ?

This standard composition fuzzes the background out, leaving the white flowers in all their glory.

Is the background too jumbled ?  I kind of liked this version, showing the forest while not detracting from the flowers.

A glimpse of Spring at Rock Creek park

On the first day of April Barbara took us to Rock Creek Park.  We followed a little stream back up towards Connecticut Ave.  But for a bevy of small white bell shaped flowers, Spring had not yet arrived.  The Sun did, however, and provided a gradually changing view of the winter landscape.

Catching the first snow of the day at Difficult Run, March 25, 2014 -- Jim Coates

Dear colleagues

I am posting some photos from the Difficult Run in the Snow event.   I may not be able to participate in the class tomorrow evening, but I did want to contribute some photos.  As I look at them I remember how frozen my fingers got, as the snow kept on coming down.