Photographs by Frank

Yesterday afternoon, I took a walk down the road at the Harris Center property on Brimstone Corner Road. The temperature was in the mid-70s F and the skies were mostly sunny.

Just before 3 PM, I lathered up with “bug stuff” and headed out. Three hours later, the mosquitoes drove me home. I don’t know if the “bug stuff” had worn off or if it was the hour but the mosquitoes were viscous on the walk home.

This property has a number of diverse habitats frequented by odes… sunny wood roadsides, old log landings in various state of regrowth and a large beaver pond with its associated outlet stream. Diverse habitat means diversity of species and I was not disappointed.

The most common odes by far were meadow hawks, I saw roughly three dozen. Yellow individuals (females and immature males) outnumbered red ones (mature males) by about four to one. The meadow hawks were present in sunny spots along the road as well as in the old log landings.

The next most common species were the spreadwings in the stream just down stream from the culverts; I counted about a dozen. There were also a small number of ebony jewelwings present here and two variable dancers (one of each sex).

Over at the beaver pond, I saw roughly half a dozen male slatey skimmers. They are hard to count has they were, for the most part constantly moving. The aerial “dogfights” among the slatey skimmers are fun to watch.

The find of the day was a single black saddlebags in a sunny spot at the junction of two woods roads. This species is fairly rare around here… rare enough that there are many summers when I do not see one.

For some (unknown) reason, I seem to be seeing pieces or details these days. The camera goes with me most places these days. Here are some of the fragments of the world that have caught my eye over the past week or so.

Color Work

Black and White

Last Friday night, I tried my hand at photographing the stock car races in Claremont, NH (see this post for the details). That evening was rain-shortened and my ticket was good again for last nights racing.

Thus, yesterday, I headed out early, paid the difference in admission between the grandstand ticket and a paddock pass and wandered among the racers for a long afternoon/evening.

I left the house about 4:15 PM and got to the track just as practice laps began at 5:30. The racing lasted until 11:30 and I got home just before 1 AM… not something this geezer could do every Friday night!

I was hoping to get some behind-the-scenes photos of my neighbors preparing to race. However, they did not race last evening. So I wandered the pits for a while and rediscovered that I am not very adept at photographing people… especially people who are working hard to get ready to race. After awhile, I turned my attention to the action on the track.

Warning… photographer talk ahead!

Photographing fast moving objects in poor light is “interesting”. Early on, with the sun still out, life was fairly easy. As the evening wore on, I ventured into ISO territory that I had not visited before in attempt to keep a shutter speed fast enough to freeze the motion of a race car.

I also discovered that I have a gap in my lens choices when it comes to this sort of photography. The long end of my 16-80 mm zoom is a bit short and my 300 mm lens is often a bit long. (I certainly did not need the telelconverter I brought along for the 300.)

I also used “burst mode” exclusively. Burst mode allows one to take multiple frames in very rapid succession something like 10 frame per second for my camera. I very rarely use this mode in my usual practice. When I do it is only for short times and generally in the “low speed mode that my camera has. Last night I used the high speed mode for the majority of evening.

The result…I made a total of 4002 exposures and almost filled a 128 GB card! Terra incognita for me. Sorting though all of those files was a major pain and I bet that I missed a few interesting frames in doing so… one of the downsides of burst mode! I ended up processing about 100 frames total. Aren’t you glad I am showing only a dozen here!?

I “cooked up” a batch of anthotypes on Saturday.

On Sunday, I beat the heat by making salted-paper prints in the basement.

The first of the anthotypes is 6.5 inches square on 8×10 inch paper. The rest are 4.5 inches square on 5×7 inch paper. The salted-paper prints are either 4.5 inches square or 4×5 inches on 5x7ish inch paper.

Electric trains were a holiday tradition in our house when I was young. The trains came down from the attic with the Christmas decorations in mid-December and went back up in early January.

There were two sets of trains. A “modern” set that my brother and I got for Christmas one year in the early 60s and to which a new car or two was added on each subsequent year. The second set was one that my father had when he was young. It probably dates from about 1940.

Both sets ran on the same tracks and we played with both. My father’s set consisted of a very sleek engine and two passenger cars. I seem to remember that the were somewhat balky in their operation. Not surprising, given their age. The “modern” set, consisting of freight cars including a missile launcher car (this was after all, the cold war!) made for more interesting play.

I have no idea what has become of “my” set. However, my father’s set recently came into my possession. When we moved my Mom to assisted living this Fall one of the boxes that ended up at our house contained the train set. When I got the box home, I stowed it in our garage and did not think much about it until last week.

When I opened the box last week, I found the three trains (engine and two passenger cars) that I remembered (in their original boxes) along with a receipt dated 2005 for their refurbishment. Also in the box are four unopened boxes of brand spanking new train track and a modern power supply. I don’t think that my father ever set them up after getting the trains fixed up.

I was inspired to make a photo of the engine. The box of trains is currently sitting in our house, I should probably set them up and give them some exercise. We’ll see…

Friday morning I visited my friends Joe and Diana in Laconia.

I took an indirect route home and stopped to photograph in East Andover and at Potter Place (a historic rail station) in Andover with the following results:

Of course, there were things other than bob houses to photograph during yesterday’s walk on the lake.

Here are a few of the things that caught my eye:

No new photos for today, but I cannot let the day pass without comment.

I made my first-ever post here, eight years ago today… here it is, so you don’t have to search for it!

Four hundred seventy four posts later, I am still at it. Who woulda thunk?

As the last photo in my most recent post says… Life is Good.