Photographs by Frank

11 December 2011

Shooting The Moon — A Near Miss!

Filed under: Monadnock Region — Frank @ 7:22 PM

The Moon… so obvious, so easy to miss.

Yesterday was a full moon and the day before that there was a lunar eclipse. I only found out both those things today. Oh well!

Late yesterday afternoon while driving back from some shopping Keene, Joan and I noticed the wonderful moon rise. I made a mental note to make time today to see if I could catch the moonrise.

The key question that need to be answered when planning  moon/sun  rise/set photographs is what to put in the foreground. One needs something “interesting” to make a good image. My thought was Powder Mill Pond in Hancock. It is easy to get to, just pull off the side of US 202 in the right spot and walk across the road; an important criterion on a cold night!

I was a day (or two late). Sunset was about 4:13 both yesterday and today; moonrise was  4:21 yesterday and 5:21 today.

This afternoon it was completely dark by the time made its appearance over ridge to the northeast of  Powder Mill Pond a bit after 5:30… ugh! Yesterday would have been just about right… enough sunlight to illuminate the foreground as the moon popped up over the ridge. Next month!!!

I did get a couple of okay shots. One  in the very last of the sun light and another in the very first of the moonlight. The two photos were taken about five minutes apart and from slightly different positions but the views are about ninety degrees for each other… very roughly southwest (last light of the sun) and northwest (first light of the moon).

The last image (of the full moon) is about one quarter of the frame, taken with my 70-300 lens… not too bad.

Next month, I’ll do it right!

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2 December 2011

November Gray

Filed under: Monadnock Region,November — Frank @ 12:00 PM

November is a tough month for nature photographers in New England. Much of the wildlife has gone dormant or headed south. The leaves have all fallen and the ground is bare of snow. The predominant color is gray. A time for black and white photography!

Last Sunday, I headed out to photograph on a foggy morning. I had three thoughts in mind… winterberries, Meetinghouse Hill and Sky Farm.

Winterberries grown in wetlands and this time of year they are often the only color other than browns and grays to be found. I have a “photo” in my head of a large stand of winterberry with a distant hillside (gray and nicely blurred) in the background. I have yet to find this scene in my travels but I keep looking. On Sunday, I thought that the fog might make it easier to “isolate” winter berries photographically; it did, but not in the way I was expecting. The fog helped with some close shots of individual plants and branches.

Meetinghouse Hill and Sky Farm are in my thoughts on foggy days because they are easy to access high spots that are often fog bound and the fog can add some “mood” to photographs.. or in the case of Sky Farm, the Contoocook Valley below can be fog bound while the hill tops are clear. Alas, the fog was mostly gone by the time I got to Meetinghouse Hill. There were even patches of blue sky showing for a short time when I got to Sky Farm.

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The group of flags on Meetinghouse Hill were “found” and shot as you see them… I did not arrange or move them.

25 November 2011

Gregg Lake — Last Light on a November Afternoon

Filed under: Landscapes,Monadnock Region,November — Tags: — Frank @ 12:00 PM

This photo was made at about 4:40 PM on Tuesday; sunset was about 4:15.

Joan and I were on our way to town to run some errands and she wanted to stop to see if there were any cranberries in the bog on the north side of the road. Thus while Joan was foraging, I was photographing.

Joan found many berries but all had gone mushy from too many freeze-thaw cycles.

I  noticed the patch of warm light at the far end of the lake. This provided a nice contrast to the cool blue of the rest of the sky. There was not much detail in the clouds… I would have liked more. Landscape photographers don’t have much control over these things.

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29 October 2011

October Snow

Filed under: Landscapes,Monadnock Region,Winter — Frank @ 9:17 PM

A few inches of snow fell  Thursday (27 October) night; on Friday afternoon, I took a walk “up” the road with my camera just to see what there was to see. I thought that the remnants of snow might add interest to late fall foliage (the yellows of beech and oak on the way to brown) along the road.

As I wandered down the road, I noticed the reflections of sky and foliage in the water puddled in the ruts on the road.

Here are the photos:

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Update on October snow… as I write this at about 9 PM on Saturday evening, it has been snowing steadily since about 3 PM and I just measured 11 inches of snow on our front steps!!! The forecast is for steady snow all night… boy am I glad we have a snow blower for this winter!

23 October 2011

Late Foliage

Filed under: Autumn,Landscapes,Monadnock Region — Frank @ 12:00 PM

Friday was one of those days when the weather changed every fifteen minutes. The cloud cover kept going from “heavy and gray” to “almost none” to “white and fluffy” and back again. Unpredictably interesting skies; perfect weather for landscape photography!

I headed out in the late afternoon with two spots in mind… a farm field on the Contoocook River (Thanks Diane!) and the Forest Society’s “High Five” (aka “Sky Farm”) property in Deering. On the way out, I also stopped near the bridge at Gregg Lake as well. The skies and light held up through the farm but by the time I got to Sky Farm a heavy overcast had set in and there were no worthwhile photos to be had. Such is the life of a landscape photographer… next time!

Here are the photos:

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Panoramas

Filed under: Autumn,Landscapes,Monadnock Region — Frank @ 12:00 PM

One of the things I like to experiment with when in “landscape mode” are multi-exposure panoramas. That is, using the computer to stitch together multiple (overlapping) frames into one long, high resolution image. I don’t doing anything fancy. Usually, I just switch to manual exposure (so that things don’t change on me unexpectedly) and shoot away; no special “nodal point” tripod head for me.

The “problem” with panoramas is what to do with them once you have them made… they are very long and thin. In a word they are unwieldy! I don’t have the proper equipment to print them with (i.e. a printer that takes a roll of paper). Even if I did get them printed, they are a pain in the “you know what” to mat, frame and hang on the wall. So usually they just languish on my hard disk.

Thus, I have decided to see how they work out displayed here. Please stretch your browser window as far as it will go; these images are roughly a thousand pixels wide. (Click on each image to see the “full” version.)

Swamp Edge (22 Sept 2011; six frames; this would make an 11″ x 87″ print)

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The North End of Gregg Lake (21 Oct 2011; three frames; 11.5″ x 30″ printed)

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Looking Northwest from Diane’s Field (21 Oct 2011; five frames; 10.75″ x 67″ printed)

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15 October 2011

Meanderings

Filed under: Monadnock Region — Frank @ 11:00 PM

This afternoon I headed off on the back roads to hunt foliage.  My ultimate goal was a spot with a view of Mount Monadnock that I had found last spring.

I was too late; the foliage is more-or-less over.  There did not seem to be much red this year… the maples were mostly yellow and yesterday’s rain took down many of the leaves.

Next year!

Anyway, here are the photographic results of my meanderings:

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