On Sunday, I headed for the Contoocook Falls in Hillsborough… at least it said “falls” on the map… it is more of a set of small rapids. The light was too harsh (even with broken clouds) and there were not many good angles for shooting the river.  However, I did discover some very small (fingernail-sized) wildflowers (Anemone quinquefolia, according to Joan) that made for interesting subjects. As I was setting up, one of the flowers had a visitor.

The black flies were not too bad! There were painted turtles sunning on a log in the beaver pond. There were swifts or swallows (one of these days I’ll figure out which!)  foraging from the tops of the snags and there were other birds about.

But, as I expected, there were no odes in flight. However, I did scare a single Hudsonian Whiteface (either a female or an immature male) up out of the vegetation as I walked through the wet meadow.

On my way back up the hill I found a painted trillium, so I headed back out with the camera gear to photograph it. There were also some very small ferns beginning to emerge in the woods. The trillium blossom is less than the size of a quarter and the fern is maybe the size of a nickel.

It was good the get out and photograph. I am looking forward to the next few months.

However, we are back to owning only one house and there is only one more week (plus a week of finals) in the semester… so things are looking good for the near future!

On Thursday afternoon, I headed out at about 5 PM to make some photographs; I had to be in Jaffrey for the Monadnock Camera Club meeting at 7 PM so I took a meandering route from Antrim to Jaffrey.  There were nice skies, good reflections on the water and I was only ten minutes late to the meeting!  Two hours… two nice photographs; a pretty successful outing if you ask me!

The photo of the squirrel is a grab shot through the glass looking out on our deck. This fellow spent some time watching us eat breakfast one morning. I guess that he was hoping for a hand out!

In addition to the buffleheads, there were also some mergansers, some mallards and another (unidentified) diving duck hanging around in the open water. Unfortunately all were too far away for any worthwhile photographs… even with the 500 mm lens. I enjoyed just watching them for some time.

The lake was quite calm and I was eventually attracted to the reflections of the lake shore trees in the still water along the far shore. Making lemonade from the lemons nature hands you?

My first stop was “the bridge”, about a mile from the house… where the road becomes paved. My initial goal was the farm fields in East Washington, but I did not make any photos there. I ended up at the covered bridged in Henniker, NH. I had noted this bridge on a number of occasions but had never stopped to photograph it before.

I was parked behind the school and also made some time to photograph the cupolas of the nearby buildings in good, but not great, light. There are more structures to explore photographically, so I’ll be headed back at some point in the future.

A few weeks ago, I had photographs and a short essay published in the Bridgewater Review (a twice yearly publication that highlights faculty work). The folks at the review seem to be a bit behind in updating their website, so here is a tear sheet in pdf format.

Yesterday, I opened an exhibit of roughly thirty photographs at the Tuttle Library in Antrim. There are a mix of color and black and white of all sizes — 5″ x 7″ to 20″ x 24″. Most are of NH subjects with a bit of the rest of New England thrown in. The exhibit will hand until the 24th of February.

Coming up in March, will be the first showing of my Life Cycle of Dragonflies and Damselflies exhibit. The photographs will be up from the 19th of March to 13th of April in the third floor exhibit space in the Maxwell Library at Bridgewater State. An artist’s talk will take place from 12:30 to 1:30 on the 21st of March (here is the announcement).

I have another showing of this exhibit arranged for the gallery at the Northeast Regional Office of the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Hadley, MA but don’t hold your breath as it is scheduled for November and December 2014!

Yesterday dawned cold (about 20 degrees) and gray. However, about 2 PM, I noticed the clouds starting to break up as the expected cold front arrived; the temperature was still around 20. I headed out to the north end of “our” beaver swamp to see what would develop. I took my first photo at 2:35 and spent the next hour photographing the swamp in very changeable conditions; both the clouds and the lighting were in constant flux.

The sun went below the ridge of Robb Mountain just about 3:45 putting the foreground in shadow. Thus, I broke the tripod and my feet free from the ice, packed up and headed home as the temperature dropped rapidly.

It was about ten or twelve degrees by the time I got home. The temperature continued to drop into the night and it was right around zero when I rose this morning. As I write this (at about noon) the temperature stands at about five.

Today might be a day to prints some of the recent photos in my nice cozy studio!

P.S. As I went to publish this, I notice that it is my one hundredth entry; my first entry appeared on 24 May 2010. The first anniversary passed unnoticed by all!

There has been extensive logging on the Robb Mt. in the recent past so the terrain is not pristine. However, the views afforded by the clearing are quite spectacular.

The clearest views (and thus best photographically) are to the south overlooking Willard Pond. Mount Monadnock is hidden behind Bald Mountain but Pack Monadnock, North Pack Monadnock and their connecting ridge are clearly viewable above Goodhue Hill.

The steep climb (and probably more so, the descent) are hard on the knees, but the view was worth it. The temperature was in the mid-thirties and it was windy “up top” but not unpleasant.

I spent a little time photographing the pond, but the light was not particularly good nor were the clouds. I spent much more time photographing the stream which feeds the pond.

The walk back, in fading light, was “interesting” as the snow made it difficult to pick out the icy patches along the road! We proceeded slowly arriving  back at the house in the dark.