Photographs by Frank

9 March 2016

Spring Training

Filed under: Birds,Monadnock Region,The Yard — Tags: — Frank @ 10:15 PM

Just like baseball players, the skills of small bird photographers get rusty over the winter. Thus for the past two days, in anticipation of spring bird action,  I headed about twenty feet out the back door for a bit of spring training.

Even though it was 70 degrees F this afternoon, the tufted titmice and the chickadees still seem to be in their winter mixed-flock mode. At times, there were seven birds at the feeder (with nine feeding ports). Also present were white-breasted nuthatches  and downy woodpeckers. A single red-bellied woodpecker made a brief appearance as well. There were also blue jays and crows present nearby but, as is usual,  neither species showed much interest in the feeders*.

All of these species spend the winter in our neighborhood and there was no sign of any spring birds these past two days. We did, however, catch a glimpse of a purple finch at the seed feeder a few days ago. I also heard the call of a pheobe this afternoon on a number of occasions.

Spring can not be too far away.

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* In the depths of winter we will get an occasional blue jay on the suet, but not when the ground is bare.

 

19 February 2016

Chaos Will Rule/Kisses in the Morning

Filed under: Winter — Tags: — Frank @ 11:47 AM

Yesterday afternoon, I had an hour to kill in downtown Brattelboro, VT. I spent the hour roaming the back alleys along Main Street photographing the public art.

Here is the result:

Brattleboro, Vermont
Feels like a big city
When one lives in a town of 2600 souls

Graffiti both edgy and tender
Edgy preponderate
Feels right

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30 January 2016

Margins

Filed under: Landscapes,Monadnock Region,Winter — Tags: , — Frank @ 1:00 PM

Last Tuesday dawned cold and clear. However, by mid-afternoon the temperature was near 40oF and there was a thin, high overcast to soften the light.

Thus, camera in hand, I headed out for a walk around the edge of the lake. Because the sky was uninteresting, I concentrated on the intimate landscape.

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12 January 2016

Adams Dozen – 2015

Filed under: Uncategorized — Frank @ 1:00 PM

This is the fourth year*, I have picked an “Adams Dozen”… that is, twelve of my favorite photos for the year.

The process seemed more difficult this year that it was in years past. I “exposed”  16,914 frames in 2015**. On my first pass through, I ended up with nearly eighty candidates for this years “Adams Dozen”.

Here is my final selection:

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* See this post for the first year’s selection and for a more detailed explanation; see this post for last year’s selection.

** This is maybe a bit more than the recent past. My LightRoom catalog says I exposed 12,832 frames in 2014 and 11,735 frames in 2013.

 

13 December 2015

Herba Senex*

Filed under: Monadnock Region,Winter — Tags: — Frank @ 8:00 AM

A couple of weeks ago, I roamed the yard with a pair of scissors and a cardboard box and collected a bunch of “past prime” plant matter. My intent was to make black and white photographs of the brown stalks against a black background in my “studio” (i.e. a table in the basement).

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon actually making the photographs that were floating around in my brain.

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* That’s Latin for “Old Plants”!

 

14 November 2015

Brimstone Corner Road Artifacts

Filed under: Monadnock Region,November — Frank @ 5:00 PM

artifact (är′tə-făkt′)
noun

      1. an object made by a human being, typically an item of cultural or historical interest.

 

Yesterday afternoon, I donned my blaze orange vest (the main deer hunting season began on Wednesday)  and took a short walk up  the unmaintained section of “our” road.

I make no claim about the significance of the artifacts I found (and photographed). However, they are interesting, at least, to me!

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24 October 2015

Sachuest Point & Second Beach

Filed under: Autumn,Birds,Wildlife — Tags: — Frank @ 11:30 AM

Last Wednesday evening I judged the nature competition at the Hockomock Digital Photographers club. I left the house early that morning and headed for the Sachuest National Wildlife Refuge in Middletown, Rhode Island.

I was hoping (but not expecting, since it is early in the season) to photograph diving ducks (including Harlequins) that winter in the waters off Sachuest Point. There were surprisingly few ducks. I saw a single female Common Eider and a single American Black Duck; that was it. The ledges off the east side of the point held a couple of dozen double-crested cormorants. And, of course,  gulls, mostly herring gulls, were ever present.

On land, the most common bird, by far, were migrating yellow-rump warblers; there were dozens of them. Two different types of sparrows (also migrants?) were also common along the edges of the walking paths.

I had seen groups of small birds at the surf’s edge on Second Beach on my way out to the point. They were still there when I stopped after spending a few hours at the NWR. I spent more than an hour photographing sandpipers as they foraged at the waters edge.

These birds are a never-ending source of entertainment as they scurry about trying to avoid the waves, dogs and people while pausing intermittently to forage for a morsel of food.

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19 October 2015

Autumnal Abstracts 2015 — Redux

Filed under: Autumn,Landscapes,Monadnock Region — Tags: , , — Frank @ 1:30 PM

About two weeks ago, I made my first batch of Autumnal Abstracts for the 2015 season.

Since then, I have ventured out on a few more excursions in search of the ‘proper’ scenes from which to extract more abstractions.

All but the last photograph made using a long exposure (in the range of 6-12 seconds) and deliberate movement of the camera. The only ‘photoshopping’ done to these photos is the processing typically applied to raw files from the camera (i.e. levels adjustment, contrast, etc.).

Many of these are much more abstract than the previous photographs in this series, in that they do not really have any trace of their origin remaining. I would be interested in hearing folks reaction to these photographs.

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First Snow

Filed under: Autumn,Landscapes,Monadnock Region — Tags: , , — Frank @ 1:00 PM

All of a sudden it is seemingly winter!

The foliage is definitely past peak and Saturday night we got about an inch of snow. Sunday dawned cold (the high for the day was 39 oF) and sunny. The sun made quick work of most of the snow. By the time we (Joan, her friend Sally, and I) headed out to hike the Bailey Brook loop in the early afternoon it was mostly gone.

However, during the couple of hours we were out, the clouds moved in and we experienced three or four periods of snow showers and flurries. The combination of colorful leaves on the ground and traces of fresh snow made for some interesting photography.

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13 October 2015

Autumn Foliage — 2015

Filed under: Autumn — Tags: , , — Frank @ 2:00 PM

Last week, I took drives on three different days in search of autumn foliage to photograph. Finding the ideal combination of foliage and light (both quality and direction are important) is not trivial.

Last Wednesday (the 7th) the foliage in our ‘neighborhood’ was good, but not yet peak. Thus, I decided to head north. I meandered as far as Rumney, NH before turning around in the late afternoon. The weather was not completely cooperative but I made a few nice photos before the clouds moved in.

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Friday (the 9th) dawned foggy and rainy. I took the camera with me and after finishing my errands, I wandered the back roads on the way home looking for interesting photographs.

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Saturday (the 10th), I took an indirect route (via South Newbury, Bradford and Washington) home after I finished photographing the meeting house in South Sutton.

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