That Colorful Time of Year

Columbus Day weekend Deb took a class at Snow Farm in Williamsburg, MA, which is located just slightly northwest of Amherst. I took the opportunity to tag along and visit the area, doing some hiking and picture taking while she was learning new pottery techniques. The weather was absolutely perfect all three days.  The skies were a clear autumn blue.

This is my first post of photos for that long weekend.

A Scene from Becket

On the way back from Becket:

Textures

Moments Before Sunset

Chapel Falls 1

Chapel Falls 2

On the hike from Chapel Falls up to Bullitt Reservation.

Overhead on the Trail

Bullitt Reservation turned out to be a worthy destination:

Flowing Tresses

Garden Color

Across from Chapel Falls there's a substantial ledge that rock climbers use to test their skills. Fortunately, there's also a hiking trail up and I was rewarded with this:

View From the Ledge Top

Chapel Falls is in the town of Ashfield, that happened to be holding its fall festival that weekend. I walked around the festival for a bit.  I like shiny highly polished metal cars, creating, in this case, yet another selfie.

Parked at the Ashfield Fall Festival

Part of the Ashfield Fall Festival

Streetside Orange

More foliage photos to come.  Stay tuned.

All photos © 2015, all rights reserved.  Contact me for licensing or to order prints.

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Wide-ish Angle at the Res

Normally I use my 150-600mm equivalent lens when I walk around the "Res" to take pictures of ducks and other wildlife, but on this occasion I thought I'd step out of my comfort zone and see what a wider angle might bring me.  This is the polar opposite of shooting close up details of everything which is my usual photographic leaning.  While I don't have a true "wide angle" lens, my Olympus 12-40mm pro lens is fairly wide angle-ish on the short end, where its 24mm equiv. focal length does begin to distort things a bit and gives one that classic wide angle perspective.  All photos on this page were taken with the 12-40 lens.  I had my 75-300mm lens with me as well on the day I took these photos, but I never had the urge to swap lenses.

Part of my inspiration for trying to take more wide angle photos is that my son took some outstanding wide angle shots on one of his recent hiking treks into the Sierra wilderness.  I really appreciated the beauty in this form of photographic expression.

Do you agree?

A Stand of Trees

View of the Island

Curved Shoreline

At Reservoir's End

I love that I can shoot at f2.8 and freeze water with this lens on a not very bright day.  This shot was at 1/500 sec. at ISO 200.

Dog Fishing Action Shot

Drip, Drip

Low Perspective

Blues

Duck Wake

Other Worldly

Branch and Leaves Over Water

Dam Glow

Don't Trip on the Roots

Triangles

Late Sun

All photos © 2015, all rights reserved.  Contact me for licensing or to order prints.

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Medfield Day

Towns in this part of Massachusetts like to declare a special day each year, usually in September, to celebrate their existence.  I had the good fortune to attend "Medfield Day" a few weeks back. Of course, there were several other towns celebrating the same day as their town day as well. It turns out that Medfield really knows how to throw a proper Town Day celebration.  It was extremely well attended, and many of the activities were designed for kids. The weather was outstanding.

In addition, Deb was invited to do a pottery demo by the Cultural Alliance of Medfield and sell some wares.

My view on events follows below.

Downtown Medfield has a rather nice water feature.  There were varied booths along all sides.

Blue Meets Blue

Splash of Color

Of all the activities I observed at the celebration, I was most pulled in by watching the kids completely engrossed in painting pumpkins, especially when the painters themselves had already had their faces painted.  There was just too much fun going on here!  See for yourself.

Let's Get Dirty

Nice Face Paint Job

Mixing Green

Red Tones Surround Her Butterfly Face

Focused

Total Concentration

You Gotta Love That Expression

Shiny Fire Engine Gauges

Steady Hand

Here's the face painting artist herself.  I wonder who painted her face?

Glitter at Work

Almost Done

This girl takes her face painting very seriously. Her mother, who was standing right next to me, told me this. Such intensity!

The Effect is Complete

As always, Deb gets many interested onlookers who find the clay throwing process intriguing.

Parallel Viewing

This highly cropped photo is a self portrait if you look closely into the lenses.  That's me kneeling to take the shot. You can see Deb throwing too.

Selfie

Artist's Hands

This next one might just be my favorite shot of all the day's pictures. Gifted hands.

How an Artist Plays With Mud

Scrunched Face Onlooker

Is that Cool or What?

How Does She Do That?

All photos © 2015, all rights reserved.  Contact me for licensing or to order prints.

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Garden Simplicity

We had torrential rains yesterday, but today was relatively quiet.  At one point, mid-morning, there was even a bit of filtered sunshine.  The garden, though waterlogged, has begun to show its fall colors.  These grasses really caught my eye in their simplicity and natural beauty.

Sometimes I just feel like blogging a few pictures from the day and this is one of those days.

Yellow Grasses One

Yellow Grasses with Leaf

Yellow Grasses Two

A Gift

For the above photos, the yellow in the grasses was a bit accentuated in post processing, but I also intentionally de-saturated and added haze to the rose photo.  That's my photographer's "license" in action, I guess.



All photos © 2015, all rights reserved.  Contact me for licensing or to order prints.

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